IRONMAN® World Championship

Solveig hit ~132g of carbohydrate per hour en route to being crowned IRONMAN® World Champion in Hawaii. In what was only her third IRONMAN®-distance race, Solveig consumed ~145g/h on the bike leg and posted the fastest split of the day with a blistering time of 4:31:53 for the 180km. She hit her numbers by carrying PF 300 Flow Gel in two bottles, so that she didn’t need to slow down to pick anything up at aid stations.

For the run, Solveig placed five Flow Flasks containing PF 300 Flow Gel at the pro aid stations, where they were kept cool until she picked them up. Each flask delivered ~60g of carb, which ensured she was able to hit an impressive ~139g/h across the marathon. To handle such a high level of carb intake without difficulty, Solveig has been conducting gut training, with a particular focus on being able to consume carbs in hot and intense conditions to simulate the strain that she’d experience in the heat and humidity of Hawaii. This preparation paid off late in the race as she stayed strong when some of her fellow competitors began to fade.

Solveig had spent the entire year preparing for the brutal conditions of Kona and she spent a lot of time undergoing heat training. She felt that spending time acclimatising to the heat was the biggest factor in being able to tolerate the sweltering conditions on race day.

The heat training also gave her a chance to get a handle on her fluid requirements in race simulation conditions and, based on her sweat rate testing, she aimed to drink ~1.2L/h to replace most of her sweat losses on the bike. On the run, she was aiming to drink in excess of 1.5L/h to limit the rate of dehydration across the hottest part of the day. The Norwegian superstar supplemented her fluid intake with sodium to closely match her own individual losses. She loses ~1,044mg of sodium per litre of sweat and she replaced a decent proportion of those losses as the relative sodium concentration of her intake across the race was ~844mg/L, which was largely achieved by using PH 1500.

As a former short-course athlete, Solveig doesn't shy away from using caffeine in races. To keep things simple, she gets her caffeine on board by consuming two PF 30 Caffeine Gels at three different points in the race: pre-race, halfway through the bike leg and then one hour into the marathon. Taking her caffeine early on the run leg gave it enough time to be absorbed into her system and meant she could feel the full ergogenic effects of this final dose during the crucial final hour of the race.