njc65 Mentor Group CLOSED (Page 4)

The last week plus has been good for training.  I've put the hours in and felt comfortable doing it generally except for the bike (see later). 
I'm still trying to plan the season out and am struggling a little because of this.  What I'm finding is that a lot of triathlons held last year June onwards have not yet posted dates and race types for 2011.  Because of this I don't haven't been able to plan the year and focus the training distances towards building up to specific race distances.  The broad plan is to do maybe 2 sprints and then 2 olympics.  I've found 3 sprints (close to home) Mar 6, Apr 16 and May 29 which are really nicely spread out. I think I've found an olympic on June 20 but nothing later yet.  The Mar 6 race is also an olympic as well.
At this point I my tentative plan is to do the sprints on Mar 6 and Apr 16 then move to the olympic on Jun 20 and look for a later olympic to come up.  I was toying with doing the olympic instead on Mar 6 and taking it nice and easy but am going off the idea.  I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. 
Second question for the group.  The bike is my weakest part.  I hate cycling on stationary bikes but often it's necessary.  I cycled for an hour last Saturday on a stationary bike and physically couldn't do anymore because it was just so uncomfortable sitting on the bike.  I don't know if this is my position or just that I don't use these bikes that much.  Tomorrow I'm going to try a longer ride on my mountain bike to see if that is also a problem but any thoughts / experience in this area would be welcome.

Neil,
I'm pleased to see someone else has issues with stationary bikes.  I ended up working for 16 hours yesterday so didn't fit any exercise in at all.  We now have 2-3" of snow so I doubt the long ride will happen until maybe Saturday (weather permitting).
Swimming scheduled for tonight so at least it is indoors.
Ray

Gary - where are you from again? Hope the ride went well

As for me I ended up with another RD yesterday so I'm looking to repeat last week and get in a 30 min walk tonight and another 2.75 on the weekend.

Snow....cold......seems like a good idea at the moment from this end of the world ! Dropped down to around 27degrees C today.  I can imagine in reality that seeing the white stuff all day everyday would get a bit boring. 

Hydration is something we take for granted.  I collapsed about 6 months ago after spending only about 3 hours out on a golf course.  I did actually drink over that 3 hours, but obviously not enough.  5 hours in hospital and 2 litres of magic juice later and it was all good.  The golf was rubbish that day too !

Ok folks here’s a bit on nutrition. Nutrition is very individual, it’s an area that I need to focus on, I’m not great and have tended to almost hope for the best. I am looking more into the subject and practicing with sports drinks and gels etc. Below are a few thoughts that may help you, lets keep chatting as we go on the subject.

Race Day Nutrition

I think Nutrition is really the fifth discipline in triathlon, transition being the 4^th, especially for long-course events, ie Olympic upwards. Nutrition problems are one of the top few causes of DNF in longer-course events. My worse experience was in a marathon when I ran out of gas at mile 20, nothing left in the tank, how I managed the last 6 miles I still don’t quite know!

Many aspects of nutrition are highly individual, what works for one person doesn’t for another, therefore practicing is essential.  At the same time, there are some general facts that apply to just about all so let’s look at those and it will help you create your plan.



Some Basic Facts About Nutrition

Let's start with some basic facts about human nutrition.  The body has essentially three sources of energy, carbohydrates, protein, and fat.  Carbohydrates are processed by the liver and become glucose in the blood or are stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles.  Protein is metabolized into amino acids, which can be used for a lot of purposes, including burned for energy or converted to glucose or fat, and then burned.  Finally, fat is, well, fat, and is either broken down into other things, or burned more or less 'directly' as fuel.

The ratio of carbs to protein to fat that your body uses for fuel depends on the level of exertion, how long you have been working, and the availability of the each one (carbs especially will be depleted after a while).  (It is thought by some that this ratio may change over time, depending on how you train but it is still to be proved beyond doubt).

Carbohydrates provide fast energy, and so the body prefers a higher percentage of carbohydrates if it is being asked to spend a lot of energy quickly.  Fat takes longer to oxidize (burn for fuel), and so it is preferred at lower intensities.  In addition, as glycogen stores become low, your body will switch to a higher percentage of fat for fuel out of necessity.  Because fat cannot provide as much energy per second, you will be forced, at this point, to slow down.  Protein is also burned during exercise, accounting for around 5% to 15% of your total energy, the higher numbers is reached during more intense exercise.  This protein is largely taken from your own muscle tissue, which is one more reason that it is important to replenish your body with protein after a workout or race, especially a hard one.  During longer races, it is believed by many that taking some protein on board is also beneficial.  It may help to absorb carbohydrates, and it may provide your body some protein to use as fuel in place of the protein it would otherwise take from your muscle tissue.

A well-trained athlete's body stores in the about 2000 calories worth of glycogen,  an inactive person stores considerably less, which is one reason among many that they become tired more quickly during exercise.  Your body will not allow these stores to be completely depleted.  When you get too close to depletion, you 'bonk'.  Just so we're clear, a true 'bonk' is a lot more than just feeling queasy or a little lightheaded.  When you really bonk, your brain is beginning to shut down, you cannot think clearly, you are likely to end up somewhere and not know how you got there, and you are on the verge of passing out.  I have been there it is dangerous, it was a scary experience – hmm a golf course experience somebody?!  This means that you have around 90 minutes to 2 hours of effort (depending on intensity and fitness) before something has to give.  All of us, on the other hand, have an effectively limitless supply of fat.  Even somebody who is very lean has thousands of calories in available fat.  A 140 pound person with 6% body fat (i.e very lean) still has around 8 and a half pounds of fat on board, giving a huge 30,000 or so calories, So as glycogen depletion gets worse, your body switches largely to fat, as mentioned above.

As for where these calories go, of course they are, we hope, moving you forward.  Running you burn around 95-150 or so calories per mile, depending on your weight.  (95 if you weigh 120 pounds.  110 if you weight 140.  150 if you weigh 200.)  This number does not depend (very much) on speed, so long as you are running.  (Walking burns somewhat fewer calories per mile.)  On the bike, generally people burn anywhere from 600 to 1000 calories per hour, the former being an easy cruise and the latter being a hammer-fest.  Swimming, typically people burn between 250 and 400 calories per mile, depending on weight and efficiency in the water.

Short Versus Long Course Nutrition

Most people do not need much specialist nutrition at all for a sprint triathlon but there are a few things to consider.  If it is hot, you take on some water.  Some people feel that they get a little boost from some carbohydrate during the race.  I am one of those people -- this is not a nutrition thing (the carbs won't get into your system until after the race is over!), but there is some evidence out there that suggests that if your body 'tastes' a little carbohydrate, it triggers faster burning of carbs for fuel (i.e., a higher ratio of carbs to fat).  Since the pacing 'strategy' in a sprint is to push as hard as possible to the end, this is a good thing.  I put a bottle on my bike with a few swallows (literally -- not much more than is needed to wet the mouth) of sports drink, and I drink it during the bike.  Other than that, I take nothing during the race. You may want to pop a gel in about 20 mins before the start it will give you a boost before the swim.

An Olympic race is a bit different for me, I take something more substantial during the bike.  The race is longer than the 90 minutes to 2 hours mentioned above, so if you want to keep going hard throughout the race, you'll need some calories.  I try to consume a bottle of sports drink during the bike, and perhaps a gel or more sports drink during the run.  I take water on too as i get a bit sick on just sports drinks alone. Whether you should, for purposes of nutrition, think of the Olympic distance more as a sprint or more as a long-course race depends in large part on how long it is going to take you to finish.  If you are going to go around 2:30 or less, I'd consider it more like a sprint, and just be sure to get some decent calories in on the bike (around 200 or so), and possibly some (100 or so) on the run.  If you are going to go 2:30 or more, I'd think of it more as a long course race and plan accordingly.  The biggest mistake I see people making during an Olympic race is over-eating.  I've seen bikes that look like a hotel buffet.  Your glycogen stores plus a little supplement is probably all that you need.

Half-iron and full iron distance races are another kettle of fish entirely.  Even if you took in nothing during an Olympic distance race, you'd probably finish, just not as quickly as you'd like.  But DNF due to poor nutrition is a distinct possibility for the longer races.  Here you need to be considerably more careful, and you need to practice your nutrition.  Most of my comments below are therefore geared towards these longer races.

The way I think about the difference is this:  In a sprint or Olympic distance race, I just want to take in enough to be sure that I can continue to push hard all the way.  I'm not thinking 'long-term' or 'steady-state' at all.  I'm burning the candle from both ends, and the point is to take in just enough fuel to keep it burning.  When and how I get that fuel into my body is not a huge concern.  For long-course, I take more of a 'steady-state' attitude.  I have a planned number of calories per hour that I want to take in, and I begin my plan the moment I get onto the bike.

Pre-Race Meal

For a sprint race, there is good evidence that a gel 20 minutes before the start can set off an insulin reaction that encourages your body to burn a higher percentage of carbohydrates.  As mentioned above, this is a good thing -- for short hard efforts we want to rely on carbs for fuel as much as possible.  They allow us to go faster.  Other sugary food should have a similar effect, but avoid anything that will not sit well in your gut.  This is easy to practice.  Prior to your harder training efforts, just try taking something and see how it sits with you during the workout.  

For long-course racing, we do not want this effect.  We aren't going to be going at an effort that would benefit from added glycogen availability.  In fact, we want to keep our glycogen stores in decent shape for as long as possible.  For this reason, you should eat a final meal around 3 hours prior to the race.  This gives you time to digest and store the carbs as glycogen, and the insulin response will have gone away.  The purpose of this meal is to top up liver glycogen.  Your muscle glycogen stores are not depleted over night (contrary to what you might hear).  While you are sleeping, your body uses blood glucose and liver glycogen (and fat) for fuel, not muscle glycogen.  You want to consume complex carbohydrates such as a bagel, baked potato, low fat yoghurt, or a banana.  Fat is probably a bad idea, and especially avoid saturated fat.  Also try to get in a small amount of protein. 

This pre-race meal is NOT essential.  It is a top-up.  If you have to choose between getting enough sleep and food, choose sleep.  You may be a little hungry on the starting-line.  That's perfectly OK.  It isn't going to affect your race badly.  In fact, the feeling of hunger will go away as soon as you start racing.  If the hunger is killing you, eat something small (like a gel or some other easily digested complex carb) just a few minutes before the start.  Timing here can be important -- you don't want that insulin spike we mentioned earlier.  If your effort has begun very shortly after taking the food, it won't. Once your body starts exerting a significant effort, the pancreas stops secreting insulin and you no longer have to worry about the insulin reaction.

By the way, as long as we are talking about pre-race nutrition, let's get one myth out of the way.  'Carbo-loading' is not a matter of eating a bunch of pasta the night before.  There are some protocols out there that purport to increase the amount of glycogen stored in your muscles, not true.  Don’t bother with 'carbo-loading'.  If you want to eat pasta the night before, go for it, I do. there's nothing wrong with it.  The key is don't overeat, however, you aren't getting more glycogen into your system by eating a massive pasta meal the night before.   A normal meal is plenty.

Hydration

There are a lot of myths about hydration out there, many of them perpetuated by sports drink companies.  (For a long lecture on this, see the Science of Sport blog entries on hydration.)  The most harmful are the recommendations to 'measure your sweat rate' and then try to replenish what you sweat, no no no!.  That's a good way to end up in the medical tent, or dead.  There are two reasons not to drink that much.  First, your gut cannot handle that much water.  Your body cannot absorb it that quickly so it sits in your gut, sloshing around, making you feel nauseous.  Second, when you get too much water in your system, your electrolytes are effectively depleted.  The problem is that what your body needs is not a certain amount of electrolyte (on which, more below), but a certain concentration of them.  If you dilute them with too much water, they cannot do their job, and problems start.  In the worst cases, people suffer from 'water intoxication' (hyponatremia).  Every year people running marathons die from this condition, due solely to drinking too much.

You lose around 34oz of water per hour to sweat.  This number varies from person to person, largely based on weight, and can also vary by conditions (temperature and humidity), but it is remarkably stable across the population.  And don't think that just because it is cold, you aren't sweating.  You are.  Maybe not as much, but you are.  Don't forget to drink even when it is cold.  On the other hand, our bodies are able to absorb only around 20-25oz of water per hour, slightly more when it is very hot.  Don't try to drink more than this.  It will not help one bit, and could hurt.  Some people, especially smaller people, may need to go even lower.

So yes, you will become 'dehydrated' during the race, guaranteed but your body can handle that.  Up to around 2% loss of body weight due to dehydration is generally considered normal for an endurance event, and unlikely to affect performances strongly.  By the time you get over 2% you will start to see a noticeable decline in performance.  By around 4% performance suffers considerably, and by 5% you will begin feeling lightheaded or worse.  Beyond that and you are headed for the medical tent.  Don't let it come to that.  Drink your 20 or so ounces per hour and you'll be fine.  If you feel sloshing in your stomach, slow down on the drinking.

Calories

Depending on how hard you are going, you could be burning anywhere from 500 to 1000 calories per hour during a race, in addition to your basic metabolic needs (which probably adds another 100 or so).  In a longer distance race, this means that you will burn through your glycogen stores before the race is over.  You need to replace some of that to keep going.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make with nutrition is trying to replace all or most of what they burn.  This just is not possible.  During exercise, most people can process no more than around 250 calories per hour.  Anything more than that just sits in our gut and rots.  The reason is (among other things) that blood is required for digestion -- it carries the nutrients away from the gut -- but during exercise, the blood is busy doing other things, so little of it is spared for digestion.  The calorie deficit is not a problem.  Your body has plenty of fat to make up the difference.  (No offense intended!)

It matters what kind of calories they are.  Up to 1.5 to 2 hours or so, it can be pure carbohydrates.  After that, your body will start cannibalizing protein from your muscles, and it is believed that you are better off providing a small amount of protein (10-15% of total calories taken in). 

What kind of carbohydrates is thought to matter as well.  Many argue, somewhat persuasively, that they should be complex carbs, basically this means to avoid carbs whose name ends in '-ose' (sucrose, dextrose, fructose, etc.).  The reason here is that they are digestible at much higher concentration than simple sugars.  The simple sugars need to be diluted to the point that you would either have to drink too much water to digest them, or you would not be able to get in enough calories per hour.  (There is a famous study purporting to show that one can get in more calories per hour using a mix of simple and complex carbs.  The problem, however, is that the subjects in the study were working at only 50% of VO2max.  That is Sunday stroll pace -- not remotely close even to an Ironman effort.  What we can digest at that effort is pretty irrelevant to race situations.)

Having a Plan.  Sticking To It?

You should go into a race with a nutrition plan, one that you have practiced, preferably many times, including in a race rehearsal.  Keep the plan as simple as possible, and involve food and drink that will be served on the course if possible.  Here's an example of my plan.  I mix a strong bottle of sports drink 4-6 scoops in a bike bottle.  That goes on my downtube.  A bottle of water goes in a bottle cage attached to my other tube.  I keep gels and one or two energy bars in a bag on my top tube.  I aim to get in one scoop's worth of sports drink (~100 calories), one gel (~100 calories) and a quarter of a bar (~50 calories) every hour I’m riding.  I drink water to thirst.  Unless race circumstances prevent it, I make sure to drink sports drink on the :15 and :45 of each hour, and eat on the :00 and :30 of each hour (or vice versa -- the point is that something is going into my mouth every 15 minutes).  I drink, as I said, to thirst (typically, though, I just drink right after eating, or drinking sports drink, which needs to be diluted in any case).  For the run, I would take one gel every 45 minutes (I do this when running marathons), and drink water and sports drink at the aid stations, for around 150-200 calories per hour.  If they have my preferred type of gels on course, I'll use those, usually I take my own.

It is important to have a reasonable, and simple, plan.  (Remember, you have to be able to stick to this plan even in the late hours of a long race, when your head may not be 100% in the game!)  At the same time, it is important to be able to make adjustments on the fly, and that is why a little bit of theoretical knowledge (which I was trying to provide above!) is helpful.  If things are going badly, you can sometimes use that knowledge to help figure out what is going wrong, and adjust on the fly.  Be committed to your plan -- after all, you've practiced it and know it works, right?! -- but don't be a slave to it.  If things start going badly, re-evaluate and adjust.


Post-Race Nutrition

This piece is mainly about nutrition for racing, but a quick note about post-race (and post-workout) nutrition is in order.  Well, two quick notes.  First, you need to get carbohydrates into your body, quickly.  The sooner you manage a good dose of carbohydrates, the better off you'll be, recovering.  Your body is most receptive to the metabolism and storage of carbohydrate in the first 30 minutes or so after exercise.

In addition, tissue repair is an important post-exercise 'activity' for your body, and you want to give it the materials it needs to do that -- protein.  Unlike during exercise, whey protein is thought by some to be better for this task, in large part because, apparently, a higher percentage of whey protein is 'biologically active', i.e., can be used by the body to do muscle and tissue repair.  The usual ratio of protein to carbs cited in the literature is 4:1.

Finally, don't forget to drink water!  If you have drunk appropriately during the race, you will be up to 2% dehydrated afterward.  Now is the time to get re-hydrated.

Quick Reminders

• For short races, take a small sugary snack (gel is ideal for many) about 20 minutes before the race.  A few sips of water is all you need for a sprint.  A bottle of sports drink and maybe a gel or sports drink on the run is all you should need for an Olympic distance race.
• For long-course races, eat a small meal consisting of complex carbohydrates, a little bit of protein, minimal fat, and minimal fibre, around 3 hours before the race.
• Try to take in around 250 calories per hour during the race, mostly complex carbs, but a little protein (soy if possible) especially during longer races is helpful.
• Drink around 20-25oz of water per hour.
• Experiment with electrolyte replacement during training, and plan your race accordingly.
• Practice, practice, practice!  Don't let race day be your experiment.
• Based on what you learn in practice, formulate a plan and follow it.  Deviate from the plan only if things are going very badly.
• After the race, eat complex carbs and protein (whey if possible) in a ratio of around 4:1 within 30 minutes of the finish.