I can only imagine that Mortal was spending significantly more than Gatorade, or Gatorade was just cutting sponsor dollars and VIK. It does however seem like Gatorade has left the endurance sports field as there is very little marketing. They had a whole ambassador team doing triathlons and running. The only thing you can get from the Endurance range now is powder and there’s almost not marketing being done. Which is probably why Lionel stopped using the product more than preference, as they cut sponsor dollars.
Fun story, at Oceanside 70.3 a few years back I accidentally left my gel flask in my run bag in transition and figured I’d just grab gels on the run.
Not thinking about what I was taking, every aid station I grabbed a gel and took one. It was at the 4th aid station that I realized I’ve run less than 4 miles and already taken 4 gels. I paid more attention after that.
But still, to this day, I wonder if I sold myself short. Just how many gels could have I consumed in one half marathon if I didn’t stop? I guess I’ll always wonder the rest of my life.
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I’m going to say at least a new pair of shoes worth of those gels! gotta get your entry fees worth.
I am still confused about what I am going to be getting in the bottle I grab at an aid station. A 24 ounce bottle with one fizzy tablet? Why in the world does this have to be so complicated. Why can’t they spell it out for us? For example: “each 24 ounce bottle will contain 1 tablet, 500mg of sodium” or whatever. I understand that it’s meant to be consumed as 2 tablets (1000mg sodium) in one liter but we ain’t getting a liter at an aid station! It’s 24 oz. So what the hell is in the bottle??
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you’ll get a 500ml bottle with a tablet (1000mg).
Oz is Australia.
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I guess I have the same question. Does this mean the bottles on the course have 500 mg of sodium?
If it’s one tablet, it’s 500mg of sodium.
Edit: I’m probably wrong about G and GE being separate. But I do remember the two guys there saying something about that. Cannot remember.
Gatorade Endurance was a separate venture/business from Gatorade. I met the two owners at IMLP 2019 and was talking to them about it. From what I remember they were not part of Gatorade.
Regarding this move, I think it’s rough to it offer an on course hydration with carb. Not everyone wants solid carbs. It’s very efficient to get carbs with fluids. And if you want just plain water you can also have that. Now you have to load your bike with more stuff.
I thought Dr. Alex H did a great job explaining this stuff. An electrolyte heavy but low carb drink means someone will
have to find a separate carb heavy drink that’s low in electrolytes and that’s not easy to find.
Logistically this just seems bad but I get that Ironman is a business first and must find a sponsor, regardless of the impact on the athletes.
If Maurten had flavored hydrogels I’d use them.
See I think I normally defend Ironman’s business decisions, but in this case I have to say they aren’t thinking about the customer experience and the direct impact the product has on their customers.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the many thousands of hopeful finishers Ironman attracts are having at a minimum a harder time finishing and no doubt some are totally bonking because they aren’t being given enough carbs.
Very few if any of the back of packers are suffering only from not enough electrolytes (and if they are, they are surely struggling with carbs as well).
Ironman is intentionally executing a business decision here that will reduce the quality of their customers experience. Their customers just aren’t well versed enough to understand how many gels they’d actually need to get through the day.
One of the head coaches I work with bonked on all of his 70.3s hard because he has no idea. “I took a couple gels on the bike and run” was his fueling strategy.
Ironman, you are setting your customers up to fail.
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I have to agree I’m not happy with the business first mindset here. Wanna keep the village smaller? Ok. Wanna make it harder to get to the start line? Ok. Wanna give us less swag? Ok.
But remove something like a carb source and make fueling during the race that much more complicated? Fuck off.
Also am I reading you correctly that one of your head coaches can’t manage a basic 70.3 nutrition strategy well? Umm…what?
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Ya tell me about it. Former Football player, CrossFitter, turned XC coach. Good people, but nutrition to them usually means protein, veg and low carb….
As I mentioned elsewhere, the points in bold are what I agree with. I am no totally clued out on things related to triathlon, and just ended one 70.3 Worlds just assuming there were carbs in the drink and then before the next 70.3 Worlds was when I found out the drink had no carbs. It never occurred to me that Ironman would serve a no carb drink. Fortunately, I already carry a decent amount of carbs in my bike bottle concentrate and in my T2 bottle and it is fine for a 70.3
Over a full IM, it would have been a full on bonk disaster not knowing the drink has no carbs. It’s just a VERY reasonable assumption that a sport drink has carbs. Literally everyone who did high school sports has been using drinks with carbs on the sidelines/halftime etc, so it is a bit shocking that an event that is way longer than standard 2-3 hrs team sports events would actually also have carbs!!! That is a valid assumption for anyone coming over from another sport
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Not quoting simply to make it easier on the eyes.
I think the real issue is the amount of moving pieces required to prep and think about for one of these branded races. I’m the first one to say buyer beware and will admit the onus is on the racers to read and prepare well, and read again, and read all fine print. Especially for an event that requires swimming.
Beginners already don’t prep well-enough physically and logistically, and maybe they are but just coming up short because there are sooo many small boxes to check off. Can be death by a thousand cuts leading up to a full and I think people are just tapped out. The cognitive load is immense.
I would have crashed and burned my first two times if I didn’t have the luxury of a friend/coach who knew what the F he was doing.
Coming up short on the carbs and making the physiology calculations that much more complicated is asinine IMO. Even a basic carb drink will make a world of difference if an AGer can drink a few bottles over the course of the race.
This is just not the place to cut corners.
Does anyone have any data to support the run DNF rate increasing overall or for first timers? There are a lot of assumptions and statements of fact that this is severely impacting new athlete, but really it seems to be the old heads who are most impacted. It’s the ones who are so ingrained in the way they have done it for 40 years that they can’t fathom doing it any other way. There is a huge segment of athletes who carry a huge portion of their fuel on them and don’t rely on aid stations. So would be interested to see if the belief is backed up by statistics or just by anecdotes of experienced athletes acting inexperienced.
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If we flip it around and ask, is there a correlation between carbs taken and finished time?
It’s reasonable to assume that on average, increased carbs reduces finish time, and reduced carbs increases it.
I know it’s true from my personal experience, even if there are examples of someone taking more carbs and not finishing etc.
I think it would be interesting globally to see rates but even if the data isn’t there, that could mean any number of things.
Except you can still OD on carbs with the extensive buffet at every aid station, so flipping it doesn’t work. You aren’t being starved of carbs you’re just not getting liquid carbs.
In addition your notion that nothing bad can happen if you take on too many carbs is factually wrong. Too many carbs can absolutely lead to GI issues. Those can run a spectrum but they can certainly slow you down, we’ve seen a few people famously shit and puke themselves during races in the recent past. Carb intake like anything is a curve. The more you take improves performance until it doesn’t.
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I don’t think this is about experienced athletes acting inexperienced. For around 45 years Ironman had carbs in their on course sport drink. Even the most clueless athlete was getting minimally 6x150cals from Gatorade bottles alone on the bike. That’s 900 cals that need to come from somwhere else in an Ironman.
It’s just about expectation management. They should have it plastered everywhere, “ALL ATHLETES BEWARE THAT WE ARE NO SERVING A DIET DRINK ON THE BIKE…NO CARBS,…SO IF YOU WERE FUELING OFF DIET COKE GO FIGURE OUT WHERE ELSE YOU WOULD NEED TO GET ENERGY”
It should be in large font blinking print, because it’s just a stupid thing to do when you are sending people across an Oasis.
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DNF isn’t the only poor outcome possible from not fueling well on the bike.