IRONMAN® World Championships

Katherine aimed to consume 90g of carbohydrate per hour across her race at the IRONMAN® World Championships in Nice. She executed her fueling strategy well on the bike, averaging ~91g/h, and maintained a solid intake of ~77g/h on the run despite experiencing some sickness. She attributes the GI issues to her Crohn’s disease rather than fuel intake on the day and believes her drop in energy from 18km onwards was due to nausea. Despite this, her overall fuel intake remained strong, especially over the six-hour bike leg. She used a very streamlined fueling plan consisting of only PF Gels, PF 30 Chews and energy drink mix.

At first glance, Katherine’s fluid intake was on the lower end of what we typically see in warm conditions across full distance races. However, the fact that she urinated three times during the bike and run suggests she wasn’t severely under-drinking. Additionally, her sodium concentration was likely sufficient to replace a proportion of her subjectively moderate sodium losses and support fluid retention to help her hydration status. Katherine would benefit from collecting some sweat rate data to help her quantify the difference between her current fluid intake and actual losses. This will allow her to assess whether she is experiencing dehydration to a level that could be impacting her performance and fuel absorption.