Canoe Marathon World Cup

When the Sports Science Team started working with Mads earlier this year, he was consistently consuming ~30g of carbohydrate per hour during training and races. The team advised him to focus on increasing his carb intake through strategic gut training during his sessions, with the goal of better fueling his high-intensity performances in races. Mads successfully increased his carb intake to ~50g/h during this World Cup race, which is a significant improvement in such a short period of time! It no doubt helped to fuel his winning performance, with only a slight dip in energy in the last 3km, which Mads puts down to the ‘extreme race demands’. To achieve this intake, he consistently consumed Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix throughout the race, drinking a total of ~1.25L of the mix across his drinks bags.

Mads was able to keep fluid coming on board during the race by way of three 500ml drinks bags, each with Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix in them and a long straw attached for easy access. In total he drank about two and a half of these bags, which he picked up at portages spread throughout the race. This worked out to be slightly more fluid than he reports consuming at the Amsterdam Waterlands Marathon (his most recent race). Although we don’t have data on Mads’ sweat rate, he does describe himself as a heavy sweater, and considering the logistical difficulties of taking on fluid during his races, this was a suitable hourly fluid intake that would likely have replaced a decent amount of his losses and mitigated any serious dehydration effects. Following advice from the team, Mads was more proactive with his sodium replacement during this race, where he consumed closer to ~240mg/L and didn’t even preload. Preloading is a great improvement to his strategy to replace more of his sweat sodium losses and promote fluid retention as a heavy sweater with limited access to fluids in his sport.

Mads took a caffeine shot containing 200mg of caffeine roughly an hour before the race began. Since it was a relatively short race and caffeine has a half life of 4-5 hours, this dose likely provided him with the performance and ergogenic benefits of the stimulant throughout the entire duration of the event.