T:Zero is excited to announce a new partnership with Fuelin, customised performance nutrition plans for triathletes. We’re big believers in referring our athletes to multisport-focused professionals and for years we have been asked by our athletes for guidance on who to see or where to go for nutrition advice.  ​

What is Fuelin?
Fuelin is the essential triathlete nutrition program created by experts. It maximises your performance by addressing three key areas – energy, hydration and gut issues – and best of all it syncs directly with your T:Zero coach’s training plan and Training Peaks. Aligning with the T:Zero philosophy, Fuelin is focused on providing customised and tailored plans to suit the needs of all athletes. 

Strategies for Nailing Triathlon Nutrition
To launch our new partnership, Fuelin Coach, Scott Tindall – nutrition coach to professional triathletes and expert advisor to companies on nutrition produce development and health optimisation – shared practical insights and takeaways with the T:Zero community for fuelling for optimal health and performance. 

Understand your baselines
Recognise your starting point and know where you are heading. Three common baselines to consider:

• Understand your body composition: if you’re focused on weight loss, quantify what you’re trying to achieve. Do you really need to lose weight? If so, how much? What percentage is going to be fat mass?
• Understand your sweat rate: including your sodium composition
• Understand your carbohydrate rate: how much can your body tolerate and what type of carbs are best to maximise race day performance.

Practice your carbohydrate intake 
It might sound simple but pre-plan your carb intake and practice managing it leading up to race day. Without practice, taking in 60-90g of carbs per hour on race day to get through to the finish may lead to GI distress.
 
Understand your sweat rate data 
Knowing your sweat rate on the bike and run, especially in hot, humid conditions is beneficial for optimal performance. Learning to manage your sweat rate to ideally 2-3% of body weight loss will enable you to establish an effective hydration strategy to perform at your best.
​
A three macronutrient approach 
Protein, carbohydrates, and fat all play a critical role for endurance athletes. It’s important to recognise how macronutrients impact your performance, your recovery and your general health.

Missed the T:Zero and Fuelin launch?
Catch up the on-demand here. In addition to these strategies, Scott shares insight about pre-session nutrition, in-session fuelling and hydration and post-session nutrition, discusses supplements and answers our athletes’ nutrition questions. 

Interest in learning more? Contact T:Zero here and Fulein here.  

​

Focus: Race nutrition for long course + ultra endurance (anything over 2-4 hours in length where the body can’t sustain an effort without exogenous (outside sources)).
 
Race day overview:
Pre-race brekky:

• Big meal 3+ hours from race start.
• Within that time <3 hours, go for smaller meals i.e. toast, small bowl of oats, something small/light.
• The closer to race start, the smaller the portion or the more liquid the source.
• Practice in training, particularly big days.

Fluids:

• To thirst. Avoid overdoing it, but at the same time, don’t forget it.
• With meal is good.
  ​
  

During race:

• Research tells us:
  • ~60g/hr from glucose source
  • 90g/hr with a 2:1 ratio of glucose:fructose (60g glucose:30g fructose)  – some anecdotal reports say you can get in more with practice
• The higher the intensity, the less blood flow goes to the gut, therefore making it harder to digest anything solid. Hence why most nutrition products are based around gels, bloks, chews, liquid nutrition… it’s easier to digest.
• Conversely to above, the lower the intensity, the more solids we can handle.
• The more we practice this in training, the easier race day becomes.
• Trial and error… reserved for training and B/C races. Think of your gut like any other muscle in the body. It needs to be trained, under stress and/or race simulations are even better.
• Create a steady flow of nutrition from as soon into the race as possible. We are aiming to minimise losses. We can’t physically match the input of energy from fuel sources to the amount going out, but we can minimise the shortfall.
  • Set and use a timer:
    • Every 15-20 mins eat and drink
    • Stay with it. The more you nail it… the more vanilla/smooth sailing the day, generally speaking, the better the end result. We ideally want to have a steady, consistent effort throughout the race, married to steady, consistently applied nutrition and hydration.
• The fitter you are, the faster you can go for the least amount of effort = efficiency. And, the more you practice this in training, the more efficient your gut will be at handling the stress of processing everything you throw down, whilst trying to keep you travelling forward as fast as you can.
• Hydration v fuel = keeping them separate is good.
  • Liquid fuel sources are good, but it’s also good to practice keeping the two separate especially in the heat.
• Avoid trialling new products on a whim on race day, particularly an A race or Ironman event. You spend hours training for a big race, not to mention thousands of hard earned dollars, and this is one thing under your control, so invest some time and energy into it and make it count.

 
We talk regularly about the things within our control for any given race.
Nutrition is one of those main controllables and should be well practiced. Going into a race knowing you have dialled things in practice can help both physically (your gut and body know what to expect) and mentally… peace of mind knowing you have practiced and dialled this in for the last few months goes a long way in keeping the mind at peace on race day. There’s enough to focus on already!
 
Control your controllables and leave the rest for the triathlon gods… whoever they might be 😉
 
Have fun!
SF

Head Coach Scotty Farrell
Bachelor of Nutrition 

By Head Coach (and qualified nutritionist) Scotty Farrell

​When it comes to race day nutrition, experienced athlete or not, I still hear and see so many basic boo boos. We know this stuff, we just forget, especially if we are not racing often, as has been the case this year.
So… a refresher for your convenience.

The please do’s:

1. Practice your race nutrition many times (5-6x) before the event. Experiment with different products, amounts, and timing strategies in the lead up to your race and find out the product and the amount of fuel you can handle. With plenty of concerted practice, you can really dial this stuff in, so that race day isn’t such a gamble on the gut
   1. For running specifically (as this is where we tend to see gut issues happen most often) aim for around 50g of carbs per hour and work up from there.
   2. Smaller feeds more often works well, especially for more intense racing. I personally like 15-20’ between feeds (a couple of bloks or half a gel).
2. Practice your pre-race eating routine.
   1. If you’re wanting a big brekky, let’s say you’re doing an Ironman, then it’s a good idea to work backwards from race start and aim for about 3 hours for a bigger feed (big bowl of oats and fruit).
   2. If your race is shorter or you’re not a big fan of eating whilst having the butterflies, you might prefer to nibble on an energy bar or a banana. But keep to small bits and every 20’ or so, like you would during a race.
   3. Big feed/longer racing = think 3 hours or more pre-race for time to digest. Smaller race or don’t like eating then think small feeds and spread the love.

 
Please don'ts:

1. Smashing down a clif bar, a banana and a bowl of cereal with an hour to go until race start isn’t enough time. Expect a good bout of stitch or some gut cramps and trip or two to the porta loo.
2. Have nothing and expect your body to go all day.
3. Aim for high amounts of fluid and carbs when you haven’t practiced it beforehand.

 
Think of your gut like any other muscle in the body. If you want it to perform well on race day, then you need to teach it what’s expected and train it accordingly.

On the bike, in my experience, I find it’s a lot easier for athletes to consume a higher amount of carbohydrates, so perhaps start with 60g/hr and work up from there. Using a glucose/fructose mix, athletes can train their gut to absorb around 90g/hr and in some cases even higher than this. Personally, I like the 70-80g/hr mark on the bike.

On the run, with pavement pounding happening, I find my gut struggles a bit more and I need to down regulate and aim for more like 50g/hr. But again, practice and trial it out.

Same deal with hydration… train your gut to handle the amounts of fluids you will ideally need on race day. If your race is going to be hot, then it makes sense to keep your fluid intake up, so train for this. If it’s going to be a cold weather race, then maybe a bit less fluid is needed? Use your nut, it’s common sense stuff, we don’t need to over complicate it, we just do.

The other thing to consider is that if the race is intense and short (let’s say under 90 minutes in length) then smashing down carbs and fluids isn’t as important. A well trained athlete could very well punch out a 80-90 minute race with barely any nutrition at all, maybe a gel or a couple of Clif Bloks and a few mouthfuls of water. And the more intense a race is, the more blood flow is diverted away from the digestive system to the working muscles, and the harder it will be to digest anything.

If the race is longer than 90 minutes, then nutrition and avoiding total energy depletion and the dreaded bonk, becomes more important.

The longer an event goes, let’s say all day or multi-day, the lower the intensity, but the more important it is to keep the fuel going in steadily. An Ironman, in my opinion blurs the lines of pushing ‘hard’ all day and being classed as ‘intense’ for most of us. And therefore, it’s super important to be practicing and training your gut for the rigors of race day stress. For multi-day events or ultra distance runs, we find that the intensity is generally low enough, that we can train our gut to eat almost anything. The longer an event goes too, the more important it becomes to avoid flavour or texture fatigue and mix up your nutrition between sweet, savoury, umami etc.

There you go. Keep it simple. Control the controllables.
​
Coach SF

​My world-beating race nutrition strategy & tips for Mooloolaba Triathlon race nutrition
 By Richard Thompson 

​Triathlon can be an incredibly complex sport with so many different elements affecting an athlete’s race-day performance. Elements such as preparation and managing injury spring to mind, amongst others.  
 
At T:Zero Multisport, we do everything possible to get you to the race in your best possible shape. But once you arrive at the start line, you can’t possibly get any fitter. Only three things can impact the outcome of the day for any athlete:

1. Pacing
2. Mindset
3. Nutrition

Whilst any of our coaches are more than happy to discuss pacing strategy and provide you with the tools to take your mindset and make it a weapon, it’s your race day nutrition that I want to focus on in this article.   
 
Nutrition is something we certainly hold dear to us at T:Zero Multisport. Head Coach and Co-Founder Scotty Farrell is a qualified nutritionist and I was so grateful to have him in my corner for the Ultraman World Championships, particularly when it came to developing a plan of attack for my race-day nutrition. Further, having such a wonderfully long-standing relationship with CLIF Bar Australia, it wasn’t difficult to find the right nutrition within their extensive range to suit the plan that Scotty had developed for me.  Indeed, their help enabled me to live my potential in Hawaii last November.
 
Fuelling during an Ultraman is different to a standard Olympic distance triathlon in that you have the opportunity to fuel during the swim with the assistance of an escort in a kayak paddling next to you and further, there is no run off either portion of the bike leg; the result being that you can afford to eat heavily in the backend of the ride knowing that you won’t be running until the Day 3 double marathon. For Ultraman, our fuelling plan was based on grams of carbohydrate per hour.
 
 
SWIM – DAY 1 (10km)
 
In the swim, our plan of attack was to hit roughly 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour. Following the adage that one should consume small amounts often as opposed to a large amount at once, I was aiming to fuel myself with 15 grams of carbohydrate every 15 minutes (versus having one big hit of 60 grams at the one-hour mark). There are obvious benefits to this, most notably not overloading the stomach when you want your blood to be directed to other parts of the body as opposed to your digestive system only.
 
Obviously, it’s pretty difficult to chew under water and I didn’t want to stop swimming completely so the Citrus CLIF Shot Energy Gel (with 25mg caffeine) was my go-to here. To prepare, I squeezed the required amount into a drink bottle and added water, shaking it up until it became one consistent liquid. I then marked the bottle, indicating where I’d need to drink to for each 15-minute increment. This had worked perfectly for Ultraman Australia where we broke the world record and again worked well in Hawaii at the World Championships.
 
BIKE – DAY 1 (145km)
 
Both Day 1 and Day 2 were very similar in that we were trying to hit 80 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Again, I was aiming to digest something every 5 to 10 minutes, following the principle that consuming carbohydrates when your body is working hard is a lot easier when they’re ingested in small increments as opposed to one large hit. 
 
I managed to execute my bike nutrition plan with precision on Day 1, consuming only the CLIF Bloks in Mountain Berry, Strawberry and Margarita (extra sodium boost) flavours, aiming to take-in 1.5 packets per hour (roughly).
 
Once I crossed the finish line on Day 1, I went straight into recovery on the wind trainer to ensure I cooled down effectively, not dissimilar to how professional cyclists warm down during the big cycling tours. I also immediately consumed both carbohydrates and protein in the form of CLIF Bar’s greatest flavour of all time – Chocolate Almond Fudge.
 
BIKE – DAY 2 (275km)
 
We always knew Day 2 on the bike was going to be a long day, and during the first half of the ride my heart rate and effort was going to be much more controlled than in the back half. Therefore, whilst we were trying to maintain 75 to 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour, we were happy to consume some more solid food in the first hour of the day. This constituted a combination of CLIF Bars and the ever-trusty vegemite sandwich. Once I began climbing up the volcano (a 40km climb), I diverted to my Day 1 method of 1.5 packets of CLIF Bloks per hour. This continued until the latter stages of the day, whereby – for a complete variation - I changed to a bottle of diluted CLIF Shot Energy Gels.
 
This strategy and well-paced nutrition plan not only allowed me to feel full of energy but also maximised my ability on the bike without having sluggish side-effects at any point in time.
In the final 40 kilometres of the bike leg, I managed to average 303 watts; and this was after 7.5 hours of hard riding. I attribute a lot of this to both a well-developed nutrition plan and high quality nutrition products that complemented it perfectly.     
 
RUN – DAY 3 (84.4km)
 
A much more difficult prospect came in the form of the double marathon run from Hawi to Kona (point to point) on Day 3. Again, the plan of attack was to hit 70 to 75 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Throughout the day I relied solely upon CLIF Bloks, moving to Coke only in the latter stages of the run.  
 
Often, it’s not until the run leg that we as athletes get “found-out” on a nutrition level. On the bike, it’s generally always too early to know whether or not you’ve paced your nutrition well. Too much nutrition and you’re going to feel bloated as you head off out of T2, but too little and you’re going to feel lightheaded and despondent.  Whenever I feel that my mind is turning negative on the run, my first thought is to my nutrition. In my experience, the mind turning against you is the first trigger that you may need more fuel and it’s a good reminder to ask yourself how well you’re fuelling at that current moment in time.
 
My race at the Ultraman World Championships was executed with precision by my entire team and we were thrilled to cross that finish line in first place, in such a great state. While I couldn’t walk properly for a few days following, at no point in the race did I feel like I had a carbohydrate deficit or surplus. We planned and implemented our nutrition strategy to perfection and I am so thankful to CLIF Bar Australia for helping me perform at my peak.
 
Nutrition Tips for Mooloolaba Triathlon   
 
Pre-Swim

• If you’re an athlete that requires something solid in their stomach before a swim, lean towards the CLIF Bars. The quantity of bar consumed will vary depending on what you’ve practiced in your training
• Most athletes swim in the morning in training so this is a great opportunity to test your nutrition plan that you want to implement within an hour of your swim start on race day  
• If you don’t like or need something solid in your stomach, go with a portion of a CLIF Shot Energy Gel or a couple of the CLIF Bloks to get extra carbohydrates in your system before the gun goes off

T1

• This is not a time for fuelling
• Focus on controlling your heart rate and intensity and ready yourself for the ride
• A sip of water here is all you need

 
Bike

• Implement the carbohydrates/hour that you want to aim for (anywhere between 60 and 80 carbohydrates per hour is your honey hole here) but give yourself 5 to 10 minutes of leeway at the start of the bike to get your legs used to the ride
• Similarly, back off the nutrition in the last 5 minutes before you head into the run
• Consume CLIF Bloks or CLIF Shot Energy Gels during this leg

 
T2

• Another great opportunity to control your heart rate and intensity
• Focus on the job at hand which is getting your running shoes on and yourself out onto the run course

 
Run

• This will be largely dependent upon how you fuel with your runs off the bike in training, but, especially at Mooloolaba, I like to hit some carbohydrates when I’m running down the hill the first time. It provides a perfect opportunity to lessen your intensity and consume some carbohydrates – remember – small portions more often is much better than large amounts infrequently
• Avoid taking in too many carbohydrates when running back up the hill (into town) but again – small amounts often. I suggest CLIF Shot Energy Gels. If you find they are too thick, throw a couple into a flask with some water and shake to dilute
• If you’re well-nourished leading to the last climb up the hill before the finish line, then you’ll have enough on board to get you to the end in one piece

 
As always, when it comes to nutrition the overall principle is: do not try anything new on race day. Practice makes perfect so keep testing your nutrition and honing your plan until you’re 100% confident it’s right for you; then you won’t go wrong. 
 
T:Zero Multisport wishes everyone all the best for their training. Stay safe, and have a wonderful race at Mooloolaba.