7 tips to keep a cranky stomach at bay
By Jay Prasuhn
Feb. 5, 2007 -- It’s the quintessential question for any Ironman or 70.3 athlete: How much should I eat to stay fueled during an Ironman? Or more pointedly, how many calories do I need to take in during a race?
The short answer? A lot. But that doesn’t mean you can simply shovel in bars, gels and Fig Newtons when you get hungry and feel like it. If it were that easy we wouldn’t see athletes at any given Ironman sitting on the curb empty of fuel like a car out of gas. And on the flip side of the coin, we wouldn’t see over-fueled athletes vomiting roadside. It’s a tricky balance that makes nutrition the fourth event of any Ironman or 70.3 race.
“There are three ways of getting calories in,” says Amanda Carlson, director of performance nutrition and research at Athletes Performance, “bars, gels and replacement drink. Whatever feels best on your stomach is what you should take, because the body doesn’t care what’s in there.” The average 150-pound male, working out aerobically, can absorb about 240 calories per hour, Carlson says. Note that word “absorb.” People use to think in terms of calories burned, but really it’s about how many calories you can absorb, says Multisports.com coach Paul Huddle. Several factors dictate whether the food will be digested, then absorbed (or moved into the bloodstream) as a usable fuel or whether it will sit like a brick in your gut, cause nausea or come back up on you. What are the factors that can throw your nutrition plan off its game?
• Intensity. Exercising at a high intensity can shunt blood from organs working to absorb and digest your fuel and shuttle it to your hard-working legs. That means the stomach is closed for business. Any food you put in your belly cannot be absorbed, and thus, can come back out.
• Weather. The body is more receptive to absorbing calories in cooler conditions, when the body’s already high temperature can be reduced by the air around it. When it’s a hot day, the body works overtime to cool the skin. Again, this means the stomach can shut down, inhibiting caloric absorption.
• Flavor fatigue. You may have trained exclusively with a particularly agreeable brand and flavor of bar or gel. But on race day after 11 or 12 hours of one flavor your stomach may simply decide it is played out. It wants something else. Often, the things that taste good in training just don’t work at race pace for hours on end. It’s too sweet, too pasty, too whatever. “We’ve learned that if an athlete gets sick of a flavor during a race, they just won’t eat it, even if they need it,” Huddle says. Which is why some companies offer flavorless plain. Huddle offers a suggestion: “If the race has your particular gel available during the run, don’t use it during the bike, because you will get sick of it,” he says. “That’s why Ironman offers orange Gatorade on the bike and lemon/lime during the run—for variety.”
So how do avoid the myriad nutrition pitfalls while making sure you stay well fueled? Here are seven tips from the experts to help you keep your cranky stomach on side during your next Ironman or 70.3 race.
Determine your caloric needs: “You gotta take a hard look while training at what your caloric needs are,” Carlson says. “You can get a pretty good prediction of how many calories you need—an idea—by monitoring your heart rate,” she says. “With that, you can estimate what your basal metabolic rate is to come up with a caloric intake. Smaller athletes or those going at a lower intensity require slightly fewer calories, and of course bigger athletes or those going at a high intensity will require more. On average, with one energy bar per hour you should be good to go she says, “but you have to remember, if you’re taking it with Gatorade, that’s another 15 grams [of carbohydrate]. It all needs to be factored in, in training.”
Practice at race pace: It’s vitally important to practice your nutrition plan at race pace. Want to find out how much you can take in? Do a swim/bike brick workout with friends, simulating race effort. “The higher the intensity, the lower the absorption,” Huddle says. “But people run into trouble when they stick to a rate of intake and don’t take intensity level into consideration. You gotta try it in training and practice eating at that time—and don’t worry about how it’s going to impact your training. This is the time for testing.” And on those brick days practice your pre-race nutrition as well. “Often you train after a big breakfast, which will probably differ from what you’ll actually eat on race day,” Huddle says. “You then have a bigger load of calories on board to start with. Your whole perception of when to start eating might be a bit different than in training.”
Stay within yourself: Raise your hand if this has happened to you: You get out of the water, jump on your bike and launch into mach 2 speed for the first half hour, to keep speed with everyone else. After forcing down a bit of bar, it comes right back up. With that intensity, your body is focused on turning your legs over instead of taking in fuel. “It’s a rookie mistake, not to say it doesn’t happen to people with experience,” Huddle says. “You just swam hard and drank a lot of fresh or saltwater. Ironman is very much an aerobic day, not anaerobic, and this is one time when you’re excited and gonna want go harder than you should—and that will negatively impact absorption.”
Be flexible: Your nutrition plan should be looked at as a guide not as a hard and fast rule. “Once people get what they feel is a good calories-per-hour formula they should not be married to it,” Huddle says. “Be flexible, and pay attention to how you feel, your ability to absorb the calories. If you ask yourself what you want, you may find the answer.
Don’t oblige every aid station: Nutritional plans implode on race day often because athletes are besieged by aid-station volunteers offering a buffet of wonders every few miles—gels, bars, cookies, trail mix. Like Thanksgiving dinner guests, people depart the tables bloated with excess calories. “People don’t train with this much food, but come race day they get it every few miles on the bike and every mile on the run,” Huddle says.
Again, what your body can absorb should set your fueling tempo. In fact, Huddle says it’s better to be under-fueled than over-fueled. “It’s easier to come back from bonking,” he notes. If you’re hungry, you’ll absorb readily. On the contrary, if you overdo it, and if you’re lucky enough to throw up, your body has to come back to equilibrium before it can take up fuel again. Remember what worked for you in training and forgo the aid stations unless you need something.”
Consider liquid calories: For some, chomping on a bar while trying to ride at 20 miles per hour can be unappealing to the palate and the stomach. But can you do an Ironman or 70.3 by just drinking your calories? “It worked for us when we were babies, and works for us when we’re in the hospital,” Carlson says of high-caloric drinks. “Some can’t handle anything solid in their stomachs, so you gotta figure out a way to get calories in, and liquids can do it.” One can of Ensure (yep, that stuff for seniors) is packed with 250 calories. There's also Carbo-Pro, a maltodextrin powder that mixes 112 calories per ounce into your existing energy drink.
“I’ve always been a proponent of liquid calories, but it varies with people,” Huddle says. “Paula [Newby-Fraser, Huddle’s wife and the eight-time winner of the Hawaii Ironman] has always been someone who needs solids, but back in the day, we started with Ensure, then moved to powered maltodextrin.”
Just be careful when differentiating your caloric-fluid intake versus your hydration-fluid intake. “Remember when drinking a calorie drink, it’s not a hydration fluid; it’s food in a bottle. I’ve had people drop out of races wondering why their stomachs went south.” Huddle says. “When I asked if they stayed on their hydration, they say, ‘Yeah, I drank my Carbo-Pro bottles.’ They gotta supplement that with water or a sports drink.”
Differentiate bike and run caloric intake: Huddle makes a point many fail to consider: Your caloric-intake capabilities differ greatly from the bike to the run. “The run is where people tend to run into issues,” Huddle says. Absorption is slowed by the jostling while running, which means you can’t take in as many calories on the run. But how much does this calorie intake change? “I’d say your absorption on the run is cut in half [when compared to calorie absorption on the bike],” Huddle says. “If you take in 300 calories an hour on bike, it’s about 150 an hour on the run.” That’s about a gel and a half. Huddle’s other advice? Take those calories in piecemeal. “Often athletes look at the nutritional information on the back of the gel and think they need to hammer all that down at once and then end up getting sick,” Huddle says. “Take a third of it every 15 or so minutes—small doses at a time.”
*This story ran in part in the 2008 Road to Kona & Clearwater, but part of the story was left out. To download the PDF version of this story, click
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