Half Ironman Triathlon Nutrition Plan
Friday, June 4th, 2010
This weekend I’ve got some revenge planned for the Rev3 triathlon half course. And it all started with a completely reworked half ironman nutrition plan.
Last year I came unprepared and suffered. The short story is that while my training was pretty solid, I started off the race drained and with not nearly enough water in me. Starting a race already in the red is a great way to spend the day in a 70.3 mile triathlon suffer fest.
This year, everything is different. Ditched the coach, got a whole new ironman plan, a fancy new carbon bike, a whole new race nutrition setup and I have a whole mess of nutrition lessons learned from painful race mistakes to hopefully get me to the finish line a little faster and a whole lot happier on Sunday.
Here is the plan.
The Day Before:
- Bring my full Camelbak with me while I volunteer at the Oly run course aid station with two scoops of EFS. Slurp away slowly all day to have plenty of water in my system at all times.
Morning:
- Glass of juice
- Cereal
- Fruit
- Bottle of EFS when I wake up
- Bottle of EFS while hanging out in transition
- First Endurance MultiV
- First Endurance OptygenHP
Swim:
- Avoid getting kicked in the face and chomping on people’s toenails
- Suck down cup of water on my way to T1
Bike:
- Drink one bottle of Liquid Shot mixed with water in the first 40 minutes (400 Cal)
- Drink two more bottles of a weak EFS mix (~100 calories) every 40-45 minutes after that
- Continually suck from another 400 calorie Liquid Shot flask throughout the rest of the bike.
- Grab another water bottle from an aid station and polish that off 10-15 minutes before rolling in to T2
Run:
- Slurp down water at every aid station
- Mix it with a sip from a new EFS flask (400 Cal total)that I’ll pick up in T2
Post-Race:
- I’ll have a bottle with two scoops of cappuccino Ultragen recovery goodness waiting for me back at transition. I’m leaving it without water, so that I can just grab the bottle, fill it up with water somewhere at the expo and suck it down and hope that it helps me be able to walk normally on Monday morning. I love that stuff and it hasn’t let me down yet.
That is the plan that I’ve tested and seems to work pretty well in training. I’m pretty confident that it will work on race day, but there is only one way to find out.
Training wise? I think my bike is a LOT stronger than my run lately, but as long as I can get to mile 5 of the run feeling good, I should be able to bring it all home feeling good.
UPDATE:
Note, I’ve tweaked the order of what I consumed on the bike. Instead of starting with a heavily concentrated water bottle on the bike, I decided to start with a more diluted drink to let my heart rate settle before increasing my caloric intake. More information behind that decision can be found HERE.
Tags: 70.3 nutrition plan, efs, first endurance, half ironman nutrition, half ironman nutrition plan, nutrition plan for half ironman, optygen, quassy, rev3, ultragen | Posted in Ironman, Nutrition, Training Log, Triathlon, Videos | 3 Comments »
