IRONMAN 70.3® Sunshine Coast

Luke entered this 70.3® off the back of limited training from an achilles injury, so he didn’t do the normal pre-race taper and instead used it as a training race for the big showdown at the IRONMAN® World Championships in Kona in October. His previous IRONMAN® Cairns race saw him consume the highest average intake he’s achieved so far (~80g/h), but this race saw him step up to ~107g/h over the middle distance. To achieve this, Luke has been putting himself through plenty of gut training so he can tolerate this level of carb and fluid volumes in race conditions. He used a mixture of PF 30 Caffeine Gels, PF 30 Gels and PF 300 Flow Gel throughout the bike and run. Similar to many triathletes, Luke had quite a dramatic drop off of carb from bike to run (~135g/h to ~62g/h). However, this is quite a bigger drop than we see on average but still dramatically higher than his previous 70.3® fuel intake.

Luke has a history of hydration issues while racing, mostly in warm conditions with his extremely high sweat sodium concentration and high sweat rate. He’s made several notable changes to combat this, including using sweat rate modelling to predict his fluid requirements during exercise and more closely matching his losses, especially on the bike. Luke recently found success in Cairns by replacing his excessive electrolyte losses with both PH 1500 on the bike and Electrolyte Capsules on the run and sodium chloride tablets and continued this strategy for this race. Given his positive subjective views on his fluid and sodium intake, we’d suggest generally sticking with this strategy moving forward. However, he could look to bring up his sodium intake to better match his losses, especially for longer races such as the IRONMAN® World Championships in Kona where it could be more impactful in the heat.

Luke is one of those individuals who tolerates and loves high doses of caffeine, surpassing the recommendations during almost all of his races. And, this race was no exception. Luke consumed five PF 30 Caffeine Gels, which puts him above the upper limit of the guidelines of 3-6mg/kg. Since Luke experienced no side effects with this strategy though, it’s not necessarily an issue. Personal tolerance and testing it out in training is a helpful way to know what will be best for each athlete.