• Five weeks after winning her first IRONMAN race as a pro triathlete at IM Mallorca, Ruth recorded a second full-distance victory with a fantastic performance at IM South Africa, where she won in a time of 8 hours and 38 minutes!
• In tough, warm and extremely windy conditions (which lead to the swim being shortened to 1.9km), Ruth came out of T2 leading and ran a 3:11:55 marathon to finish ahead of the chasing Annah Watkinson
• In what Ruth described as “without doubt my hardest IRONMAN to date”, she used similar products to fuel and hydrate as to her previous races but consumed less in total

Hydration

• On the bike, Ruth had two bottles (750ml/25oz and 500ml/16oz) of energy drink mix but only drank half of the 750ml/25oz bottle. She also picked up around ~250ml/8oz at 10 aid stations and added PH 1500 to a proportion of this. On the run, she had two pre-made energy drink mix bottles which she drank ~100ml/4oz of each and picked up some Coca Cola and Red Bull from a few aid stations
• As a result, Ruth drank an average of ~627ml (~21oz) fluid per hour. Without detailed data on Ruth’s sweat rate, this seems like an adequate volume to replace a proportion of her expected losses and is higher than her intake at her previous race in Mallorca (~495ml/17oz per hour). Considering the windy conditions made handling difficult on the bike leg, Ruth did well to achieve a high fluid intake to replace her losses in warm conditions
• She mentioned peeing quite a few times on the run (~5 times), which would indicate that she didn’t under hydrate and therefore she could consider dialling her fluid intake back slightly if she wanted to
• Ruth had some sodium in her pre-made energy drink mix, but also added PH 1500 to a proportion of the water she picked up on the bike
• This meant the relative sodium concentration of her intake was ~518mg/L. This will have replaced a good proportion of her sweat losses (Ruth falls on the low-to-moderate side of the scale in terms of sweat sodium concentration)

Fueling

Conclusions

• Ruth rated her race satisfaction as 8 out of 10 and said “generally things went to plan, other than not drinking all the carb mix. I definitely felt like I needed more hydration in the heat and the wind - the wind felt very energy sapping and dehydrating”
• Despite a relatively low carb intake, Ruth produced a superb performance. But, she did illude to this being her 'hardest IM' yet which may have been a result of the lower carb intake and the tough conditions. Considering she usually aims for 60-75g/hr we would recommend she looks to increase her bike and run carb intake to hit this again
• We hope Ruth gets some well deserved rest this off-season and we’re looking forward to seeing what she achieves next year!