I have an athlete who through testing, is a heavy salt sweater. He has a nutritionist who advised him to consume 1600mg of sodium per hour *. Not surprisingly to me, he started puking at the start of the run. Does this seem like a lot - as in too much - sodium intake?
I advised him that it might be better to do some dedicated heat training and ease up on the sodium.
Yes that is a lot. Perhaps the nutritionist thinks that “all” sodium loss can be replaced during a race and thus the recommendation. I think it is pretty clear how much one can absorb within an upper and lower range, just have a look at Dr. Alex and what he has come up with for a huge sample size of athletes…
So the initial complaint that the athlete and nutritionist were trying to overcome was muscle cramping during 70.3 races. The athlete says this high sodium intake plan worked fine for subsequent HIM races but didn’t work so well in a full IM. I thought the idea of sodium curing muscle cramping was disproven and was no longer advised.
(Lack of) sodium is absolutely linked to muscle cramping.
It’s just that muscle cramping can be caused by other factors as well.
Geoff, do you have any idea how much the athlete is drinking per hour. My happy place seems to be ~ 1000mg/liter consumed but others may do better with as much as 1500mg/liter of Na.
I don’t know if that means one bottle of three scoops. I’ll ask.
What is the sodium source? Your gut may have a different reaction to sodium citrate vs. sodium chloride. Might be worth testing it out if higher sodium intake is required.
Might be worth checking out a home mix via Saturday Fuel (Dr. Alex Harrison)to see if the athlete can satisfy their nutrition requirements that way since the store stuff is not working so well.
You are a coach and you dont know this yet?? Perhaps his nutritionist is not the only problem here…
He consumed one bottle of liquid per hour on the bike and that was three-scoops of Tailwind.
Was that a 600ml bottle? It appears that Tailwind contains 303mg of sodium per scoop so just over 900mg per hour and ~ 1500mg of sodium per liter which is a bit much for some athletes. That would be a 12.5% CHO solution if made up in a 600ml bottle. That’s one of my favorite go to concentrations but might to too strong on a hot day if not taking additional water.
For reference…as a heavy sweater…the most I can get Dr. Alex’s app to give me is 1400 mg of sodium / hour, at maximum sweat rate for 6 hours at marathon pace. It maxes out at the 3 hr mark and stays the same rate at 4,5,6 hours.
I have not had any issues with 1400 mg / hr out to 4 hours…that’s diluted into 36 oz of water.
I also do up to 120 g / hr of CHO for 4 hours in the same bottles.
The sodium sources were:
Adding in the 2 x 342mg from the S!caps that brings the total Na amount to something like 909 + 682 = 1591 mg /hour and if he’s only drinking 600ml with that then the sodium concentration works out to be ~ 2651 mg/liter which would be way, way too much in my experience.
YMMV
Hugh