Race Nutrition: Sugar crash at about 9-10 hours in
Ok, IM Boulder is August 3rd. I'm thinking back on the past three IM's and all have become progressively better. Before B2B in 2013 I made a concerted effort to be more scientific, planned and deliberate about my race course nutrition. I began a regular regimen of sweat tests at all long rides/runs (I am a heavy sweater), worked with the spreadsheet that emerged here in Q32013 to plan my nutrition and intake, and changed in intake foods with which I religiously trained and executed on Oct 26th last year. I would say that between 2011/2012 and 2013 this did produce results.
On my first two IM's I got horribly sick on the run in the first half, leading to a lot of walking. This time I never got sick at all. What lingered was a sort of wall I hit at around +/- 2 hours into the run (+/- 10 hrs into the day) I got to a similar point as 2011 and 2012. This time while I no longer was sick, I could not take in any more of the same food with which I trained - all of it was just too sweet and would make me gag. Up till that point all was well and pretty much on schedule. In 2013, based on a webinar from EN, I changed to mostly the Powerbar Endurance bars/gels. Training went VERY well. The bike went VERY well (and included a bagel from special needs on which I munched over the last half of the bike). I was hydrating with PowerAid so much so that for the first time I had to pee twice during the ride (still have not mastered peeing on the bike).
Yet when I got to that spot about 10 hours in or so I once again just was tired of all the race nutrition -- all of it was sickly sweet and would make me gag. I had experience that chicken broth was very good and palatable so I could keep fluids going and salt intake. After a while I decided to try coke though I have NEVER tried it ever before. The first stayed down and after that I was drinking doubles at every mile. After about 5-7 miles of mostly walking I finally had some energy and began to pick up the pace to the finish, but never regained my earlier pace. At least I was jog/running and not walking.
So what I'm asking of the team is ideas on how to approach training this year. I'm thinking that this past year was a huge change for me (first race with power, big nutrition focus), and a huge success even though the B2B race in 20133 did not yield a big change in overall time (there's a story behind that and I've got a handle on it). Getting through the run not being sick was my #1 goal -- mission accomplished. I'm a runner originally, so I'd like to finish IM Boulder with a good run and fixing the food/sugar intake problem will get that done, of that I'm sure.
Thanks in advance for the dialog that I'm sure will follow!