Race Day Nutrition

Perhaps the toughest part of any long distance triathlon to get right like an Ironman is your race day nutrition. It goes without saying that you will need to refuel and rehydrate during it. No one is going to be able to escape this piece. You can complete a long race without strength training, without speedwork, even without a whole lot of actual swimming, cycling and running. But getting calories, fluid and electrolytes in to sustain your effort is going to be a part of everyone's needs on race day.

The challenge is that what might work well in training can become a disastrous recipe during the actual event. You can test and retest your nutrition plan during your long rides and long training days and have it pass with flying colors, but then on race day find that your stomach gets bloated and you become nauseous to the point of wondering how you will dump one more calorie into an already backed up absorption chain. 

So what's the deal? Why do drinks, gels and electrolytes that keep you humming along with no gastric distress in training can fail so badly in a race? A big part of that answer has to do with the stress you are under on race day. Think of it this way, during the holidays when you are sitting around with family eating huge meals you can absorb it all with little more than just feeling a little regret that you may have eaten too much. But your body can handle just about anything you take in. The environment is low stress, which means that there are no other demands on your system other than digesting on the couch talking with family and friends. Clearly you would not try to eat those same types of foods in a training ride because you know it would not work. There are now other demands on your body, like providing blood and oxygen to the working muscles. So you switch to more easily digested and absorbed sources of energy.

But just like the holiday meal, even though you have physical demands on your body during training, you are still not going to be in the same state of mental stress that you can find yourself in during a race. You are on a very fine edge that demands equally fine-tuned nutrition to work. The more stress our bodies are under, the less blood and energy is available to the digestive system. It has to do with the fight or flight response that our ancestors survived with to escape danger. If a tiger is chasing you like you are lunch (high stress), you don't want or need to spend any of your resources digesting. That can wait until the danger passes and things return to normal.

What this translates to in the real world of racing is that even sources of calories that work for you in training can be in forms and concentrations that are just not going to cut it in a race. And if your drink isn't being absorbed quickly and efficiently, it will just sit in your stomach and trickle in based on the level of race stress you are under. That stress can come from the actual physical effort as well as the anticipation and excitement of a race along with the expectations and stress you can feel on race day. On top of that, the reality is that on race day most athletes create a gigantically out of proportion mixture of drinks, gels and electrolytes that were in no way designed to work with each other.

Let's go to science for a moment to help explain some of the variables that will work either for or against you with your nutrition during a triathlon. One key element is how fast the source of carbohydrate is absorbed. The faster your source of carbohydrate gets absorbed the less time it's going to take to empty it from your stomach. Pretty simple. Another is the number of actual molecules of the carbohydrate source that it takes to deliver a given amount of calories. The reason this is important is that the absorption mechanism is kind of like a conveyer belt with one speed that has buckets that accept one molecule at a time. A short-chain simple sugar molecule can't necessarily cram a bunch of molecules into one bucket, so even though it may be a simpler sugar, the receptors (buckets) that will accept it can fill up. This can leave other buckets empty that are the ones that will transport larger chain carbs with more calories per molecule into the body. This is one reason why a drink with a variety of carb sources can work better than a single-source carbohydrate drink or gel.

Up until recently, regardless of how fine-tuned an athlete's race day nutrition plan had become, there was still a fairly high risk of gastric distress because of the inefficiency of the digestive system during extreme efforts like an Ironman. There just seemed to be no way to make sure things like osmolality (the number of carb molecules dissolved in the drink), osmotic pressure (low generally increases the rate of absorption), and the drink's ability to deliver sufficient levels electrolytes to sustain performance were all optimized at a calorie delivery level that was needed to maintain a high level of output in a race.

That has changed! A breakthrough in carbohydrate technology has developed a source of fuel called a branched chain cyclic cluster dextrin (CCD) that scores the best in every area that is important for efficient absorption and carb utilization. It's very soluble and stable in water. It has the fastest gastric emptying time when tested against all other forms of carbohydrate including glucose, dextrin, maltodextrin and other sugars. It renders a solution that has very low osmotic pressure, which aids in absorption. It has a very low insulin response, which helps keep your aerobic physiology active. And because it has a low osmolality, when used with other products such as gels that are high osmolality, it can actual help reduce the risk of gastric distress from those products. It's also possible to combine this form of carbohydrate with large enough quantities of electrolytes to be effective in a race without the drink becoming difficult to absorb.

First Endurance has a cutting-edge sports drink that utilizes CCD carbs that has the best real world test results I have ever experienced. Not only is the drink designed to maximize carb absorption, First Endurance has factored in the need for electrolytes and measured the entire drink as a whole and included essential ingredients to make sure that your body can get enough calories, fluids and electrolytes during hot, long events. Taken alone, a drink may work. Taken alone an electrolyte source may not cause gastric distress. Taken alone fluids may keep you hydrated. But if your race day concoction is a mix of these three elements that were designed to work independently, then problems can occur with absorption and the results are far from ideal. If you have ever had gastric distress in your long races, I would highly recommend giving this a try. 

Here is the link to see more of the specifics and science behind their revolutionary drink called EFS-Pro: firstendurance.com/nutrition/efspro.html. If you decide to try it, use code MarkAllen20 for a 20% discount.

Cheers!
Mark Allen