A good band aid solution with not having much time to experiment - I would look into getting some Infinit "Go Far" mix. Have a bottle of that per hour on the bike and you should be golden - or at least much better off than you are now. As mentioned above, taking a drink in 15 minute increments is a good idea, making sure you complete the bottle by the 60 min mark. I also have plain water with me on the bike to sip on throughout as needed. Afterwards you can look at a more tailored strategy that fits you the best. As for me, on the bike I 100% prefer a liquid powder mix that has everything I need in it over having to fumble with solids/salt pills/etc to get what I need per hour.

For the run, Gu every 45 minutes and chase with gatorade for your calories. Ordering a bottle of salt stick capsules on Amazon and having about 2 per hour is also not a bad idea on the run, depending on how hot it is/how much you sweat.

Good luck!!

I can't find the Go Far in town or Amazon. Do you think Skratch will sufffice? It's an electrolyte powder etc sold at bike stores

And sorry, but what is "gu"?

Gu is a brand of gels. It's pretty much a catch-all for gels now, kind of like Kleenex.

Sweet. I've been using clif because that's all I see at Aggieland Cycling

And I ordered some Gatorade powder and salt sticj

I'm actually surprised Amazon doesn't carry go far. My bike shop does carry it in stock - handlebar cyclery in katy/fulshear area if you are anywhere near there.

Else, any drink mix with 300 or so cal per serving and a generous blend of electrolytes and carbs should do the trick.

queso1 said:

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Sweet. I've been using clif because that's all I see at Aggieland Cycling

And I ordered some Gatorade powder and salt sticj

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Assuming you consume 20oz of Gatorade (140 cals) and a Clif shot (100 cals) each hour on the bike that gets you up to 240. Probably still a tad light.

You have to play around with calories until you find out what works. Plus the more fit you are the less calories you need for shorter events (you burn more per hour the faster you get but your body gets better at burning fat). During a half I went by feel and typically took in 400-600 calories (200-350 calories/hour) on the bike and 100-200 on the run. During a full I took 350-400 calories on the bike and then whatever on the run, at least 150-200 an hour.

How much sodium and potassium do you need? Ive been using GU drink tabs and shot bloks on my rides and feeling a need for more sodium when i get home. It seems the GU srink tabs provide enough of those.

Everyone is different, typically 250-1000mg/hour so 400-500 is a safe starting point. You can get most of this from drinks (any First Endurance products, Gatorade Endurance, Ironman Perform, etc.) and the rest I would recommend Salt Stick. The Endurolytes or whatever they are called only have about 100mg while Salt Stick has 250. Easy to carry and once you dial in your nutrition you just pop the pill open and put it in your drink ahead of time. During longer races I would put some in a mini M&M tube and stuff them in my suit.

So i literally started a spreadsheet to try and put together the math on this. It seems you cannot get to these numbers without doubling the dosage rate per bottle listed on the containers with GU or Skratch plus shot bloks, or you have to add a cliff bar. How are yall doing it with liquids alone?

There are calculators out there, if you have a power meter you can do the math to show you how many calories you are burning. You do not want to replace everything but if it makes you feel better mentally go ahead.

The easiest way is to grab one bottle and make it concentrated with all of the calories you will need for the day. For a half I would use a 20 oz aero bottle and put 600-900 calories in it (depending on the course). To get it this full you put as much powder in there as you can, add some water, shake, and repeat until you get the calories you need. For a full I used a 32oz bottle. I would have a cage between my arms for water swap outs at aid stations and if it was really hot I would have another cage behind my seat for emergency water.

Infinit makes it easy to customize a drink based on your calories and flavor requirement (I had the flavor setting on 1), EFS Pro is not very sweet so you can concentrate it (expensive), or you can use straight malto and/or add Gatorade powder which cost around 1/4 of buying a mix like Infinit. Then you add Salt Stick to get the sodium you need. This is basically what Infinit is just at a fraction of the cost.

As always, thanks!

Another thought, if you take in around 35-40oz of liquid an hour you can always use what they have on the course. Most come in 20oz bottles and have about 170 calories a bottle. Can always dilute with some water but this way you live off of the course so you do not need to worry about dropping a bottle. But out of the thousands of miles of road biking I have done I have never lost a bottle on the downtube.

PUTU's strategies are solid. The guy that just won IMTX took in two bottles / hour (I think EFS Pro). I can't seem to take down that much liquid, I'm more of a one bottle per hour guy, so I use his concentrated mix option. Six scoops of EFS is 600 calories (and a boat load of electrolytes). I use a Liquid Shot for another 400 calories. It's a little more liquid than a gel so it goes down fairly easy. Lastly I'll have a Clif bar on hand and usually chow it through the middle of my ride. So that's 600 + 400 + 250 = 1250 calories over ~3 hours. For a full IM I simply double everything (two concentrated bottles instead of one). I keep water between my bars and refill as needed.

Ok. So I used Hammer Perpetuem during my ride along with some GUs and salt stick. Gatorade and salt stick during my run. Everything felt a lot better. I'm not fatigued. Frankly the difference was AMAZING and I appreciated all the advice.

My HR was down about 10 beats per min. But I still think it's high during the run at 150-160. I paced it around 140-145 on the ride. I'm noticing that whether I run at 10:30 pace mile or a 13:30 pace mile, my HR is the same. Any thoughts on that?

queso1 said:

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Ok. So I used Hammer Perpetuem during my ride along with some GUs and salt stick. Gatorade and salt stick during my run. Everything felt a lot better. I'm not fatigued. Frankly the difference was AMAZING and I appreciated all the advice.

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On your HR, how far did you ride & what was the weather like? You may simply be dealing with endurance conditioning at this point. At IMFL a few years ago between pushing the bike and 80% humidity I could barely get mine below 150 without walking.

Mid to high 80s. I rode about 1.5 hrs.

Word of warning, if you let Perpetuem sit in the hot sun it will separate and clump due to the protein. Be sure to shake it before you drink on hot days. And for a lot of people it works until it doesn't. At one point it seems like most people get some GI issues. Mine were not too bad but during that brick run it sounded like a pack/heard/group of frogs in heat was running with me.

P.U.T.U said:

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Word of warning, if you let Perpetuem sit in the hot sun it will separate and clump due to the protein. Be sure to shake it before you drink on hot days. And for a lot of people it works until it doesn't. At one point it seems like most people get some GI issues. Mine were not too bad but during that brick run it sounded like a pack/heard/group of frogs in heat was running with me.

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someone dig up the RR from IM France where adam was swallowing his own vomit to keep calories in due to his perpetuem going bad.

Sorry but I had to laugh, I never remember reading this. This is what they call GI issues

Quote:

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My stomach really started to hurt and I kept vomiting, but I would swallow most of it because I didn't want to lose the calories out of my system. The pain was definitely moving through my system but from what I could tell there were no bathrooms on the bike course, so I finally decided to stop on the side of the road a couple miles after reaching the top of the climb. I felt much better and thought that I had taken care of it. Not so. The pain quickly came back so bad that I couldn't even get down in aero position. I didn't want to stop now because we were on a downhill, but I finally did. Ok, I thought it was just last night's dinner and I'll be fine on the run. Nope... It came back even worse than before and by this point I was trying to figure out what was happening. I thought that it probably wasn't dinner, maybe it was a relapse of my sickness earlier in the week, but based on the fact that I was having trouble actually getting anything down I thought it was something with my Perpetuum.

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45 miles bike and 6.2 run. 70.3 next Sunday. I think I'm ready to finish

And I wouldn't be close to being ready if it wasn't for y'all genius advice. Id still be slamming nuun thinking that was nutrition.

That's what message forums are for, so others can learn from our mistakes. Getting closer to your race you will think of a thousand things. Any questions post them here since I can guarantee you someone else has the same ones

Queso you doing Tri Ft Worth? Chattanooga?

Fort Worth. Then I'm taking a break. Going to go surfing and chill. Then after a few weeks going to start training for a marathon in December (unless I get nuts and trained for a 70.3 in sept). I plan on doing the ms 150 next year and a few 70.3s. 2019 is ironman.

Well, I did my 70.3 and I'm wiped.

One thing I noticed: while perhaps fit for triathlon, there are some really bad physiques. What's up with that? I saw a lot of what I call "low bottom" girls. Huge (fat) asses. They seemed to destroy the bike but tanked on the run. A lot of skinny fat going on at triathlon:

queso1 said:

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Well, I did my 70.3 and I'm wiped.

One thing I noticed: while perhaps fit for triathlon, there are some really bad physiques. What's up with that? I saw a lot of what I call "low bottom" girls. Huge asses. They seemed to destroy the bike but tanked on the run. A lot of skinny fat going on at triathlon:

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i think its because tri is "easier" for big people. Doesn't really slow you down in the water. Carrying extra weight on the bike is slower, but its low impact on the body. Then they shuffle/walk the run. Not uncommon to see more bigger people in tri than running, but there's a lot of big people that just cycle too.

How do they just cycle?

get on a bike a ride?

same as they do in triathlon, they just don't have to swim first or run after.

Oh. I thought you meant they just cycled in the tri and didn't run or swim.

Triathletes are typically larger in frame than runners. The lean ones.

I've found a lot of people don't really care how they finish. Total completion grade.

One of my least athletic friends I know does sprints all the time. He'll have a 2:45/100m swim hanging on the wall, a 14mph bike ride and a 10+min mile run with 6-7 minutes in each transition. To me, that sounds horrible...but I guess to each their own.

This isn't exclusive to triathlon either.

I never cease to be amazed by the diversity of age and size I see. At any point in the race.

I would say most people do it for fun and to finish then a smaller group is in it to continuously challenge themselves. I have known a good number of people that have gained fat during training.