Training for a triathlon means that our body needs more fuel, especially during the actual hours that are spent swimming, cycling or running.
It’s very important to fuel longer and harder training sessions, not only to provide the body with the fuel it needs to perform, but also to practice one’s race day nutrition strategy to ensure that the gut is well trained and adapted to taking on the fuel one is taking on.
Here are some easy to follow tips to help you fuel your triathlon training and ultimately, your race day.
Choose your fuel
Fueling looks different for everyone and it’s important to choose something that you enjoy! Some love gels, some enjoy jelly sweets, and some prefer to go the more ‘natural’ route of dates and bananas.
Workout your hourly requirements
A good guideline to follow is aiming for 0.8-1g of carbohydrates per hour of exercise. For example someone who weighs 60kg would want to aim for 48-60g of carbohydrates per hour.
TIP: small frequent feeds are your friend. Try to aim to eat every 20-30min to make it easier for you to meet your fueling requirements.
Hydration
We want to make sure that we are meeting overall fluid requirements, but also sodium requirements as we lose sodium and other electrolytes when we sweat. This varies from person to person and it is hard to say how much sodium each individual loses without conducting a sweat composition test, but if you are someone that struggles with muscle cramping, nausea and often find salt marks on your clothing and skin after exercising, then you are more likely than not a more salty sweater, meaning you need to ensure your sodium intake is adequate.
*Note that overall fluid intake is also dependent on the conditions you are training/racing in. Hotter and more humid conditions will require more liquids, vs colder ones for example.
Once you have worked out all of the above, the only thing that is left to do is practice it in your training sessions. Especially during longer sessions this will be important because it will help you work out whether what you have got planned in terms of fueling actually works.
TIP: Include some higher, race-like intensity efforts to get a true reflection of your planned race day nutrition strategy.
Sample fuelling strategy:
Jenna weighs 60kg so she wants to aim for 48-60g of carbohydrates per hour for her race.
She wants to fuel with jelly babies and gels.
1 gel contains 20g of carbohydrates and 5 jelly babies contain 15g of carbohydrates.
She chooses to have 1 gel and 5 jelly babies every 20 minutes which will give her an hourly total of 50g of carbohydrates.
In terms of hydration she will aim for 500ml of water containing an electrolyte effervescent every hour. Race day conditions will be mild and she is not a very salty sweater.
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In summary, there are so many ways a race day nutrition strategy can look. The most important thing is that it works for you. Try to tick the above boxes and you will be on a great track to finding your perfect strategy!