T100 Las Vegas

In James’s first exposure to the T100 race series, he was eager to show that his selection as a ‘wildcard’ was justified. As a Sports Scientist himself, he knew how important an aggressive fuel intake would be to match the high intensity of this unique middle-distance race. The first 45 minutes on the bike was as intense as expected, and his carb intake was a little overzealous as he consumed ~150g of PF Carb Only Drink Mix with ~1.75 litres of fluid, ultimately causing some stomach discomfort. Luckily, James triaged this on-the-fly and reduced his consumption of liquid carbs, instead switching to a PF 90 Gel which he had stashed in his bento box. His run nutrition was simple, as he headed out of T2 with a fresh PF 90 Gel, and tried to get through as much as possible.

James technically did preload, but followed a slightly different protocol than we normally see. He had the usual 500ml of PH 1500 but then also drank ~750ml of fluid with no sodium, followed by a serving of sodium bicarbonate. This had ~4,000mg of sodium, which would have created an average relative sodium concentration of ~3,800mg/L when factoring in his other fluids. We’ve written a blog about whether using sodium bi-carb is actually beneficial to endurance performance, as there have been >100 studies on the stuff since the early 1930s! James chose to roll the dice, and thankfully the extremely high concentration didn’t cause him any stomach upset, but it’s hard to quantify whether it made a positive difference to his performance or not.

Between 2004 and 2008, a four year study found that ~74% of elite athletes used caffeine before or during races, with endurance athletes being the most prevalent users. 10 years later that number had increased to 76% of athletes who had some C8H10N4O2 in their strategy. All of James’s caffeine intake came before the race through two “strong coffees” (likely containing ~80-100mg each) a couple of hours before the race started. He topped this up with a final dose of caffeine via a PF 30 Caffeine Gel ~20 minutes before the gun. This total ~260-300mg dose spread over 2-3 hours likely pre-caffeinated his bloodstream adequately for the mid-afternoon start time. James could pop an additional Caffeine Gel in his bento box to take at the end of the bike to ensure maximal circulating levels of caffeine and prevent a drop off before the end of the run.