• After receiving a last minute wildcard spot for the World Duathlon Championships in her home country, Line seized the opportunity to get back into racing after a busy offseason submitting her PhD. She opened her season with a brilliant performance and result to finish second with a time of 3 hours and 3 minutes, only 9 minutes behind first place
• After working closely with Line in the past year, including at the IM 70.3 World Championship and IM 70.3 Indian Wells she asked the team to check over her hydration and fueling strategy for the race, in which she had to change her plan to fit the Duathlon structure (10km run, 60km bike,10km run)
• Over a very tricky course, primarily on cobblestones, Line executed a solid hydration and fueling plan to hit good carbohydrate, fluid and sodium numbers and was extremely happy with the end result saying “it still feels surreal”

Hydration

• As we have seen her do previously, Line prepared for her sweat losses by preloading with a high sodium concentration drink. Ahead of future races, especially hotter ones, she should consider using PH 1500, as she did before IM 70.3 Indian Wells, instead of PH 1000 to make sure she is starting optimally hydrated
• For her hydration strategy, Line had a mouthful of plain water on the first run, then 1L/32oz of PH 1000 on the bike alongside ~300ml/10oz of plain water. On the second run she had a total of 5 sips of water (~150ml/5oz) from cups that she picked up at aid stations. Overall, Line drank ~1.48L/50oz of fluid which equated to ~485ml/hr (16oz/hr) on average over the whole race
• We know Line subjectively has a high sweat rate and this fluid intake is much lower than what we saw her drink at the IM 70.3 World Champs (~853ml/28oz per hour) last year. However, the conditions were much cooler in Denmark (~10℃/51°F) compared to her previous races, and being a duathlon, the race was shorter in duration, therefore a slightly less aggressive fluid intake was suitable
• From the PH 1000 tablets that Line took in her bottles on the bike, she was able to consume ~328mg of sodium per hour which meant that the relative sodium concentration of what she consumed was ~676mg/L. From her Advanced Sweat Test, we know Line is a moderately salty sweater, losing 798mg/L and therefore this level of electrolyte replacement will have replaced a good proportion of her losses
• Rating her hydration strategy 9 out of 10, Line was happy with her plan saying the only slight change she could have made was to prepare more fluid on the bike as she “had no water left for the last 20 minutes” and reported that she felt dehydrated after the race. Despite this, Line did well to strike a good balance between staying on top of her losses, avoiding any hydration-related issues like cramping, and not carrying too much fluid which is extra weight over a relatively short bike leg

Fueling

Conclusions

• Coming off the back of a tricky training period which included a couple of niggling injuries, Line did a great job of meeting her carb, sodium and fluid needs to have an excellent performance on what she described as a “brutal” course. Being one of two wildcard places in the race, she said it felt “surreal” when she secured second place and rated her race satisfaction as 7 (out of 10), this only being low due to her having to navigate the difficult course
• Going into the racing season now, Line is excited to get to work and use her ever developing hydration and fueling plan in practice. We’re looking forward to seeing her continue to perform well throughout the year!