29 Days until the Florida Challenge Triathlon.
Time to experiment with my nutrition. This always makes me nervous but I have no choice. Maybe it’s the result of the aging process, but I can no longer “gut” out 2.5 hours on the bike and still have gas in the tank to launch into my half marathon run. With less than a month left until the Florida Challenge, I realize that my usual race diet of Sport Beans and caffeinated gels isn’t enough. As I cross into the last 30 minutes of my bike rides, I can’t keep enough fast-fuel glucose in my system without overshooting, which pushes a jittery rush of sugar into my blood vessels and leads to a coma-like bonk within minutes. More than once, I’ve had to pull up from my run and walk back to the house, holding my head low with humility while clenching my jaw with rage. I do not want to bonk in the race. It’ll be a long enough day without spending half of it surfing the blood-sugar wave crests and crashing through troughs of suicidal depression. I’ll save that for when Julie watches “Dances with the Stars.”
I’ve bonked enough before to know that nutrition on race day makes as much of a difference as your training. Or, more accurately, your training enables you to perform; your nutrition plan will determine whether you do perform. When I ran Ironman Florida back in ’02, I carried a bottle of flat Coca-cola in my belt for the marathon leg. At mile 22, I drank every drop and felt like superman right up until mile 24, at which point the wheels came off and I managed to crawl to the finish at about the pace of a migrating glacier. I rallied for the last 20 yards and ran to look good for the cameras.
The longer the race, the more impact your nutrition plan will have upon ultimate success or failure. You can gut out some hunger pangs in a 10K, but when you cross the threshold into Olympic-distance Tri’s and marathons your margin of error diminishes. My theory is that I’m not getting enough protein or fat. The problem is that my stomach gets pretty sensitive after 90 minutes of exercise in the heat. Orange flavored Sport Beans have been my staple for years. After I hit mile 11, I start putting a sport bean or two in my mouth and letting them dissolve. Until now, that’s always worked pretty well. Now I have to find something more substantial that I can get into my stomach. I figure I’ll try a smoothie Powerbar tomorrow and see how that works. I’ll eat it half-way through my 12 mile run, when I’m convenient located near the Vinoy and St Pete Pier bathrooms. If it sticks, then I’ll give it a try on my long brick next Friday. Hopefully, it will provide balance to my diet plan and let me keep ingesting Sport Beans through the run. Otherwise, I’ll be sitting in a public crapper ejecting everything else in my stomach. At least there’s a coffee shop at the Vinoy.
Time to experiment with my nutrition. This always makes me nervous but I have no choice. Maybe it’s the result of the aging process, but I can no longer “gut” out 2.5 hours on the bike and still have gas in the tank to launch into my half marathon run. With less than a month left until the Florida Challenge, I realize that my usual race diet of Sport Beans and caffeinated gels isn’t enough. As I cross into the last 30 minutes of my bike rides, I can’t keep enough fast-fuel glucose in my system without overshooting, which pushes a jittery rush of sugar into my blood vessels and leads to a coma-like bonk within minutes. More than once, I’ve had to pull up from my run and walk back to the house, holding my head low with humility while clenching my jaw with rage. I do not want to bonk in the race. It’ll be a long enough day without spending half of it surfing the blood-sugar wave crests and crashing through troughs of suicidal depression. I’ll save that for when Julie watches “Dances with the Stars.”
I’ve bonked enough before to know that nutrition on race day makes as much of a difference as your training. Or, more accurately, your training enables you to perform; your nutrition plan will determine whether you do perform. When I ran Ironman Florida back in ’02, I carried a bottle of flat Coca-cola in my belt for the marathon leg. At mile 22, I drank every drop and felt like superman right up until mile 24, at which point the wheels came off and I managed to crawl to the finish at about the pace of a migrating glacier. I rallied for the last 20 yards and ran to look good for the cameras.
The longer the race, the more impact your nutrition plan will have upon ultimate success or failure. You can gut out some hunger pangs in a 10K, but when you cross the threshold into Olympic-distance Tri’s and marathons your margin of error diminishes. My theory is that I’m not getting enough protein or fat. The problem is that my stomach gets pretty sensitive after 90 minutes of exercise in the heat. Orange flavored Sport Beans have been my staple for years. After I hit mile 11, I start putting a sport bean or two in my mouth and letting them dissolve. Until now, that’s always worked pretty well. Now I have to find something more substantial that I can get into my stomach. I figure I’ll try a smoothie Powerbar tomorrow and see how that works. I’ll eat it half-way through my 12 mile run, when I’m convenient located near the Vinoy and St Pete Pier bathrooms. If it sticks, then I’ll give it a try on my long brick next Friday. Hopefully, it will provide balance to my diet plan and let me keep ingesting Sport Beans through the run. Otherwise, I’ll be sitting in a public crapper ejecting everything else in my stomach. At least there’s a coffee shop at the Vinoy.
Update: I ran 13 miles this morning, replacing my Sportbeans with a PowerBar Smoothie, Citrus-flavored. It gave me something more substantial in my stomach and seemed to keep my energy level stable. Next, a 2hr bike/6m run brick with PowerBar on the bike and SportBeans on the run.
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