Energy supplements
in General Chat
Do these things actually work or is it simply good marketing to get you to spend yet more of your hard earned money?!?!?. Lets face it Triathlon is not the cheapest of sports to take up! As the wife keeps on reminding me!
I have been training hard for my first triathlon at Tatton Park in september, i have tried a few different gels in recent weeks and found them to be a waste of time. Is it a case of keep trying until i find one that suits me? or am i better of concentrating on my diet in general? Which is pretty good, most of the time!
I am considering trying viper active, mule bars and a few other gels but am thinking that it might be a waste of money? Anybody got a few pointers or experience with these and other supplements?
I have been bitten hard by the bug known as Triathlon, possibly divorced by this time next year!!!
I have been training hard for my first triathlon at Tatton Park in september, i have tried a few different gels in recent weeks and found them to be a waste of time. Is it a case of keep trying until i find one that suits me? or am i better of concentrating on my diet in general? Which is pretty good, most of the time!
I am considering trying viper active, mule bars and a few other gels but am thinking that it might be a waste of money? Anybody got a few pointers or experience with these and other supplements?
I have been bitten hard by the bug known as Triathlon, possibly divorced by this time next year!!!
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Comments
They do work and if you have any notion of going long then you need to work on a nutrition strategy. Generally you shouldn't any nutrition for a sprint. Then a few gels and possibly water+ nuun for OD then when you start stepping up to HIM or equivalent then you seriously need to look at nutrition.
Get it wrong and your race is over.... too much and you'll cramp up, too little and you'll hit the wall and that is just a minging feeling.
Generally solids are not the best idea as they can take up to 40mins to digest and leave you feeling like shit, some people tolerate them better than others. Gels - unless they are isotoinc need to be washed down with water otherwise your stomach will overload.
You could try energy drinks such as High5.. these are very good.
If you don't believe me then go out a 50mile cycle ride and take just water and then when you come back and you're feeling like shit then ask yourself if energy gels/ drinks don't work....you should at some point try this anyway so that when it does happen you know how to deal with it....
For OD at most a few gels and some nuun + water.
You should be looking to go out for a min 10-15mins run directly off the bike. You need to get used to the feeling of jelly legs and trying to run with it until the feeling wears off.
In my first Half Ironman (not using gels) I 'bonked' badly. This sold them to me. I now use them (to good effect) however only for HIM or further.
For Olympic (or less) I wouldn't bother, simply as the time spent mucking about trying to consume them could be better spent going for it. I know that I can survive on energy drink alone up to Olympic. For HIM or further I'd see them as an essential bit of my kit and wouldn't, now, consider doing a half without them!!
As for finding one you like, it's trial and error. Try a few and just see which one suits best!
Good luck.
I struggle with High Five Extreme energy supplements but I'm fine with ordinary High5.
I've not tried anything else apart from High 5 or SIS.... if it works then you stick with it
At IM it was High 5 gels and Hight 5 Energy Drink and I was fine.... I took part in a tri and I used the High Five Extreme and got really bad stomach cramps - which brings up the next point makes sure you try it out in training first.
Your nutrition should be nailed in training and then put into practice on the race.....
Three things you need to be aware of:
1. Lose more than 2% of body fluid and you are dehydrated, serious performance delpetion. E.g average sweat rate 1L hr, weight 70Kg you will dehydrate in about 90mins with no fluids. Drink before you thirst!
2. Energy drinks aim to assist with glycogen replacement, glycogen helps break down fat for energy. 30-80grams hr of carb replacement typical values thrown about
3. Sweat and fluid intake deplete/dilute salts needed for electrolyte process about 1gram hr,can lead the evidnce seems to suggest more of a problem for mere mortals such as me rather than elites
High5 does me fine, keeps me hydrated and the carb/glycogen/energy levels up, so sorts out 1 and 2 above. Gels can be a bit upsetting at times with me, don't know why.
To help with 3, Nuun is quite popular
If you cock this up it can hit you quite badly - I know - hopefully I have learned the hard way.
Zac's comment on 2% fluid loss was interesting, as when I questioned it recently, I was told recently that a 2% loss of body weight during a 2hr10m run was expected, if not more than that. I added it to my list of things to check out.
It appears fluid loss alone may be hard to measure outside of a lab.
I found this article http://200.89.72.103/documentos/deporte ... C3%B3n.pdf which in all data states that during ironman "despite high rates of fluid intake (median hourly fluid intake = 716 ml/h), athletes sustained a median weight loss during the race of 2.5 kg." with the conclusion of "at least 2 kg of weight loss during an ultradistance triathlon is due to factors other than pure fluid loss. This weight loss includes loss of fat and glycogen, and the metabolic water stored with glycogen"
I'll ping this by the joel-lucozade-man-about-town thread and see what he says about it.
Cheers
Ade
The article cites observed weight loss of 1kg post swim (probably from weeing, about 1l of wee and sweat sounds about right), 2kg loss post run and gain .5Kg during the bike - 2.5kg weight loss that is almost a 4% loss by body weight. If you think about pre event you will be taking on lots of fluids which simply cannot be stored and this study http://www.ultracycling.com/nutrition/h ... emia2.html
suggests that pre race weight increases by 2.5% over normal and reduces by 2.5% post race.
Most of that pre race weight increase is fluid retention which you will quickly use up as the average sweat rate is .8 – 1.5 l/hr. If you do not match your sweat rate then there will inevitably be an overall weight loss.
In a Iron distance you will use about 6,500 calaories and that is on top of your normal calory expenditure e.g. 2,500 will give a figure of 9,000 calories. You will not get all of that from from intake on the day so it comes from your body's stores i.e fat. 1Kg of fat is about 7,000 cals
So depending on your nutrition/hydrartion intake a 2% body weight loss of 2% or 1.4Kg could be 1kg fat and .4kg or 400ml of fluid. Yep you are quite right hard to measure outside the lab and in reality if you take on the fluid that is offered then fluid loss will be within acceptable limits but by taking on fluids and sweating the electrolytes get depleted with the danger of hyponatremia and in the study 28% had signs of hyponatremia.
So carb replacement helps maintain glycogen and the conversion of body fat to energy and that wight loss
Fluid intake maintains hydration
Electrolyte supplements stave off hyponatremia
You can't replace what you burn out during a race. Fact. If you try then you will overload the stomach and die a slow death or just simply wither away in a race...
So treat nutrition as fuel and practice the nutrition plan. Don't deviate from that plan until its nailed to the mast and perfect.
Re Calory expenditure, weight loss, fluid loss; this is something I am gradually understanding, for long events we need to understand how our body operates whether intuitively or by monitoring.
We have enough glycogen to keep us going at the lactate threshold for about 2.5 hrs before we effectively crash, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm still learning this stuff. The trick is to operate below that level where fat becomes a major fuel source (hence the weight loss). 1kg of fat yields 7000 - 7500 calories depending on whose figures you use. The fasttwitch muscles which give explosive power are heavily dependent on glycogen, crank it it up in an IM and burn out, slowtwitch are fat burning endurance muscles so they are the babies we want to use.
Re calory expenditure, that was a figure that I remembered seeing somwhere, just did a calc now:
Swim fast crawl 700 cal/hr 1hr
Cycle 750 cal/hr 6hrs
Run 900 cal/hr 4.5hrs
Now that's 8550 for someone doing a sub 12 so I think my figure is about right for the average competitor, again depends on the person and as S11 points out you ain't going to get that from intake otherwise you will be wolfing down sausages and burgers at the feed stations.
(750m pool swim, 500kJ SRM time trial, 5km treadmill), I was losing up to 1.5kg each time, while taking on about 300ml of sports drink.
Not sure this adds anything to the discussion, just thought you might find it interesting
When you bonk (on a long ride, for example, you really know about it!
I've always used drinks for longer training sessions, but I know a lot of people use gels, especially on longer distances, but I don't know why?
As far as I understand it, if you take a gel you need to take plenty of water so you can absorb it? Given optimal concentration for gastric emptying is around 6% (depending on which research you read), and fluid drinks are already at that, what's the benefit of gels?
However, I work on a 15 minute cycle. On the hour, Gatorade, 1/4 past, Gel + mouthful of water, 1/2 past Gatorade, 1/4 to, Gel + water. Gives me about 400cals/hours, 750ml of fluid. No GI issues.
All I know is that when drinking up to 750ml per hour on an Ironman - that could equate to quite a few pee stops.
However, again its each to their own as everyones nutrition is different. What works for Tri won't necessarily work for Tesser or me and vice versa. So if it works then good whats the issue?
PowerBar = fine
SIS = fine
High5 = fine
ZipVit = fine
Lucozade = soiled tri suit
Given how much I sweat I'll stick with Gatorade for now. I've a 70.3 in 4 weeks, so don't want to change anything now...
For IM UK it was PowerBars, but I don;t get on with them, I only train with gels, so I had a stem mounted bottle with 15 gels in, and that kept me going for the whole bike leg. Tasty, well not after a while, but that's life.