IRONMAN® Italy

Tim’s debut IRONMAN® was the Bull family’s idea of spending quality time with each other, as his daughter Liv also debuted over the IRONMAN® distance in Italy. Tim kept his fueling strategy as simple as he could, alternating between a swig from his bottle filled with PF 30 Gels and a PF 30 Chew every 30 minutes on the bike. Tim felt that this sustained his energy levels superbly, and the mixture of tastes and textures helped him stave off flavour fatigue, which is common for first-timers during races of this duration. Impressively, Tim hit the carb recommendations from our Fuel & Hydration Planner, despite struggling in the final hour of the run to take on much fuel because of some stomach discomfort. Practising consuming your race nutrition at the rates planned for race day is known to help improve carbohydrate tolerance. Tim could try gut training for future events to ensure he can sustain the appropriate intake.

Tim had a Sweat Test to help dial in his hydration strategy ahead of his first IRONMAN®, as he knew he’d be sweating for several hours. His unique sweat sodium concentration falls on the lower end of our bell curve of sweat test results, meaning electrolyte supplementation was slightly less of a priority than for other athletes. Tim strategically diluted his PH 1000 (Tablets) with more water than they’re designed to be mixed in, to create an average concentration very close to his sweat losses. But it’s possible that he was drinking too much in the early stages of the bike as frequent urination is a common sign of hyperhydration or over-dilution of electrolytes relative to sweat losses. Conditions were cooler than expected on race day in Emilia, so perhaps Tim’s pre-planned fluid intake in preparation for warmer temperatures was causing him to overdrink. Thankfully, as he backed off the fluid consumption the sensation to urinate stopped, and he finished the race not feeling excessively dehydrated.

Our blog post on whether caffeine is right for you was the first line of enquiry for Tim when deciding if he should include the stimulant in his race day plan. After careful consideration, he decided he hadn’t practised with it enough to risk trying it on race day and chose to abstain completely. This is a superb example of an athlete abiding by the age-old rule of “nothing new on race day”.