enginerd's geek heaven - FULL (Page 3)

I never did any major tri so I'll speak for my running races:

The week before the race:

Assuming that the race is taking place over the weekend, I'll be eating pasta and rice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, I will be eating a good lunch and a light dinner.

On race day:

I start off with 2 slices of 7 grains bread with a thick layer of Nutela chocolate spread and a coffee. Then, during the race: Every 1/2 hour I am taking a Gel or Sports Beans and every hour, 2 (or more, depends on the temperature) pills of Hammer Nutrition Enduralytes - to prevent crampings. I also drink a lot - as I am a big guy who sweat a lot. I usually carry with me a 16 oz. bottle of water but for the most, drink at each aid station.

I am following this nutrition plan also on longer (over 10 miles) training runs. It took me a while to find what works the best for me and I had experimented with it quite a bit until I got it right.

Good morning Donato! (and Group!)
Just wanted to follow up after my initial contact with you and hoping that I am not too late to join geek heaven. I have been with an awesome mentor group for the winter and they have given me some amazing support and information but I am anxious to connect with folks that have experience with some longer distances since I am trying to prep for IMC.

Yay!!! Thanks! Well here's the scoop on me:

Name: run_yc_run/ Yvonne

Story: 37 years old. I live in Calgary, Canada and I have pretty much always been running, though more seriously in '99 when I decided to train for my first half mary. That was the start and I have since completed 12 full marathons. I have always watched and been interested in triathlons and but swimmng was always the deterrent and I joked that I would do my first tri when they allowed water wings. Watching my DH and friends the last couple of years at IMC and knowing that other friends were signing up for 09 IMC, I got the inspiration and made the commitment. So here I am attempting to go from runner to triathlete....

Family Status: Married to a triathlete (4 years in July), with Linkin our chocolate lab

Current Training: I do train with a tri club that is run through the local college 3x per week but it is mostly focused on short intensity and unfortunately the program takes a break during the summer. We are fortunate to have 3 sport-specific coaches. Including my tri club training, I aim to be swimming 3-4x per week, biking 2-3x per week, and running 3-4x per week. Swimming is by far my BIGGEST weakness and while I am pleased with my progress, I still have a long way to go....so I will be looking for lots of help here!

2008 Races: Chicago Marathon, California International Marathon

2009 Races: MRC Sprint Triathlon, 5Peaks Trail races, Foothills Charity Sprint Triathlon, IM Canada, (I do plan on adding one or two other tri's but have yet to decide)

What will make me a good group member: I consider myself to be a positive and supportive person- something about being a Junior High teacher perhaps. I love to share ideas about training and have some pretty good knowledge when it comes to running, nutrition, wellness and have a great resource with my DH being a long time tri-guy as well as ex-manager of a bike shop.

I am very excited about getting to know you all and participating in geek heaven!

I am not quite one of the IM ers in the group, but this is what my body (220lbs. 6'4" consumes:

Running: 1100 cal./hour

Cycling: 850-900 cal./hour

Swimming: ~600 cal./hour

Ronen.

I use a POLAR HRM which takes Age, Height and Weight into account. It measures the number of calories burned given those inputs and based on the HR it measures.

www.FitDay.com has a calculator which can predict one's calories consumption. I'm almost certain that I plugged in my numbers once and got pretty close values.

Now, please be advised that the human body should take in, only so much calories per hour (280 at most I think) so, this would be guideline for how much nutrition you'll need to plan for, during a race or training.

I am really not an expert on that. Maybe someone else in the group can add/correct me if I am wrong.

Ronen.

I saw a formula once that calculated calories used to calories consumed and certainly you aren't going to take in 1100 calories per hour on a run or bike.  Most folks I have talked to go like 300/350 on the bike and 200 on the run based on just what one can digest/tolerate and such.  I was just curious about what our current group takes in as the topic of food/calories is our topic dejoir.   

When I trained for my first marathon, I has the exact same question. I learned from others, that there is not simple answer to that. What I ended up doing (following wise people's advice) was to experiment during training. The idea is to experiment different nutrition plans and take subjective notes on how it felt. Then, whatever worked should be further tweaked to get it even better. By the time I ran 16 and 18 miles, I kind of knew I had it nailed down, and from that point on, I followed that nutrition plan as it was.

Weather has also something to do with nutrition plan. Sometimes, I trained in colder weather and felt great and at times, when running when it was warmer, I felt really bad. I had to learn to adjust on-the-fly my hydration and Enduralyte intake to avoid cramps due to higher sweat rate on warmer days.

I think that another key item here is not to change anything you practiced during training on race day. It is common to read that people report that they had trained well, had their nutrition plan all sorted out, but then on race day, they felt great (initially) and skipped the first gel and then the second plus skipped a drink in an aid station to save some time - but then, later in the race - they started feeling bad and did much worst than they had planned on.

Ronen.