Long ride nutrition training

One of the purposes of my last two long rides was to see how little food I could eat without bonking. The idea was to train my body to go longer on less food, so as not to get overly used to plentiful handouts. I think it was a successful exsperiment, I lasted both rides without bonking although at the end of the 180km ride and 40 min run two weeks ago, by the time I got home and tried making a smoothie my hands were shaking! So clearly I’d fully depeleted myself. On last week’s 200km ride I nibbled too conservatively and so for the hour or so after the lunch stop I couldn’t keep up and felt really negative about the ride. That is, until I realised what it was and crammed in the food. Then a little while later (upon leaving Pie in the Sky) I was back to full force and cruising along at a great pace again.

This weekend I had the opposite idea. I wanted to:
a) train myself to take in as many calories as possible on the bike (so my stomach would get used to it for the race); and
b) try to do a practice run of the nutrition I’d be having on race day to see if it worked out.

One of the things I’d read again and again in all the articles I’d found about Ironman nutrition was to try to take most of your calories on the bike in liquid form. The bloke I spoke to at Clarence Street cyclery confirmed that idea, he said that he had all his nutrition for the entire bike ride in a single bottle!

So Thursday night after work I went to City Bike Depot and picked up a tub of Hammer Perpetuem. Orange Vanilla flavour – a bit odd, but the only one they had. It was a toss-up between that and Endura Optimizer, however the Opty is whey protein and the Hammer is soy protein so totally vegan.

Anyway after a bunch more reading and recalculation I put together a plan the night before for nutrition. I based it around having just over half my calories in liquid form and just under half in solid. I enjoy eating solid foods on the bike, I’ve never had a problem with them and to be honest I like the variety of flavours. I was aiming at about 250 calories per hour, with each hour broken down into 3rds so I’m eating every 20 minutes.

I lost it a bit at points, and it was hard to keep up with all the stopping, but I stuck largely to the plan and ended up with this total:

8 hours start to finish
6:45 riding time
185km
27.3km average speed
79 average cadence

2 Powerbars - 450 calories
2 Bananas - 200 calories
4 Dates - 150 calories
1 Vegemite Sandwich - 100 calories
9 Portions of Perpetuem - 950 calories
Total - 1850 calories

We went up the northern beaches, McCarrs Creek, Mona Vale Road to Pymble, Pacific Highway to Pie in the Sky then up to Calga to turnaround. Back the same way, but turning at Terrey Hills down Forestway, along Wakehurst Parkway and home.

Started with Dan, Andrew, Mark, Mike H, Geoff, John and I. Mike peeled off at Pymble. John had his tyre slashed by some metal road ribbon about 2 km out of Hornsby on the way home and Geoff decided to let us go and just ride to the bike shop to get a tyre for John, then go home a shorter way.

Awesome day, perfect conditions, the ride felt good (although a harder effort than I want to do the ironman in). Then I came home and did a 20 minute brisk run around Lavendar Bay which felt pretty good actually. I was absolutely shattered afterwards though, it was just above my comfort level and really did me in! The nutrition worked a treat though and I had no problem with the Perpetuem so I think we may have a race plan!

SUNDAY
I felt kind of crook when I woke up on Sunday. Itchy throat, spaced out, no energy. Not a good sign.

I dithered about going for my long run, ate breakfast first, then lay on the couch reading, had a nap, got onto the net planning my April holiday, ate lunch, more reading… I still felt ordinary by this stage, but figured I had to man up and just get out there and do the session. So at 2.30 I finally threw the bike on the turbo and lay on the bars in front of the Tour de France 2006 highlights to just get my legs into the idea of having a spin before running. I was short on time because planned to go to mum and dad’s for dinner at 6pm, so I only knocked out a quick 20minutes on the tri bars at 90rpm.

Then it was straight off and onto the run. Still feeling ordinary, but managed to crank out 2 hours 30mins along the usual waterfront track, and I managed a slightly higher heart rate and a slightly faster pace than the last couple of weeks. Still less than my ideal IM pace, but it’s getting better at least! I also tried the nutrition thing, ate a vanilla hammer gel (which I’m thinking of carrying), ate a Powerbar chocolate gel (which was much tastier than I expected) and ate a few dates (which are gold as always). My stomach didn’t feel a hundred perfect, but then it was feeling a bit iffy all day so I wasn’t sure if this was more related to my not feeling great in general.

Monday
Still feeling iffy so decided a full day off training was warranted. I’d planned a yoga session in the morning and a lunchtime swim, but when the time came didn’t fancy either so I’ve been just taking it a bit easy instead. Hope it works!