I wanted to share the major changes I had to make to the Ironman nutrition plan I used during last year's race. So I briefly summarized what I used last year but I was very detailed on what I used this year. Yes people, I'm a wordy son of a gun so very detailed means extremely detailed! I will not go too deep into all of the weeks of trial and error experimentation I had to endure to finally find what worked for me. During those weeks, I was getting stressed out about finding what would work. I finally discovered that my biggest issue was caused by early muscle fatigue due to insufficient sodium intake! I also wanted to provide the details of the race plan I used during this year's Ironman Florida (IMFL). I wanted to share all of this information to contribute to the triathlon community since I have learned so much from the community over the last 2.5 years.
The information I provided below can help more than just triathletes doing Ironman. It could be slightly modified for half-ironman length races. For half-ironman races, the fats that were included in my bike nutrition may possibly not be needed since it is a higher intensity, shorter race. People doing century bike rides could easily follow the bike nutrition I used this year. For sprint and Olympic length triathlons, the plan I discuss below is not applicable! In those short races, simple sugars rule. If you feel any of the information provided below is useful to you, please take heart and consider donating to my Move Your Feet for Loeys-Dietz fundraiser on Crowdrise's website that helps support LDSF.
The nutrition and hydration plan I used last year during IMFL (see my 2013 race report) failed miserably early in this year's Ironman training. I was dying during my long training days as I mentioned in my 2014 IMFL Race Report. Looking back at my 2013 training and race, I most likely was not taking in enough
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During my free consultation, I had INFINIT set up three different custom blends: one for my Ironman bike nutrition, one for my Half Ironman bike nutrition, and one for running.
I am currently only using my run blend and it is working better than I expected! I am training with it for the run leg of my upcoming 2014 Ironman Florida race. I wanted to use a different nutrition on the bike and run based on my experience during last year's Ironman. A change in nutrition is needed in my opinion. As for my bike custom blends, I will start testing them out during my 2015 triathlon season since I will be concentrating on Half Ironman races.
(see my post on the re-engineered plan I used for 2014 Ironman Florida)
When I started eating low carb high fat (LCHF), I was avoiding sugars and grains as if my life depended on it. I trained and raced all of 2013 trying not to use sugars. Prior to switching to LCHF, I was using the typical sugary stuff that was not much different from what most people use. For me, the sugary stuff was always too sweet on long training days except when I used a custom formula from Infinit Nutrition. With the custom formula, you can dial up calories, add/reduce this or that, but the best part was you can set the flavor down to near nothing!
So, what the heck was I supposed to do for nutrition if I could not use sugars and trying to avoid products with wheat and dairy?
