Nutrition and protein

If there's 5 million triathletes in the world, there's 7 million nutrition plans/recommendations out there.

From my perspective (as someone who battles weight constantly and doesn't take triathloning too seriously)...

It's all dependent on your body, your stomach, the distance you're going, the intensities you're delivering....not to mention heat, humidity and tons of other variables.

Assuming you haven't already, the first step is to read up on liquid. Find the articles/etc. about how to manage hydration. This is something I don't think anyone can mess around with. Once you start spending 40....50....60 minutes "doing fitness", you have to have an idea of your body's needs. Hell, you need to know this stuff if you're gonna do an hour+ of yardwork if you wanna stay safe.

As for nutrition....can't help ya much there, other than almost every athlete swears by some method...and they're all different. There's some math-y type stuff you can find about calculating how many calories you are burning and how and when you need to replace them/etc. It's complex.

I think the easiest thing to do....at least to get started....is to see what's out there. With the exception of Clif bars and such (remember, protein takes up to 4 hours after it's ingested to become usable)....most of it just some form of sugar and/or salt. Gels, chews, waffles....all sorts off stuff at your LBS or sporting goods store. Try a few on those initial rides/runs. Some people have tummy issues from various brands/flavors/delivery methods. Some of them will give you cotton mouth. Some taste nasty. Find what agrees with you...then you can go from there. Hard to follow a plan that involves lots of Gu gels if they give you bubblegut. Most of those things could easily be replaced with some grapes or raisins or other fruits....but those can be hard to tote around.

Find out what you can tolerate....see what they're made of and made for.....then you have an arsenal of stuff you can tolerate. Then you can start looking at how people use them.

Beware, though, since most of those things have high concentrations of sugars....they also tend to pack a caloric wallop. I did 2 or 3 years of triathloning (never more than an Olympic....you really don't NEED anything that distance or less) and never touched anything beyond Gatorade and maybe a candy bar or something. By the time I worked up to a half, I'd tried a few gels out and took along a baggy or two of treats on long runs. For a half, I won't consume much more than a Clif bar or two, a couple pretzels, some grapes....and like 1 gel. Maybe 2? Oh, I did have some cola once at mile 11. Big mistake. I never drank it when I was training and really don't drink it more than a handful of times a year (weight battles). Mile 11-12 was a burpy sloshy mess.