Emma Pallant-Browne
The Collins Cup
Emma's headline numbers
Emma's strategy
Fueling
Carbohydrate is the main fuel you burn when racing. Failing to fuel properly is a leading cause of underperformance in longer races.
Emma wisely chose to ‘decouple’ her fuel from her hydration on the bike, allowing her to drink more or less to match the conditions without impacting her carbohydrate intake. However, without access to her two planned PF 30 Gels during the run, her fueling dropped to zero after the bike. Thankfully, her solid pre-fueling before the race and throughout the bike kept her energy levels from crashing completely. Still, she reported feeling very fatigued toward the end of the run and experienced uncharacteristic soreness the next day, likely due to the lack of carb intake.
Hydration
Taking on board an appropriate amount of fluid and sodium is essential to maintaining blood volume and supporting the cardiovascular effort needed to perform on race day.
Whilst the absolute amount of sodium and fluid consumed per hour is important, it’s critical to consider these in relation to each other. This is known as 'relative sodium concentration' and it’s expressed in milligrams per litre (mg/L). How much sodium you’re taking in per litre of fluid is more important than the absolute amount taken in per hour.
Sweat sodium concentration (mg/L) is largely genetically determined and remains relatively stable. Knowing how salty your sweat is enables you to replace a good proportion of your sweat losses, which can range from 200-2,000mg/L.
Whilst Emma’s losses are on the low side, getting her hydration strategy right is still crucial when it’s hot and/or humid as her higher sweat rate in these conditions can result in significant net losses over the duration of a race.
Learn moreEmma sipped PH 500 before the race in an attempt to boost her sodium levels, but we’d recommend she swaps this for PH 1500 to experience the full benefits of preloading with a higher concentration of electrolytes that would further increase her plasma volume. Her sodium intake during the race was also low, and while the cooler conditions likely helped her avoid major issues during the race, using PH 1000 for warmer races would be a smart move given her moderate sweat sodium concentration and high sweat rate. Due to unusual aid station setups that prevented her from holding onto bottles for an extended period of time during the run, Emma only drank ~100ml of water at the final station, and felt dehydrated by the end, backed up by her comment on not being able to pee for a while after the race. This subjective feedback certainly points to her accumulating dehydration and although it wasn’t enough to impact her performance in mild conditions over this distance, it could become significantly more noticeable in hotter conditions or longer races.
Caffeine
Beyond the Three Levers of Performance (carb, sodium and fluid), caffeine is one of only a few substances that is proven to improve performance for most endurance athletes as it can help stave off mental and physical fatigue.
Emma didn’t have a coffee in the morning as she normally would, partly due to the later race start time and the jet lag that caused her to wake up at 3am. She went for a jog and had breakfast before going back to sleep for 2 hours, and then had some caffeine later when it was just prior to the race. She also supplemented during the bike leg to sit within the scientific recommendations and reap the ergogenic benefits of the stimulant.
How Emma hit her numbers
Here's everything that Emma ate and drank on the day...
Emma's weapons of choice
Final thoughts
Emma
PF&HEmma's full stats
Data Confidence?
There is an adequate level of accuracy in the data collected and the numbers reported. The athlete manages to recall what they ate and drank including most specifics (brands flavours quantities plausible estimations of volumes). However there are estimations made within the data which affect the overall confidence level in the data reported.