How do you keep going through a full distance triathlon? By eating a lot. I was aiming for around 60-75g of carbs per hour. My friend Meghan thought I would be fine on around 40g, which is good news because I didn’t hit my target.
The swim
I took a High5 energy gel (23g) just before the start and a Torq gel (30g) halfway through the swim.
Yep, I took a gel at the turnaround buoy. You can stick them in your sleeve but you need to get them far enough up that the wetsuit seals again. Or you can stick them down your chest. I do both in case I need two.
53g of carbs over 2 hours, so 27g per hour.
The bike
I optimistically took 10 gels with me on the bike. However, my stomach was not too happy when I ate so I only managed to take 4 of them (30g each, 120g total) and ate my way through 3 Clif bars (45g each, 135g total).
I also drank 2 x 750ml bottles of Lucozade and a 750ml bottle of SiS energy drink (123g in total).
That makes a total of 378g over 7.5 hours, equalling 50g per hour.
The run
On the run, it gets a bit more guesswork as I predominantly did it on the nutrition provided by the feed stations.
I did five energy drink cups per lap on the first two, plus two more on later laps, so 12 overall. I’m guessing they had around 150ml of liquid in each. That makes a total of 1800ml with around 80g of carbs per litre. So, let’s say 144g of carbs there.
I also had 8 cups of coke. They might have been a bit smaller, maybe 100ml per cup. Coke says there are around 11g of coke per 100ml, so 88g of carbs there.
Finally, I had a High5 energy gel (23g), 20 jelly babies (5g each, 80g total) and some handfuls of crisps (approx 5g total). The total of these three makes 108g.
That makes a total of 332g over 4.6 hours, equalling 72g per hour.
Summary
I was surprised how much energy I took on through the drinks on the run, roughly hitting my target. In total, I took on 763g over 14.5 hours (including transition), which equals 53g per hour.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 29th, 2019 at 11:00 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.