IRONMAN® Vitoria-Gasteiz

Mathias went into this race with a specific goal in mind: to race as hard as he could on the bike, and see what happened on the run. In doing so, it’s likely he burned through his glycogen stores faster than he usually would, decreasing the time it took for fatigue to set in. Although his carb intake was in line with the general recommendations, he may benefit from increasing this slightly to hit the ~90 g/h target, especially when pushing himself to the absolute limit. Additionally, after chatting to the PF&H Sport Science Team, Mathias aims to ‘decouple’ his fuel strategy from his hydration so he can adjust one without impacting the other more easily. In his next race, he plans to run with two soft flasks: one containing PF 300 Flow Gel and the other dedicated to his fluid and electrolytes.

Given Mathias’ racing strategy and subsequent high-intensity effort, it’s likely that his body was producing far more heat than he was used to whilst on the bike, and thus producing more sweat. Additionally, the table salt he added to some of his water bottles may have caused the significant increase in his thirst response, which was evident as he took on more plain water than planned to quench this thirst. As a result, the relative concentration of sodium of his overall fluid intake was more dilute than ideal for him. To avoid this in future, he should aim to pick up bottles of electrolytes interspersed with plain water, such as PH 1000 which was available on-course at this race, to more closely match his sweat sodium losses.

Mathias used a caffeinated energy drink instead of coffee to circulate a decent amount of the stimulant in his blood before toeing the start line. During the race, he only used caffeine on the run, leaving room to increase his intake to fall more in line with the scientific recommendations for a race of this duration and intensity. Adding a couple of PF 30 Caffeine Gels during the bike leg would be a good place to start, after practising this in training beforehand of course. This would help him maximise the ergogenic benefits of caffeine throughout the whole race and hopefully help him get into that ‘higher gear’.