I really, really wish I’d gotten more focused on race-day nutrition earlier in my long-course career. It’s been a long road of trial and error for me, as it is for most people, and I’m still working at it. What most people don’t realize is that nutrition is by far the biggest factor to your race day success. I’m a slow learner and didn’t really understand this fully until about my 4th Ironman. Hopefully I can save you some of that trouble.
Ironman racing is a different ballgame than other distances because of two things.
First, it is nearly impossible to simulate Ironman racing conditions in training. You’re simply not going to be able to train continuously for 8+ hours without taking a huge recovery cost. This isn’t true for the Half Ironman distance, for example. A 5-6 hour training day isn’t that uncommon for many athletes.
Second, the duration of the event forces you to get a bunch of things “right” that you don’t have to get right at a shorter distance. In a Half, if you’re a little off on your calories, fluids, or salts, you can often soldier through. Or just have a few rough miles at the end of the run. Not so in Ironman. If you get it wrong, you may be in for a long, sad walk. Or worse.
In my case, getting the proper amount of calories down, particularly on the bike, has been a big challenge. In most cases, my stomach would start rejecting fuel about half way through the bike and I’d get pretty unhappy. It wasn’t until this year that I really drilled into it, and if you’re someone who has struggled with this, below is the framework that I used to address the problem.
There are four key components to Ironman nutrition. Basically these are the things that affect your gut’s ability to process.
- Calories
- Fluids
- Sodium/Electrolytes
- Pacing
I’ll focus on calories here and tackle the other two at some point down the road.
Race Morning
But first, let’s talk about what we’re eating before the race. In my case, the worst part of Ironman for my first few races was eating a big breakfast at 4:00 in the morning. I’d push down 1,000 calories of eggs, toast, peanut butter, and bananas, then lay on the couch in agony until it was time to go to transition. This always worked itself out, but the extra anxiety of feeling so full didn’t help. I always had visions of how terrible it would be if I laid down a “breakfast slick” at the swim start. I understand that kind of thing is frowned upon.
So, here a few hints here that have helped me a lot.
One thing I did was try to pre-make what I could so it was ready to go when I got up. This allowed me to start eating right away rather than burning 15 minutes getting stuff ready. It also allows you to spread the eating out a bit over a longer period of time, which helps avoid that bloaty feeling.
Another is to get up a few minutes earlier and take a quick warm shower. This seems to help get the blood flowing and let your body know it’s time to get to business.
But the real key for me was to move to a smoothie recipe. Basically it’s rice milk, carbo pro, honey, banana, and peanut butter all blended up. It tastes pretty good and comes out to about 1,000 calories. There are lots of ways to do this, but it’s nice because it clears the stomach pretty quickly with little effort. And in my case, I’ll start getting hungry again and take a gel on the way out to the swim start, about 10 or 15 minutes before the cannon.
Between breakfast and the start of the race, I’ve found that plain water or water with something like NUUN in it works best.
Fueling on the Bike
This is where I’ve had real problems. I tried everything. Gels, Maxx Endurance, CarboPro, Accelerade, Schlitz Malt Liquor, Cliff Bars, Hammer Bars, you name it. In every long race from Lake Stevens 2006 through IMC 2008, I had the same thing happen. Upset tummy, inability to get calories in. Prior to 2009, I don’t think I have ever succeeded in getting 1,000 calories down in an Ironman on the bike – or even close. And I see from people’s race reports that I’m not alone.
This year it was clear to me that I needed to get this problem fixed as it was my major limiter. I’ve been using CarboPro and trying to remember to work through it steadily. But I’d get a few hours into the race and…blech…I just couldn’t handle it any more. I thought maybe that was just how I worked and that I had something about my makeup that didn’t allow calorie processing at effort.
Earlier this year, I had a great conversation with Brian Grasky and Bill Daniell about this, and their advice was to start from scratch.
Here’s the protocol I used to get it figured out:
- Stop worrying about how many calories you “should” be taking in, and get focused on what you “can” get in. Start with a small number and see if you can handle that. Say you’ve got a 4 hour ride. Build 2 300cal bottles, and try to get through them over the 4 hours. That’s 150 cals an hour, which is not typically enough (depending on our size and intensity level), but it’s a start. Along with your calories, take a bottle of plain water. So only take in water and your calories and see how that works.
- Get an Aerodrink or a similar hydration system. More water will solve A LOT of your problems. You’ll drink more with a straw in your face. I recommend the new Aerodrink with the cap valve thing instead of the older ones with the yellow sponges that you see all over the roads at races.
- Go to the store and get yourself a $30 Timex Ironman watch. Go to Timer mode and set it to repeat at some short interval. I’ve been doing 6 or 8 minutes. At 6 minutes, I’m fueling/drinking 10x an hour – do what seems right for you, and experiment with it. When it’s time to start your fueling, start that watch. When it beeps, push the button to stop the annoying noise and take a swig of water, a swig of fuel, and a swig of water. Find a way to attach it to your handlebars; I was able to put it between my stem and my aero bars. If your stomach starts feeling sour, just skip a feed interval and/or just take in some water. Since you’re bringing it slowly, usually by the next interval, you’ll be good to go.
- Start gradually working up the number of calories in each bottle on training rides and see where you can get to.
- If things are going well, experiment with adding some electrolytes to your fuel so you can get them in that way – NUUN, Endurolyte powder, Thermolytes, etc.
My results?
First, I now understand why I was having problems – it was just too much at a time. I’d get busy racing, get behind, try to catch up, and my stomach would rebel on me. In the meantime I was bonking and getting dehydrated in the process. Seems obvious now – yep, slow learner over here.
Second, it appears that I’ve now trained my stomach to perform better under stress. I used to feel like I had to be super careful to avoid having issues. In training, at least, I now no longer feel this way. Basically, I’m to the point where I build about a ~700 calorie bottle (haven’t tried more) and I’ll easily get through it in training in 1:45-2:00 without any problems. Then I’ll eat a snickers bar, then do another 700 cal bottle, then maybe throw down a gel or something. Yes, big, big difference. I’ll have little moments where my stomach lets me know it’s feeling overworked. Some water, a few minutes off, and all is OK again in Tummytown. It’s easy to feather it.
With better nutrition, you’ll also find that you can ride strong for your entire long rides, run better off the bike, and finish the day without feeling completely wrecked. It’s a big difference and improves the amount of volume you can absorb. That’s the goal, after all!
At Ironman Canada this year, I had no problem getting calories down. In fact, I overdid it and ended up taking in almost 2,000 calories on the bike. That, plus way too much fluid and not enough sodium caused me problems on the run. But less calories is an easy problem to solve so I’ve made good progress.
Note that for rides of 3 hours or less, I don’t really bother with this – I’ll bring a bottle of Gatorade and a gel or two. However, for Half IM, I do follow it. I got 800-900 calories in at the Troika Half Ironman, got off the bike feeling just wrecked because I'd ridden so hard (and because I’d come right off of several huge training weeks), but still ran better than the prior year on a much hotter day. And felt fine after the race. The calories made a big, big difference.
Obviously this is tailored for liquid calories, which I think are the way to go for most cases. But you could make it work with gel or solid food with some tweaks. But solids are tough at higher intensity levels, and you really need to get your fluids right. Most people really think that liquid calories should be your predominate fuel source on race day.
Fueling on the Run
My experience is that it’s tough to count calories on the run. The cups of Gatorade or Coke you get on the run are filled to randomly different levels, and most of it ends up not going in your mouth anyway. Gels are easier to monitor, but in many cases your stomach will not be able to handle much maltodextrin (or other longer chain carbs) out on the run. In addition, everyone’s tolerance for sweet decreases throughout the day so it becomes harder and harder to get things like gels down the pipe. This is where something like pretzels or the chicken broth can be a great respite, later in the run.
My strategy on the run is to take in as many calories as I can manage to keep down. I purposely keep my stomach just on this side of “unhappy” and then will tactically skip something here or there if it needs a break. In an Ironman, this means Coke and Water at every aid station, and then a Gel every three miles or so. With the gels, I grab them at the station and stick them in my pocket, then pull them out about 2/3 into the next mile and nip of them with the goal of finishing as I arrive at the next aid station so I can chase with water. Unfortunately in my last two Ironman’s, I’ve gone over the edge, so this isn’t bullet proof.
But the key on the run is to keep the calories coming in smoothly. Your stomach is generally not going to feel great on the run of an Ironman. That’s part of the gig. But those calories are critical.
I typically do something like the following:
- Water at every aid station.
- Every third aid station, I grab a gel and put it in my pocket. About 2/3 that mile, I take it out, open it, and start nipping at it. As I approach the next aid station, I finish it right before I get to the water, then wash that down.
- Coke at every aid station where I’m not finishing a gel.
- Every other mile, I take two Endurolytes or a Thermolyte or whatever.
- If it is mid-80s or higher, I’ll walk the aid stations to make sure I get my fluids in and to put ice in my hat and/or down my shorts, etc.
But this can be a tough one – it’s highly dependant on many other factors and it has a dash of luck tossed in. In my last two Ironman’s, I’ve had my stomach go sideways on the run. At Ironman Arizona this year, I think that I had picked up a stomach bug earlier, so I don’t how much my protocol had to do with my difficulty keeping things down later in the run. The fact that I had trouble keeping food down until the following morning points to something else going on.
In any case, in my next race, I’m considering holding off on the coke until the last half of the run and just going on gels and water for the first half, then switching to coke and dropping the gels in the second half.
The above is a general framework that may or may not work for others, but it’s served me well as a basis that I’ve continued to tweak on. Trial and error, trial and error, trial and error.
Fueling After the Race
After the race, there will be food available, but it’s usually pizza and fries and stuff, which may not be all that appealing. I typically have my family bring me some chocolate milk for right after the race, which is a great way to get some protein and carbs in. I’ll do that and drink water and have some chicken broth.
That usually gets me over the hump and then I can move on to proper post-race nutrition: a burger, a beer, a milkshake, and whatever else I can manage to get down. My tummy usually doesn’t really start liking food until the next day.