Perfect Your Race Fuel
Matt Fitzgerald outlines race fuelling strategies for short course to full distance. Follow his guidelines on how to keep it simple, avoid GI distress and optimize your energy for peak performance.
do Leanda Cave, Chris McCormack, Michellie Jones, Greg Welch, Karen Smyers and Mark Allen have in common? All of them have won both the Ironman World Championship and the itu Triathlon World Championship.
That’s a sizeable list, and it proves that the type of fitness required for success short- course triathlons is not so different from the type of fitness required to excel in long- course tri’s. All triathlons, regardless of distance, are almost 100 per cent aerobic in nature, requiring the ability to sustain moderately high intensities for long periods of time.
Consider this: Hunter Kemper averaged 44.1 kilometres per hour on his bike for 40 kilometres in winning the 2013 Chicago Triathlon. Frederick Van Lierde averaged 40.7 kilometres per hour on his bike for 180 kilometres in winning the 2013 Ironman World Championship. That’s less than an eight per cent difference in intensity despite a more than fourfold difference in distance.
Because the physiological challenges presented by short- course and long- course races are similar, the ideal race fuelling strategies for these events are also similar. Yet there are also key differences. In this article I will discuss both the universal rules of triathlon fuelling and distance- specific race nutrition guidelines.