Race Day Nutrition 101

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