App INSIDER: Fueling and Physiology for Racing Triathlon

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill, cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Okay, so today we're talking about racing and fueling and the physiology of racing and fueling. And we're kind of in the cool spot to where we've got a short race on a long race. Over the next couple weeks, we get to kind of get a little taste of short distance fueling, a little taste of long distance fueling and also pacing. It's going to be different between the two races as well. So when we look at a race like the first race that we'll be doing Sunday, it's a little bit longer than an Olympic distance triathlon. It'll kind of sort of feel like an Olympic distance triathlon with a little bit longer bike ride is basically what it's going to feel like. Even though the run is 12k instead of 10k, ultimately you don't feel a huge difference between a 12k and a 10k. The challenge race is obvious, obviously, just a straight up half ironman. And so there's some definite considerations there in terms of attrition rate and the need for fueling and a lot of the other kind of things that can happen from a pacing and a fueling perspective once you're out there for a longer period of time. So you attack both of these races kind of differently in terms of the way that you go about your pacing and the way that you handle your fueling during the day. Just because for a shorter race, there are some shortcuts that you could take that are going to save you time and make you faster in the long run run. For the Laguna Phuket Triathlon. The first thing that you should bear in mind, like if we're talking about breakfast prior to a short race or kind of where fuel is going to be in your tummy, you're going to be going out harder the shorter the race is, and the harder you go, the less you want in your stomach and the farther behind that race, you want to have done your fueling. And you've kind of got two options. You can either get up early, short yourself on sleep, because that race start, for example, is at 7. And so when I say get up early and short yourself on sleep, you're getting up at like, you know, 4ish and you're going around getting your pre race meal kind of done with about two and a half hours prior to that race. The other option for a race of this distance is to just get your sleep. And this by the way, is what, what I'll do. Get your sleep and then just have something smaller, something a little bit more sn tacky before the race, like a little bit of fruit or some fruit juice. If you've brought engineered fuels with you, you could do like you know, super greens or super berry or super starch, but not really a proper breakfast as much as about 300, 400 calories or so of something that's going to digest pretty quickly. So for a shorter race that starts early in the morning, I'm a bigger fan of getting your sleep, getting really, really well rested and then not doing this huge Iron man esque breakfast because fr. You don't really need a ton of fuel on board for race like this. So right before the swim you can also bump up the blood sugar levels a little bit and slam a gel, have a little bit of sport drink, that kind of thing. So you'll have a couple different, different areas leading into this race where you could fuel. Now if you are kind of like a bulletproof coffee kind of person, I know there's some people here that kind of use that scenario. You can also do something like a bulletproof coffee as close as an hour to. I mean that's kind of the cool part about doing like the coffee with the butter and the MCT oil and stuff in it is you can literally do that really close to the race and it digests just fine. So that's kind of a different beast altogether. Going into the swim for Laguna Phuket Triathlon, I would tackle it at an all out pace. You are going to have forgotten how hard you swam within 5k into the bike. You want to swim pretty much as hard as you possibly can. For this race, you'll be swimming in the salt water for a while and you'll get out of the water and you'll run to the sand and you'll swim through a freshwater lagoon. But for sprint distance, Olympic distance, and honestly, if you're a more experienced athlete, meaning that you have a few of them under your belt, even a half ironman distance swimming is pretty much all out. I mean you're just going all out on the swim. There's really not much pacing. If you ask any of the pros out there, anybody, top age groups, anybody who's posting good swim splits. You're pretty much just swimming your ass off for about any distance except Ironman. You're going all out. And that's especially true, like, early on in the race. You'll find in this race, a ton of people just like go for that first 200 meters really, really hard, getting through the breakers and everything. So just kind of be mentally ready for that. So the swim is going to be hard, but it's not going to deplete you and stuff for the bike or anything like that. Because again, it's not like an Ironman type of day. So my advice to you is to go hard in the swim. Coming out of the shorter race, the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, you'll head out on the bike and you'll be pretty close to threshold on the bike. Meaning if you've had like a blood lactate test, you would be close to zone four for most of the bike. You'll hit zone five and even maximum heart rate, like, you're literally your maximum heart rate on some of the hills. Don't let that freak you out. That's pretty much the nature of this race. In the challenge race the next weekend, the 70.3, you are not going to want to get to maximum heart rate on the hills as much as you can. You're going to want to really kind of granny gear them, spin them. You do have to run a half marathon off of that bike. But for the challenge race, or not the challenge race, but the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, you're going to have a better race in terms of like your overall time if you push it on the bike and you be okay with your heart rate getting pretty high on the hills, because that's going to happen and nothing bad is going to happen and bite you in the butt if you do that. As far as like fuel depletion, again, because we're talking about a day that isn't a super long day. You know, you don't have to run a marathon after the bike. You have to run a 12K. The other cool part about Laguna Phuket Triathlon, the first race that we do, is that the hills are over with relatively early. They're over within about the first 15k. And so don't start into the bike and just be totally defeatist. 15k in, because you're like, this is crucifying me. Like, there's no way I'm going to be able to keep this up. It's like you finish those first few hills and from There on out. It's very similar to, like the ride we did yesterday, where it's just like flat with some slight rollers and everything. But you've got some pretty significant hills and you'll see them on Friday, for example, when you first go out. Now, what's really important when you're in a race where you're coming out of the swim, you've been swimming hard, you've got maybe 5k, 10k or so before you get to a tough hill. Where's your fueling scenario in there? First part of the bike, Very first part of the bike. Right. When you come out of the water, between the water and the hills, like up the fuel, like, get a really good bolus of fuel into your stomach because you're not going to want to waste energy reaching for water bottles and unwrapping gels and stuff like that when you're climbing a hill. So you want to time your nutrition accordingly. Load up on your water again. That's one less thing you got to be carrying in your water bottle. The hill. Load up on your fuels, whatever your fuel of choice is. You want to make sure that you're getting a good 200 calories or so of that into your body before you hit those hills. You're going in with a pretty good high in terms of fuel load. Yeah. On the fuel. Just talking about a gel. A liquid gel, huh? Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, if. If you've been using goos and chomps and liquid gels, then yeah, I mean, for me, I'll be using a beverage just because that's what I've been training with and racing with, but yeah. So do you keep both your round bottle holders full or for the lpt, Just one. So for the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, for example, I will have one water bottle on my. On that tube that I have mounted between my arrow bars. And that's just pure, clear, clean water. And then I'll have another down tube bottle with my entire fuel for the whole race, at least the whole bike on that down tube water bottle. And that's it. So what's in that water bottle? What's in the fuel line? I'll have basically like a starch mixture with some x2 performance, some amino acids and then some electrolytes to keep it from clumping. And I'll just shake that all up and that'll be on my down tube and it'll. It'll be. It'll be about 4 to 500 worth of calories for the bike ride. Is that the Superstar stuff? I'm not using Superstars for this race. I'm guinea pigging it and trying something different just for the fun of it. Because this isn't a priority race for me. So this is a perfect chance for me to try out new things. So yeah, I'm using something very close to like a potato based starch though that, yeah, it's not really great if you're trying to do like the whole ketogenesis type of thing, but I'm really not focused on that right now. So for me it's just a fast burning sports drink fuel without the potential stomach upset scenario that like Gatorade or Powerade or something like that could throw at you. So would you use a jumping head? I'm just thinking, yeah, well, we'll get to the run. We'll get to the run. So you literally will be just like wrecked coming off the hills on the bike. And that's okay. You should feel just like, dude, I'm like done. And then again similar to you forgetting how hard you swam 5k into the bike, you'll forget about those hills 10k later into the run as it flattens out and everything. It's better to push those hills for that shorter race than to hold back on them and then for the rest of the race be like, man, this is so easy. Why did I hold back so much on those hills? You know, I lost myself 10 minutes by kind of granny gearing it. So yeah, I think for those of us that were very casual about their tooling, I didn't bring any. They got to sell. There will be, there will be food for sale at the expo, goo gels, all that jazz. Yeah, you'll be able to pick up, pick up any of that stuff. They also have pretty good stuff downstairs here. They've got gels and sports drinks and all sorts of stuff downstairs too. So yeah, none of the starch based stuff. You're not going to find any. You can Superstarch or anything like that. No, no. So yeah, but I mean you can, you can just use a sugar electrolyte solution and race like this and I mean it'll work fine. So yeah, just thinking back to getting to the very, very start in the morning, what you normally have is Superstarch mixed reward about two hours before the race. That is what you would have. If you decide you want to have like a proper breakfast and you would actually have like, let's say you're gonna have Superstars for breakfast. You'd have like two servings of it with Some coconut milk or some butter and coconut oil, like some fats and some starches to kind of get that slow bleed of fuel in. I can tell you what I'll probably do is just eat my super greens that I travel with and I'll likely mash up a banana in that and dump some water in and I'm fine with that. Like, I've. I've got five or six different meals that I know kind of work for me before a race. And unless, unless it's an ironman where I'm really, really trying to biohack my way into metabolic efficiency and fat burning, I'm not too picky on that pre rice meal, as long as it's not something really complex, like hard to digest proteins like eggs or hard to digest fats, like, you know, fats aside from like a coconut milk or a coconut oil or something like that. So I did not bring a. I did not bring a blender with me. No. But this other stuff that I'm going to use mixes a little bit better than the Superstarch. So I'll just shake it. Yeah. Oh, I just eat that with a spoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, it's not the cap, it's not the Capricorns, it's the Living fuel super greens. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Good stuff. So the bike is again, pretty easy once you get done with the hills and then you'll transition into the run. And the run is pancake flat, but it is hot. So for both this race as well as the following race, anytime you're doing a race in hot conditions, your number one limiting factor, and this is all the more true the heavier that you are, your number one limiting factor is going to be cooling your body. And so they will have ice sponges, they will have cold water, they'll have all that jazz out there. You're going to want to make sure you really keep yourself doused with that stuff, which is a good reason to wear socks, because your shoes are going to get wet, you might get blisters if you're dumping all this ice and water and stuff over your head. So I do recommend that even if you're not wearing socks for the bike, that you wear them for the run just because of what that water is going to do up front after a while. The golf course that we run on gets a little wet and soggy and slushy sometimes too. So definitely go out there with some socks. And if you didn't bring a good pair of socks just from the expo or from downstairs or whatever, you know, look for, for a pair of dry, cool or moisture wicking or wool socks that you could wear. I like wool for, for a situation like this. So yeah, the run. The run, there are sections of it on literally on the grass of a golf course course, sections of it on gravel, on dirt, on road. If it did change, I don't know about it, but it's possible they, they could have changed it. Yeah, that'd be interesting. I'd like that if they did, because that golf course is just nuts. Yeah, yeah. So the, so the run is a 2x6K. For the shorter race, when would you take a liquid or fuel for that one? So during the bike ride and Also even in T1 coming out of the swim, you should be drinking water quite liberally and you should also be drinking water fairly liberally on the bike. So drink to thirst. And that's usually going to mean in conditions like this, averaging close to 30 to 40 ounces of water an hour. During the half Ironman triathlon, the bigger people in this group are going to exceed in some cases 40 ounces of water per hour and still need that much. Like that's almost two full bottles of water per hour. So. Yeah. Does this have changes along the way? Yes, they have water bottle changes along the way. I recommend that you still have, you know, some of your own water with you, like a down cage water bottle and then your aero tube bottle, that type of scenario. So the main reason being that sometimes you can grab a water bottle and it's like half full. And this is one of those races where if you miss a water bottle, drop a water bottle, grab a water bottle and it's half full. Don't think, oh, I'm gonna lose 20 seconds if I turn around and grab another one, grab the other one. You do not want to go into this run dehydrated. So if you mess up at an aid station and you either miss a grab or whatever, stop and go back and get what you need. So it's. I don't remember exactly how many stations. These are some questions that will be answered during race. Like the pre race deal. Yeah, they do a pretty good job at these races making sure that the athletes have adequate water just because it's such a, kind of a, kind of a humid hot race. So. How often would you cycle gel for somebody like you? I'd be doing gel every 20 minutes. Yeah, for me. For me during Iron man when I was using gels, I do a gel every 15. So I had four gels. An hour during that distance of race. For which race? For the Half Iron Man. How long is the bike ride going to take you? 3 hours or how long is this Ho. What, what are you asking exactly? If it's going to take you take five and a half hours of the race you'd have to have. If you have one every 20 minutes, you need like 10. Yeah, yeah. You need more than that. You need close to like 15. Yeah, yep. Yeah, yeah. That's why God made those little cute little tri suits. Do you do the catwalk for us fall? So yeah, and they'll be handing out gels and coke and stuff like that during the run. Count on just bringing your own fuel with you for the bike. So even though there'll be stuff out there, it's just always iffy whether or not what you want is going to be out there when you ride by. So I would be as self sufficient as you can on the bike. So on the run you go past. I remember from last year they Gatorade, Coke, water and goods, I think. Yeah. So what would you normally pick up there? Would you pick up in Coke or Gatorade or just straight warm? For me in a hot race, Coke works really well. So what I do is I grab well for, for the Laguna phuket triathlon, the 12K. I'll barely grab anything. I will come off that bike loaded with calories and I may if anything like 6k into the run, grab something super quick. But I will be close to bonking by the time I cross that finish line because I prioritize speed over food in a race of that distance. So you're coming down on the recovery recovery section. Coming into transition two. Will you load up? No, I'll have loaded up before that point so I'm not starting to run with a sloshy stomach. You'll have some gear 10, 15 minutes before we go for the bike. I'll try and finish most of my fueling about 10 minutes before I get off the bike. Give, give myself a chance to get some, some gastric emptying going on and then I'll start into the run hardcore and like 6k into the run. I may, I may just like grab a Coke as I go by and just like slam a cup of coke and that's it. Question, how do you bring this stuff in the run? You squeeze the cup and drink. Yeah. Yeah. And you still get it all. You still get it all over you. But you know when you mix it up with your piss and your urine and your blood and Everything else that you're covered in by the end of the race, little Coca Cola thrown into the mix never hurt anybody. And yeah, for the run, if you are going to fuel during the run, like, I know that we've got all different skill levels in here, and when I use myself as an example, you know, I say I'm going to run that 12k as hard as I can. I know some people just want to go out there and just like, you know, survive it. So in a situation like that, for something like a 12k, I like to split up about every 3k or so. You know, you're looking. You're looking at kind of like a fueling stop. And again, when I talked about like cooling the core, ice water, stuff like that, that's best done during a walk, your body core cools significantly within as few as like, 30 seconds of just like walking to cool you off a little bit. So. So you're suggesting inflation as an option. Wait for an aid station to walk if you can. So you can combine walking with management, with water and stuff like that. But yeah, right on the side of the road that has the shade on it. Everything, you know, every little thing you can do. Now, the other thing that's important as far as the run goes is your pacing. You know, when you're looking at something like a double loop run, I really recommend that you go for a negative split. So you essentially run that first 6k at a relatively uncomfortable pace at about the maximum sustainable pace that you can hold with good form. Okay, so for most people, that's about like a zone four. Like, you're running right at threshold, basically. Yeah, that's the first 6K and then the next 6K, you just basically build to maximum pace over that second loop so that by the time you get to like the 10k mark, you really are suffering pretty bad. And that, that last 2K is just like, you know, you're. You're counting your way through it, you know, landmark to landmark type of thing. And in an ideal scenario, you run that, that last 6k faster than you run the first 6k. So you basically run the first 6k uncomfortably fast. You run the first 6k uncomfortables fast, and then you run the second 6k, like puking, I'm gonna die fast. Like, that's, that's kind of like the mindset if you're. If you really want to go out and just like, smash it. So. And that's much, much better than just like going out and thinking, okay, I'm gonna run a 12k and just keeping up with as hard a pace as you're able to go for the first 7K and then kind of walk in and walk in 5K. I mean it's better to do, to do as sustainable as you can with good form for the first 6k which usually right around threshold and then you really build to maximum for the last 6k. So 300 miles. Yeah, yeah. Because pretty much the last 2k that race is just all adrenaline anyways because you know you're so close and all you gotta run is 2 by 1000 meters and you know you're there. It's like four times around that track. So. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So those are some of the fueling and pacing considerations for the shorter race. And I know we touched on the half ironman a little bit, but there are, there are some changes for sure for the half ironman. First of all, I would not do the whole deal where you prioritize sleep over fueling for the half necessarily. I would make sure that you do get a decent little bit of fuel in about two hours prior to the race. I don't know, seven, something like that. It's early so. So yeah, pretty much. Pretty much have your food ready when you go to bed, roll out of bed and eat. Yeah, you can just keep in the fridge. Now they do open the hotel restaurant at like 4am they're sure to open. So if you want to go down there and grab some bananas or some muesli or some yogurt or whatever you'd like to use your pre race fuel, you know, some of their potatoes, that type of thing, that's definitely an option. But I don't recommend that you prioritize sleep over fueling for that distance, only for the, for the lpt. So you'll get breakfast kind of over with anywhere from two to three hours prior. And again you can still do that quick hit of sugar like right before you start the swim. For the LPT or for the challenge race if you've raced a half ironman before, if you're pretty experienced, if you feel good about your swimming, same Tthing as for LPT, just pretty much go all out. For the challenge swim it's going to feel really similar in distance. It's pretty much like out in the ocean, then over the beach and into the lagoon. With the only exception being that out in the ocean you swim a little bit more than you do during Laguna Phuket triathlon. But it all feels pretty similar by the time you finish. Now if this is Kind of new for you. This distance is half ironman. You want to be a little bit conservative then what I would recommend is that you swim in the ocean pretty hard, but that you kind of cruise the lagoon so that you're coming out into T1 with your heart rate not completely through the roof. So you just basically kind of like breathe every stroke, nice long stroke, swim it, you know, 75, 80% as you go across that lagoon. Whereas if you're a more experienced swimmer, you're just pretty much going to smash through the whole thing as hard as you can. So going into the bike for the challenge race, it is a little bit different. Different. It's not like you tackle your and get all your hills done within the first 15k. More of the hills are really in the middle of that race and there's some steep ones and you're going to find that you're kind of goat trailing a little bit. It works out to kind of go side to side. As you go up the steeper hills, you'll find a lot of people start the hill in too low of a gear and they end up matching and grinding and many times even running out of gears or having difficulty shifting, stopping the bike, getting off the bike and then having to push the hill because it's so difficult to get momentum back up at that point. So it's really, really good. Once you get to the bottom of the steeper hills, just be in like a really high gear from the get go. So you can really almost be spinning faster than you think you should be spinning at the bottom of the hill and that'll help you as you approach the top of the hill. Some people just attack the hills and they're in too mashy of a gear and it just comes back to bite them towards the top. There's also some pretty technical descents. The best advice that I can give you on those is that your bike is going to go wherever you are looking. So don't look over the cliffs out at the ocean type thing, like bad idea. Look where you want to go. Look into the turn and you know, do a little bit of a lean. Drop that knee towards the inside of the turn. But basically it's going to behoove you to ensure that you really do focus on looking where you're going. And if it's wet out, don't brake on the turns. Always break before the turns. If you break on the turns, I guarantee you will go down okay. Now don't worry if, if it is wet and you take your bike Down. Your race is not over. Okay? You get back on your bike, you check it to make sure that your, that your head tube is set straight and that there's, you know, your brakes didn't, didn't get maladjusted or anything like that. You get on your bike and keep going, you're gonna see. Gosh, every year I do this race, I see a good like 20 to 30 people out on that run with, with road rash because they took their bikes down and, and so don't. If that happens to you, just be mentally ready. I mean, just know that life isn't over. You get back on your bike and you keep going. There are some mechanic trucks out there and stuff if you need them. And I personally have like a little tiny mini tool that I carry with me in the back of my jersey. I usually only do that for an Ironman distance race, but for this race I'll have that with me so that if I do, you know, it'll be in T1. I'll shove it into my jersey as I'm running through T1 so that if I crash, I'm at least able to put some stuff back together on my bike and keep going if I need to. So if you got a mini tool on you, I know it's, it's weight, it's grams, whatever, you know, it's, it's still worth it to have that around, in my opinion. So same rule as for Laguna Phuket triathlon, as for the challenge, you drink when you're thirsty and you're going to be going through a significant amount of water more than you think that you should be. And you're, I mean, most of you at this point kind of know you've got the clue. You lose a lot of water in these things, in this environment. So make sure that you really keep the water coming in consistent. Do you want to mention that bit? We're about 16 K's in. You have to get off your bike. Yep. And some of this stuff they'll go over during the pre race meeting. But there isn't one spot where you dismount from your bike and you push it across a cross bridge over the road and then get back on. It's pretty straightforward. So for the bike to run transition for the time first for the, for the challenge race, pretty straightforward there you will have had a long time to spin out the hills and stuff from the bike by the time you get into transition. So again, your mindset going into these hills for the, for the challenge race is you can still attack the hills, you're still going to have plenty of time by the time that you get back into T2 to have spun out some of that lactic acid and to have recovered. And again, even though I'm okay with, with you getting up to all out maximum heart rate on the hills during lpt, I still think you should try and avoid that as much as you can during the challenge race just because you've only got so many matches to burn. And there's a big difference between running a 12k off the bike and a 20k off the bike. It's just going to feel a lot different. So the run is pretty pancake flat and my recommendation is once again a negative split, but this time a little bit different in terms of the way you think about it. You should be running at a pace that is nearly conversational for that first half of the half marathon if you consider yourself anywhere in the beginner to intermediate category. Meaning that you are definitely aerobic for that first, for that first 10k of the half in saying that you mean running so that you can hold a conversation at the same time as you're running. Yep. If you had to, you don't need to get all schizo and talk to yourself during that. But you know what I'm saying, like you keep it aerobic, you should be able to, for example, if you close your mouth, you should be able to nasal breathe and be okay with nasal breathing, that type of thing. If you're, if you're more advanced, you'll be at a slightly higher pace than that. If you're more advanced, you'll go out about a seven and a half, closer to an eight on a scale one to ten. But still not as hard as you plan on going for the, for the second 10k. Because this, this one, similar to the other one, kind of has like two loops. You know, once you loop through the transition area and you head out on that second loop, that's where you start to build again in that second part of the half marathon. And you really get yourself to a fairly uncomfortable pace by about the 15k mark. And then that last 5k, you tell yourself, okay, all I got to do here is run a 5K. And that's where you really pick up the pace and kind of go to the pain cave and suffer through it. You know, for me, I'm counting my strides, I'm counting my breaths, I'm telling myself, okay, just, you know, make it to the next turn, make it here, make it there. Don't Let this person pass me. Don't get chicked by tamsin. Just every. Every little. Every little mental trick that you can think of. So, you know, and last year we had sun on the bike for the most part, and we had rain on the run. So it was nice. Yes, I guess so. Yeah, it rained pretty, pretty short after I got off the bike. But as the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines. When you're in shady spots on the run, when you're. When you're in cooler areas, pick up the pace a little bit. When you're out in the exposed heat, you may slow down a little bit, and that's okay to kind of. Kind of hit it hard when it's time to hit it hard. And when your body's not gonna heat up quite as much from, like convection and. Or not convection, but from radiation from the sun and stuff like that. So you can kind of. Kind of time your surges accordingly as you're. As you're doing the race. So tactics that you see someone in front of you like a couple of man, and you're slightly trying to get. Is there a tactic you have where you're chasing someone in front? Yeah, for sure. I mean, the tactic when you're chasing somebody up front is you use them as your rabbit. Okay. So you take splits on them as they go by whatever the restaurant sign. You glance at your watch and you see what you've got in terms of, you know, how many seconds it takes you to get to that same sign. You can kind of approximate about how many seconds you are behind them if you need to. If you're getting close to the finish line, you need to calculate, you know, how much you have to actually speed up to catch them. But even more importantly, once you do pull up behind somebody and you're gonna pass them, just for a brief second, kind of pull behind them, catch your breath. And then when you pass them, completely demoralize them. Like literally just like count, count to 100 and count your pace and make them think that there's no way on earth they could go with you or they could catch you. And that's. That's when you pass somebody, you want to make sure that they have no thoughts of going with you, and you try not to look like you're working as hard as you're working so that they basically are just demoralized. Yeah. You're that person being passed. You jump right in their feet. Yeah. And if you're that person being passed, you know that the person passing you is probably doing that and you jump on your feet and try to go with them and you know, if a minute goes by and you're just like, dude, this is not going to happen, they probably are really truly running at that pace that you're not going to be able to keep up with. And the same goes for the bike too. If you pass somebody and you don't want them wheel sucking on, you pass them and pass them hard, burn a match, you know, once you pass them, leave them in the dust and then settle back into your pace. So what about, you know, if you're ever using pipes that go in front of you and you've got. He's sort of, he's waiting for you to wait him sort of thing. But you know, you're both pushing pretty hard that pace. Yeah, you want to be court drafting, but you both take advantage of that. Oh, if it's in a situation like that where I know I'm really going to have to work to pass somebody and I'm going to have to keep working after I pass them, I'll drop back into the 10 meter zone and, or the, the, the, the, what is it, three meters? Yeah, I'll drop back and, and just stay there. I mean, why not race smart if you know they're going to be going at the same pace as you anyways and just race smart? No, you just stay in the legal draft zone. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like swimming if you, if you're drafting up someone in the swim and you try and pass them and you're just working your ass off trying to get by them and I mean just stay in the draft zone because it makes no sense to be swimming like, you know, stroke for stroke right beside them just as some kind of an ego fest. I mean like draft off them. I mean, you know, take advantage of the rules. So, so how far, what is the drop science about? Wait a minute, how far we get the extra drop full? You know, like you can get draft up like 100ft. I mean you can windows as well. Yeah. You know, you're going to get a lot of benefits of, you know, using. Yeah, yeah, it is a fair bit. And I mean like there's all sorts of little things you can do especially like if a, I mean you, you can, you can edge the left a little bit when like the big trucks go by to try and catch just a little bit of that draft and come back in. You want to be careful with that stuff just so you don't get, get pinged with a With a card or anything. But I mean, you can, you know, you just want to be thinking about little things like that, you know, because. Because it's the little things that add up over the course of the ride. So. Yeah. So on the run end for the 21, do you do the same thing? You go out reasonably hard for the first loop and then all conversational. Okay. Then on the second loop, you crank it up for the half marathon. Yeah, Yep, yep. Unless you're a more advanced athlete in which you can go out at a pretty decent pace and then crank that up to like an above threshold pace for last 10k. That's the way that I typically race, like a half marathon is I go out at a relatively uncomfortable pace at which I can still sustain good form for about the first 10K. And then in this race, when I go through that transition area and then the finish line area for the first time, so I'm starting the second loop, that's where I pretty much, you know, accept the, the fact that I'm going to be hurting like hell for the next, you know, you know, 35, 40 minutes or whatever and just burn rubber. Yeah. So how many a station would you stop? The first one you said potentially the LPT, you stop once. 6K mark. Yeah. Over 21. Yep. So for a half marathon, I like fueling stations about every 5k or so and then water every single station. Just, just get more of a nice cool down and then fuel up every five. Yep. Or piece of coke or whatever. Once you start the Coke. Start a Coke. They reckon in most cases if you try to mix coke with other fuels, it doesn't mix too well. So I recommend if you, if you start with Coke, just stay with Coke. Yeah, sometimes if you can't stomach stuff. Because I rarely can have anything on the run like I have Coke. But having a gel in your mouth, the studies show that you have a benefit because you get some absorption. You also get some neuroscience stimulation. Just having some sugars in your mouth and you spit it out. Yeah. And I, I've tried that too. Like running with little jumps and goos and shells in my mouth. I can't do it because it like I'm breathing so hard it just like falls out. But like. Yeah, so. So it kind of depends on what pace you're running too. Yeah, it's easier to do that on the bike, though. Do you have any food in the at for the challenge? They will have food at the aid stations. Yep. Yeah, they'll be like coke, banana, whatever, gel. They're using. It's like Excel gel or E gel or something like that. Lots of toilets before you start. Nothing worse when you're hanging out before you get. Before you start. You ask me at the toilet like, there's lots of toilets down there. Lots of what? Toilets. Oh, toilets. Yeah. Because it's not the worst, these New Zealand accents. Australian. Yeah, yeah. Calling Dex dicks and everything like that. So. Yes. Okay. So will they have toilets? Yes, they will have toilets. We are gonna be. How close are we to the start? Yeah, you'll. There'll be toilets there that you can for sure. Yeah. There's toilets on one side of the lagoon. There's toilets on the other side of the lagoon. You'll. You'll be good. You'll be able to find something. Yeah, yeah. Just take, just take some magnesium before you go to bed and maybe ride as rain in the morning. But there is ice at Dyson Physical Ice. They've got icy cold water and ice sponges and I seem to remember there being ice. But you may want to double check on the. During the pre race meeting before the rice. No, for the same reason. That anti aging doc, he really said this really quickly though and he's like, magnesium will make your muscles weak. But it is true. It is a relaxant. So if you take a bunch before the race, you're going to be kind of like too relaxed. Magnesium, you would take magnesium at night before the race to help loosen your stool for race morning. So you'll be able to evacuate your bowels a little bit better. You would not use it during the race. Then after the race, topical or a transdermal magnesium helps quite a bit. Oral magnesium, it's not really, it's not really specific to a muscle area, so that won't help that much. Yeah, it's better just spray on and rub it in or I mean heck, you can go. Just jump in the ocean. So other, other questions about the race, about race fueling, race pacing, transitions. What are you riding your bike at threshold? Do you mean what is my heart rate or what? What pace am I riding? I guess heart rate threshold. Oh. So for, for a half ironman, like for this race, I'll be riding primarily just a tick below threshold, like kind of like a high zone three. And then I'll be up around zone four, zone five on the hills. So you know, for, for most. Yeah, for most of the hills I'll. I'll burn some pretty serious matches. So. Yeah, and the only thing I'll. The only thing I'll avoid is getting to that. Like, during the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, I literally will push to max out right on the hills. Like, I'll get close to just like, blackout point of the hills. Yeah. But during. During the. During the half iron Man, I'll. I'll hold back a little bit and not get myself to the point where I'm just like, dude, I'm not going to recover from this at all. In my age bracket, there is. Yeah. What's his name? I read him on the thing. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm not scared. Australians are wisps. Of course. It kind of sounds like the hills are, like, for us going to be all we have to get up it. We just have a lot of control over. Oh, yeah. The hills are all the hills. You. You definitely goat trail the hills. You definitely go side to side in the hills. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you got where, you know, cassettes on the back? 28. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 28s are fine. Yeah. What's that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Can I consider myself to be an okay strong cyclist and. Yeah. Yeah, you'll. You'll see. Pretty much a pretty good taste. Just about what every hill looks like on Friday when we go ride the hills. We're gonna take you guys up one hill and then that's it. And it's a pretty good example of the kind of hills you're gonna see. And how many of these are there? During the Laguna Phuket triathlon, you hit like 4 or 5 in the first 15k and that's it. And during the half ironman, you hit. There's probably like six or seven kind of closer to the middle, and there's one that's really hard, that's deep. You just do it. Yes. I have a question about hills. Last year was. There were so many people around me, and you're saying to go zigzag because that's what I was going to do, but I could because I had someone. Yeah. Almost. And I just couldn't do it. That's why. Yeah, yeah. If I were in that case, I would. I would pull over, dismount my bike, take off my bike shoes, run my bike up the hill, put it back on, and go. Okay. Like, honestly, that's. That's, that's what I would do. Yeah, that's. That's faster than like. Like freaking, like, people everywhere. I mean, just. Just get off your bike and run it up the hill, so. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're. You're gonna lose 60 seconds. I mean, it's like, you know, ultimately it's. Versus risking crashing out or pissing somebody off or. Yeah, cuz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a pretty, like, it's a pretty. There's lots of people. If it's that steep and they're all struggling, it's pretty big with traffic. You know what, it's far enough into the race where they're pretty spread out by that point, but there's still a little bit of traffic. Yeah. So. But just common sense. Yeah, yeah. And the course is really well marshalled. You don't have to worry about getting lost or anything. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Other other questions about races pacing. When you say you take off at the start, we smash it pretty hard for the first in the run. But what's your reasoning around that? Because I would have thought that you put a steady, get steady, steady, faster and bring it all the way home in the end. Is there, is there a reason why you start pretty hard? When I said start pretty hard, I was referring to the swimming. Oh. For the run, I didn't recommend that you start pretty hard. I recommended that you start like for the Laguna Phuket Triathlon, you start at the maximum sustainable pace you can maintain with good form. And then after about 5k or 6k, then you push into pretty hard. What do you do if you speed up though, and you really feel your form is, what do you do? Do you go back to good form or do you think, now I'm just going to push it through? Ideally, if you've got a gps, you look at what your speed is doing when you feel like you have bad form. And if you're slowing down with bad form, then you go back to your original form. But for me, by the time I finish a race, I'm flailing all over the place, but I'm still running faster than I do with good form. So. Yeah, yeah, but I'm like the ugliest runner on the face of the planet anyways, so. Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. Sam.