8 Nutrition Rules Endurance Athletes Must Know

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Welcome back to another episode. In today's episode, we're talking about the key and top nutrition rules for endurance athletes. And we have to say from the off the bat, this episode isn't about our nutrition advice because we are not nutritionists, we are not nutrition experts, we are not sports dietitians. So these aren't our opinions, but we've had a lot of nutritionists on the podcast this year. We wanted to summarize the best lessons we've learned and what you can apply directly as an athlete. What are the top rules you can apply straight away that will give you, as what we always say, the best bang for your buck? We want to give you advice that you can just take really quickly and utilize really quickly and apply straight into your training and racing. And that's what we want to do in this episode. We want to summarize from some of the top nutrition experts in the industry some of the best rules you can follow in terms of nutrition for your training and racing. But before we get into that, our normal quick segments to start each episode. Dad, gratitude and court attention. What are you grateful for?

Starting with thanks, Jordan. I'm looking forward to this podcast. And as you say, we're not the experts, but gee, we've had some experts on, haven't we, that are unbelievably giving us fantastic information and, yeah, can't wait to dig into it. What am I? What am I? What's my gratitude about today? Well, the sun's shining and there's only one more day of winter. By the time this podcast comes out, we'll be into spring. And I could not be happier. I don't like winter. I do my best to spend as little time in the colder environments as I can and try to, if possible, get into the sun somewhere. I just don't like being cold. And so the hard, hard works behind us, I call it. Winter's just about finished in spring and the cherry blossoms are on the trees and it is a spectacular time in any, any year, I reckon Spring, it just feels like, you know, you know, even though the magpies are swooping us, it just feels like it's a new beginning again, you know, the sun's out and you're about to get some really enjoyable days of training. Rather than shivering and wearing beanies and gloves and 10 layers of clothes on the bike, you know, you can actually get some sun on your back. I just can't wait. So I'm looking forward to that. Thank God winter is over.

I could tell you that everyone is starting to feel better in Melbourne because I've been in a warmer climate. I've been very lucky to escape a lot of winter again for about the seventh year running. But a lot of I came back this week and went out for a run over the weekend and I was as rugged up as possible. I was in beanie long trackies, long jacket to start with. I would take them off eventually, but I was absolutely freezing and everyone else around me was running in, in shorts and a T shirt or, or shorts and a singlet. And I can tell that the Melbournians have been through a tough winter because just the slightest bit of warmth and everyone's got very little clothing on. So it is definitely turning a little bit. My gratitude is quite simple. The foot season is coming to an end here in Australia with his one month left at finals, but the NFL, the epl, the Scottish football, football all around Europe Champions League is back on. And I just absolutely love those sports. I love keeping up with them and they run through from this period all the way to through to February, March next year. And so I'm grateful that those sports are back because they're some of my favorite sports to watch. Moving on to something more specific to our industry. Triathlon, cycling, running. And what has caught your attention in the wild world of cycling, triathlon or running sports.

As usual, by the time this podcast comes out, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about is maybe a week old or two weeks old or whatever. But at the moment we're in, just finished the individual time trial in the welter and Remco Evanopol from Quick Step from Belgium, another one of our favorite sons. Anybody Belgians feel like they're part, part Australian.

How hard it is to get Belgium citizenship for ourselves, but that's right.

And oh, you know, we think Woot Van Aert's a champion boy is Remco. I mean, just, just remember how injured this guy was a couple of seasons ago and when he, when he went over the bridge and landed, you know, four or six or eight meters down and got wheeled off in an ambulance and, you know, was barely able to walk for, for months. And here he is leading his, you know, his first Grand Tour. There's going to be question marks over whether he can, you know, it's day 10 or stage 10 out of. He's halfway, he's at the moment 2 minutes 48 ahead of Roglich, the three time winner of this event. And he's, he's just leading the, leading the field. His time trial was I think 48 seconds quicker than Roglic and you know, a minute click quicker than the next best. So every single stage he's just putting more time into his opposition and the only thing that's going to cause him to not win this event is something catastrophic. I feel he'd have to crash. He'd have to have one of the worst days on a bike ever to lose three or four minutes and be out of contention. And mind you, the ultimate pessimist in me says that that is a possibility because he actually has not finished a Grand Tour. He's done, you know, plenty of stages in Tours, but he hasn't actually finished a full, a full Grand Tour. So that's the only question mark I have over him. But boy, he looks bulletproof at the moment and, and I'm just loving the way he's riding. He's, he's, he's got measured efforts. You know, we, we were critical of Pagaccia in the, in the Tour de France because he was sort of, you know, he was, looked invincible and he was just having a crack at everything. And I think Remco is a little bit more measured. I think he's really learned maybe from watching Pugacha go about his demise at the Tour. And maybe he listens to our podcast and he's really understanding that you have to be patient in an event that's 21 days. So I'm really gunning for him. Hopefully he can finish it off and get the result he deserves. It's been, it's been really interesting to watch.

His story is truly remarkable. I mean, it was, it was I think still less than two years ago where he had that horrific accident and he couldn't walk. He, you see the footage of him and he comes back in just the most horrific fashion because he has to learn to take his first, he has to learn to stand up again, he has to learn to take his first step and you watch how he progresses into a couple of steps and then he's on the treadmill and then he's doing some squats and then he's doing a couple of jump squats and you watch that progression, you think, how's this guy ever going to ride a, the top level again? And less Than a couple years years later, he's back and he was always touted as one of the best talents coming out of Belgium, but then no one knew if he was going to be the same again. And then this is probably his second chance at a Grand Tour to show himself and he didn't finish the Giro. And so, yeah, to, to come here now and, and start performing like this. And yeah, you're right, he is measuring his efforts, but he's still going guns to the wall. He's just some, some of the efforts, attacks he's doing just pretty unbelievable to watch. So it's, it is really exciting.

Well, the, the Belgians or the world cycling press were calling, you know, before he had that accident. He was just such an outstanding junior. They were calling the next Eddie Merckx, which is, you know, a lot of.

Pressure, confidence you can get. Yeah.

And, and you know, they're not, you know, Wood Van Aert's, you know, got the runs on the board, but this guy is, is his talent and his potential. And I'm really interested to see what's going to happen with the Belgian team at Wollongong for the world titles in three weeks time, four weeks time. You know, you'd think that they would be backing Woot Van Aert for the road race and everybody would be working for him. Yet you've got, you know, if Remco does do the world titles, he'll be in great form from, from the, the welter. But he could have massive fatigue. And you know, what happened last year, it was just a bit of a schmozzle with the way the Belgian team rode. They ended up getting nothing when they probably had the two best riders in. And you know, there was a lot of criticism about the way Remco didn't apparently ride for the team. And I don't think that was actually fair. And you know, he went up the road in the break and that, that really suited the rest of the Belgium team because they didn't have to chase and that gave them all, you know, the opportunity to sit in and let the other teams chase. And you know, I think it was a bit unfair that they were saying that was a bad move by Ivanopole. But, you know, there's so much can happen in these events and I just can't wait to see, you know, how they go about this next World Road Race and it should be a world champion jersey on the back of one of the Belgians. But, you know, you never know in, in these events. You know, Ella Philippe proved Too good last year again. And just an opportunist rider like that. He's just so clever. You never know what's going to happen.

I want to chat about the triathlon scene and the Collins cup happened recently, which is. It's the second year it's happened. It's a really cool event. It's basically the top athletes competing in one on one on one races. So there's basically three athletes per little race and they're racing one on one against each other for points for their continents. Basically it's Team Europe versus Team America versus Team International, which is made up of Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African athletes and the Internationals. And it's a 100k race, so it's 2k swim, 80k ride, 18k run. So it's a little bit different distance and it's really a fascinating event because the athletes are getting a lot more comfortable on social media. Last year they spoke about the fact that they, apart from races, they don't really spend that much time together. But now that the sport's growing and they're doing events like this, they're starting to see each other a lot more. And they were in the village together in the days leading up and they really enjoyed spending a few days together. And there's a lot of banter online going back and forth between a lot of athletes now and they're. They admit they're doing it to try and build some height because triathlon needs more money in it, it needs more growth. And then there's a couple of boil overs. I don't know if you saw, but Lionel Sanders was paired against Sam Long and they were paired against the British, Sam Laidlow. And he was getting stuck into Sam Long before the race, so. And he got under his skin so much that Sam Long absolutely cracked it and stormed out of the interview. And he's a hothead anyway, and he absolutely got under skin. And I think he did push too far. He was getting a little bit personal. And then Lionel and Sam Long ended up smashing him in the race, which is what they wanted to do. And they joked about the fact that they would, they would never be teammates before, but they both had a point to prove against this guy who was calling them both Jew athletes and saying they're such crap swimmers that they're just your athletes. And he said, jew athlete won't beat me. And then they both smashed him, which is very interesting. And, and then after the race they said, let's put it behind us, it's all good. We settled it on the field. No hard feelings, but there's just a lot of interesting things going on and, and this is all leading up to the World Champs in Kona, where a lot of these athletes will get together again in a couple of months. It's going to be interesting to see how they all go. The Norwegians are even getting involved. They're, they're, they're posting a bit of cheeky things online about, there's comments about the Norwegian hype train in quotation marks and they're going along with it. I think it's all a bit of fun. I think it's all really good. But I think the real test will be to see, see what happens in a couple months time in Kona when they all have to brace those conditions and leave it all out in the field and all the social media talk will be behind them.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. As I always say, back in our day, there was just no opportunities for this and you didn't have a clue what any other athlete was doing until you saw them on race day. There was no such thing as the Internet or social media or anything like that. So it's quite interesting now that there's so much access to every single word that you, that you utter has could be have good or bad outcomes. And, and you've got to be very careful. There's promoting your sport and then there's going too far and, and you know, I think it was, it got people interested with the banter that was going on in that press conference pre, pre event, so much so that people wanted to watch it, to see what happened. And, and that's probably a good outcome and you know, good on the athletes for doing that. But there are some athletes who, who that's detriment because they're focused on the man rather than their own, their own performance. And it was so good to see the two guys come out and just put all the words to the side and let their actions speak loud and clear. And I always love it when people are big talking because big talking needs to have big action accompanied with it. And if you just got the big talking, you're going to sort of embarrass yourself a little bit. So my mindset's always been to be as quiet as I can and try to, you know, show by example rather than by, by big talking. So I know, I understand. It's all about hype and promotion and that's a good thing, I think. But yeah, it's, it's all leading to a good A good outcome because, you know, Kona is going to be the event that's really going to decide everything. And I did see that there's a few people pulling out because of some other issues with accommodation and the cost of it, which is a little bit disappointing. And that's a completely separate topic. But, but yeah, hopefully we can get all the best people there and not have people pulling out.

I do want to get your thoughts on this because we spoke about a little bit in the last episode about, you know, the goal of enjoying the sport and then the cost required to perform better. And yeah, as a coach, I'd love to get your input as to what, you know, what you want to advise athletes to do because even the top pro athletes have been put in this position where they're having to make a hard choice. And Joe Skipper, who was one of the two athletes that broke the sub seven hour record, that project that happened a couple of months ago, one of the best iron man athletes in the world has just pulled out of Kona because he stated that his accommodation canceled on him. And then to rebook the same accommodation, it was triple the cost. It was just absolutely absurd. They just bumped it up because they knew that the accommodation in Kona was so scarce. And it's really against the spirit of the event for anyone with the locals to do that. I mean, they can do whatever they want, but it's really not a nice thing to do. And he's just said, stuff it. With all the costs combined and how tough it is to get there, I'm just pulling out. I just can't afford to do it. And then there was a couple of pros that posted below and said the same thing, that they're, they're just not going to do it because of that reason. And it's really a shame that that would be a factor, especially because it's such a bucket list item for any triathlete to get to go there and race. What are your thoughts on that? And combined with our conversation last week, I mean, when you come back to it, the whole point is to enjoy the sport and to have fun and, and to not have to be under pressure to get the best bike or the best equipment or worry about all these things that might be a limitation for you. So what's, what's your advice? There's.

That's an interesting one. And look, I, I was in a similar position, except the position I was in as a professional triathlete was that I had no income and I had to basically raise money. To get myself to Kona in 1987, 1988. And, you know, the prize money we were earning was, you know, $500 or a thousand dollars for a race or, you know, and there might have been five races in the season, and if you weren't in the top three, you got nothing. So to get to Kona, I'm just giving you an example of what it meant to me at that particular time. That was the race that counted, that mattered. It was the world championship, it was the Olympics of triathlon. So the cost factor to me was irrelevant. I would do anything to get myself to that event. And I've only got a small window of opportunity to prove myself. And some of these guys have been fortunate enough to be able to do this for five, six, eight or ten years. But, you know, I knew my window wasn't going to be that long and, you know, I just moved heaven and earth and I got sponsors to help me with getting, you know, Fosters team, Team Fosters Australia came on board. You know, we worked really hard to get a group of guys who were, you know, sponsored by the local brewery to do that. And, and, you know, that set the precedence for many years to come. And that became a team, Team Fosters Australia, which went to many of those events. And it was purely because we couldn't afford to go ourselves. It was so cost prohibitive because we, we weren't earning any money. I didn't have a job, and that was, my job is to be a triathlete. So, so I, I, I understand that it's, it's a very expensive thing to do, but, but for my mind, if that's what my job is, I'm going to do the best I can to move heaven and earth to get there. And I wouldn't want to look back on my career and say, oh, what happened in 2022? How come you didn't race at Kona? It cost too much. I don't know if I'd be happy with that answer. I think I want to actually say, well, you know, the accommodation was triple what it was, but I still managed to get myself there and I competed and, you know, put a dampener on it, but, but I was still there and, you know, there might be a lot of pros in the same position that I was. You know, you've got to actually navigate your way around roadblocks just like you would if you're in an event where you have a mechanical. You don't just, you know, pick your bike up and go home. You've got to, you've got to manage a way to get a better outcome if something's gone wrong. So, so I'm sure there are alternative options for these guys and I'm, I don't want to speak on behalf of them but, you know, it's not, it's not the end of it. You know, you should be doing something about it to help yourself. You know, start networking, start, start reaching out. Do a GoFundPage me if you have to. You know, there are ways to get yourself there, I think without saying it's a cop out. I'm a little bit worried about do they think they're not in a good, good enough form to go there? And they're using that as an example and this is just an opinion on giving. But, but, you know, I'd hate to think that that was the real reason. If you were in the form of your life, I don't think there'd be much stopping you from going there. That's just what I think.

It's a reasonable point. And I wonder if since that post, if any of his sponsors have reached out to him or if anyone's anyone has actually changed his mind. It'll be interesting to see if he actually turns up on race day. What about for the age grouper? You know, these roadblocks are a bigger problem for the age grouper because the sponsorship isn't an option.

Yeah, totally agree. And you know, it's just your priorities then like we spoke about last, last week. If, if it's cost prohibitive, then unfortunately it's just something you have to, you have to give a miss to. But you know, there's, there's, there's always ways and means to do things. If you, if you've, if you've searched high and low and you just can't find ways to get, to get to any event because of a cost prohibitive, then that's just unfortunate and you just have to, you have to be a local racer. You know, I can still remember we live in Melbourne for those people internationally. And there was a qualifying race for the Commonwealth Games that the last race was in Noosa. It was the Noosa Triathlon, which has been going since 1980 something and I was a part of the very first few events and in 1980, 1990 when the Commonwealth Games selection was for New Zealand in Auckland, you had to, you had to do a certain amount of races to get selected for the Australian team. And the last race was in Noosa and it just happened to be. There was an airline strike the month of the Noosa Triathlon. It went on for a while and we had no choice but to drive from Melbourne to the Sunshine coast which is a 20, 23 hour drive. And we borrowed my brother in law's car and my brother came up with me and we did the race and qualified for the Australian Commonwealth Games team and drove home two days later for the ready for the next race, the next weekend. And they're the things we did when there were roadblocks put in front of us. You know, if all else fails and you can't afford something, drive and that's a fair Drive with 2000km to go and do an event.

As an example, it did happen last year with the COVID lockdowns when Cairns Ironman was on and all the flights were closing before the weekend and everyone had their flights on the Friday and Saturday. And so a bunch of people from Victoria and New South Wales just drove up on the Tuesday, Wednesday, which is a ridiculous drive to Cairns. It's almost. What is it? Almost double.

Almost 4,000 kilometers.

Yeah, same thing. And then this is for an age group event and a lot of people were just so desperate to race that they made it happen. And that was pretty inspiring to see, to be honest. You put in so much hard work and these people just said, I'm not letting this opportunity slip me by. Let's move into the topic of today's episode and we want to summarize some of the best nutrition rules that all endurance athletes must know. We just want to start. The first rule is understanding that correct fueling will make or break you. And this is really, really important just as a concept to know and make sure that you are taking nutrition seriously. And I think too many athletes are still only looking at their nutrition in the last month before the race or last few weeks before the race. They go, I'm going to get dialed in now. You know that's it needs to be. Nutrition will make or break you in your training sessions, before your training sessions and races, during your training sessions and race and post training and race for recovery.

Yes. And I know that all the athletes I coach are sick to death of me saying this one line back to them. If you don't fuel yourself, you can't function. And it doesn't matter how fit you are, if you don't have the correct nutrition for your everyday week function of training and working and sleeping and living, you are going to slowly perform worse. And pre race during the race and post race, pre training, post training, post block You've just got to concentrate on, on nutrition as part of your program. And you know, we use the example so many times I've said it. If you've got a Ferrari and it cost $2 million, Ferraris don't cost $2 million and you've got a car that costs $2,000. Does, doesn't matter. Both cars will not function without fuel. Without you putting petrol or diesel or gas in them. They won't go. It doesn't matter how expensive it is. Same with the fitness. If, if you're the fittest you've ever been, if you don't feel yourself, you'll still have a malfunction on race day or in training in your build up to your event. So we can't underestimate how important as part of your program, especially for your endurance, how you can get away with it with shorter stuff. There's no doubt about it, it's still going to affect your performance, but it's going to be catastrophic for your endurance performance. And that's a big word. But you could add hours to an ironman. You could walk for an hour and a half instead of running an hour and a half quicker, instead of doing a four hour marathon, you could end up with a five and a half hour marathon because you've got no fuel to function properly, no fuel to run properly. It is a game breaker for people's goals on race day. And it's just not race day, it's everything in between. So this topic we're talking about, and it's great that we've had so many expert nutritional on our program and they've all given us variations of the same thing. But it's really intriguing to hear different experts and we've had professors, doctors, just nutritionalists, all from the very bottom all the way to Professor Louise Burke, who's probably one of the leading nutritionalists in the world. And the information they're giving is all very similar but with a different take. And that's what we want to actually get across today.

So rule number two is the golden question of how much carbs you actually need to be taking in your race. And then we'll also go specifically just for any endurance performance approximately above 90 minutes, not above 90 minutes to two hours. And everyone wants to know this and the consensus among them all is very similar. And the answer is consuming between 30 to 90 grams of carbs per hour in endurance races. And why that range? Well, it depends on the specific person, doesn't it? Yeah.

And there's so many variables to that look, 30 to 90 is a big range, isn't it? Like if I take 30 and you take 30, the outcome could be completely different. You know, I might need 90 on the same day, same temperature. Then you only need 30 because we are different humans. So it's really important that everybody out there understands there is no one number or gram or calorie that fits everybody. So stop trying to do that. You need to understand that the requirements of every race can be different. Even though it's an ironman compared to an ironman compared to an Ironman, you think the event is the same so your nutrition plan should be the same. Well that's not even necessarily true. If you do an Ironman, that's for example Utah or Kona or Port Macquarie or Busselton. I'm just picking four events that have completely different temperature, different coarse terrain and they're the big things that are going to affect the rate of consumption or the rate of usage of your calorie expenditure, calorie burn. So the temperature is going to drastically change how much hydration you need and how much nutrition you need. We know that the minute your heart rate's going above where it should be, you're going to burn more fuels to keep the body temperature as low as possible because you're heating up. So there's so many things that can affect what you think worked last race. So I'll just replicate. This is just one person, you know, comparing themselves. So imagine if we had, you know, 15,000 people, we can't just say that 30 grams is right for you. So what is the answer here? The answer is that you need to experiment. You need to figure out in your own training, your own practice, your own racing and take notes, take detailed notes about what you're consuming, what you plan to consume and what you actually did consume. Post training, post race, post practice, you know, your big pre race session that you're doing might be 160k followed by 30k run off the bike as your 6 week out, you know, practice day. What happened on that day? How much calories did I consume that day? How many grams of carbs did I need? How did I feel? Was I running out? What was the temperature, Was there much wind that day? Was the course I selected very hard and undulating so that I was riding sort of like over under type riding rather than steady state on a flat course. So all these things are going to contribute to what you get as your outcome about what you're going to take into race day and the things you had before that week of that big practice day, the day before, the night before, the morning of all of these things. You need to keep taking detailed journaled notes about what you're consuming. So you have a really clear picture of am I a 30 gram per hour person or am I 90 or am I 120? And you have to work that out yourself. And you can get help from other people, from nutritionalists who can measure these things for you, but you can do it yourself as well. You don't need to have a degree in nutrition to work this out. You can actually understand how many grams of carbs you are actually putting into your fuel drink or how many gels you're having because it's all there on the packages. So it's really honing in on what works for you. And there is no one rule fits everybody.

And a bunch of athletes actually put out their carb intake per hour from the Collins cup last week. And there was, I think I saw four athletes put out their data and it was amazing to see the difference. There was one female had I think less than 40 grams per hour. Another female had 70 grams per hour. One of the males had 70 plus per hour when the other males had 55 or something per hour. So there's amongst genders, it wasn't necessarily the males had higher than the females the whole time. You would think that might be the case because they'd be heavier. Yeah, there was, there was a big mix and a big range in that 30 to 90 gram range. So very interesting to see that and I love that they released that data. Rule number three.

But just before we go on Jordan on that point, don't forget that if, if you, if you worked out that you had 70 grams per hour, understand how you performed. Was that right? Did you perform well? And oh yeah, I got through the event but I didn't actually feel that good. So I think I needed more. So just because that's what they had on any given day might not be the right amount. You need to reevaluate post event to find out. Well, I think I'll need to try 80 grams next race because that was clearly not enough. I still went okay, but I think the nutrition was holding me back. So that is a point that really needs to be understood.

Absolutely. Rule number three is that your food intake should reflect the specific day. What does that mean?

Yeah. So if you happen to come to a day where it's either a rest day or an easy walk or just roll your arms over swim session compared to A day where you're doing a five hour ride followed by an hour run. The requirements of your nutrition are completely different on those two days. So don't fuel yourself on the day where you're having the easy day, the same as you're going to fuel yourself the day that you're doing a six or seven hour training session. So that's the extreme examples of what we're saying. So every day in your week, in your block, in your monthly lead up to your event, you need to identify the days that require more nutrition against the days that require less. So understanding how much energy you're going to expend will determine how much fuel you need to input to work out that you're not running yourself down. You need to keep that balance of healthy nutrition against the amount of energy you're expending. So really understanding what training you're doing each day will help you determine how much fuel you should be consuming.

It can also help you determine the types of foods. We had a sports dietitian, Taryn Richardson, come on and she just spoke about what you can and probably shouldn't eat, what you can eat and what you maybe shouldn't eat before training sessions and before hard sessions or any type of, of at least moderate intense exercise. You don't want to be having high protein, high fatty foods because they're going to sit funny in the stomach for that training session. You want to have easy to digest carbs predominantly. And so the lesson I took from that was on those hard days, definitely don't do that. But if I'm having an easy day, because as triathletes, you tend to train every day. If I'm having an easy day where I'm doing a recovery session, a zone one session, or even up to potentially the bottom of zone two, I've already experimented and found that I can handle those sessions with kind of almost any food in there. If I have a higher protein or higher healthy fat breakfast, even though I know my stomach isn't feeling great, I can do those sessions, no problems. But if I was going to do a hard session, then that wouldn't feel good. So I'm even willing to change what I'm eating depending on the day, allow myself to have that different kind of breakfast on the easier days. And on that note, that takes us to rule number four, which is, and this is one of Taryn's principles again. But again, this is, this is definitely proven and seen worldwide. The recovery window after training is vitally important. The recovery window is up to 60 minutes post heart training, you need to be aiming for between 20 and 30 grams of protein, depending on your body weight. Probably lower if you're a lighter weight and a bit heavier if you're heavier weight. 20 to 30 grams of protein in the first, within the first hour after exercise. And that is vitally important for recovery.

Yeah, and we've got to be careful that we don't put people off. For example, if they don't get home for another hour and they don't have access to protein, it's still okay to do that whenever the most quickest time available for you is. It's better to do it as soon as possible. But you know, the window is not completely shut. It is open for a fair bit of time. So it is important.

5950, it's okay. And an hour and ten, it's not okay. I'm joking. That's sarcasm.

I understand. So what we're trying to say is, regardless whether it's two or three hours down the track, you still want to have some protein into your body post event because it's going to help you repair the damaged muscles that have already been worked over. So don't dismiss it. It's too late. It's no point in having it. That's not what we're saying here. There is an ideal window where it's more beneficial and as that window closes, it becomes less beneficial. But there still is a period where you need to be actually ingesting some protein post activity.

Rule number five, and this is another favorite one from Professor Louise Burke. And the way she put this was so perfect. She said our Western cult, we tend to not eat any protein throughout the day and then we eat a cow at night. And it's just so true. We tend to have these funny meals, some high carb, high sugar breakfast cereal or toast or something for breakfast. Then we have something not protein based for lunch. Then we have a huge steak and beef and barbecue with a little bit of veggies and stuff, AKA eating a cow at night. And she just said, aim for a bigger serving of protein at each meal, a more even balanced serving of protein at each meal. That's going to be so much better for you and everything to do with your nutrition than this sporad kind of western culture diet we have.

Yeah, it's a really good point, wasn't it? It's a bit of an eye opener. When she, she said that on our podcast, I loved it because it really made me think about how am I spreading out my Meals and, and it was a real help, helpful tip and certainly trying to get a little bit of protein as much as possible throughout the day was so much better than just, you know, you know, feel like a caveman and I need my protein tonight. And so as she put it, you know, eat half a cow. Well, it's just so long to digest that. So, you know, give your body a chance. So it's taking little bits at a time and spread it out throughout the day and it's not that difficult to do and the reward will be that you're getting the right total amount of protein and not all at once where it just sits there and it's quite uncomfortable and you know, so that was just fantastic piece of advice I thought.

Yeah. And we looked at what kind of options can you have for breakfast. If you are on those easiest training days, you can have an egg based breakfast, whatever form that looks like. And three to four eggs is approximately 18, 25 grams of protein. So that's a decent serving. We looked at if you're going to have more of a cereal base or some sort of muesli or oats based, there's specific yogurts that have 15 grams or 20 grams of serving of protein in them. There's also smoothie options where you can put protein powder in. And then for lunch making sure that there's a decent base of some sort of protein there. And that might come in the form of a serving of chicken or something and it might be a chicken salad base or chicken wrap based kind of lunch. But just looking at those options to make sure you're actually ticking that box and obviously they're all meat based options. If you're vegetarian or vegan out there, you'll have to look at different ways to do that and there's plenty, plenty of athletes doing that out there. So if you want to find them, there's all over Instagram, there's people posting ideas for that. But. But yeah, it is finding and looking at options that are available to you and increasing your knowledge in that area. I think Rule 6, and this is a big point I wanted to bring up and it's the fact that we know that and we've heard so many experts, not just nutritionists, but so many experts come on and say that one of the best ways to improve performance is to improve your power to weight ratio. And running wise, you'll improve your economy and efficiency by dropping weight, weight. And that is such a key point and a lot of athletes want to do that. But then there's also this balance of not putting too much pressure on yourself for that to become too stressful or become too much of an issue. And in the last month, I think I've heard personal stories from such a wide range of people that did such a wide range of diets. They did a full carnivore diet, which is the kind of diet where you're just basically eating meat with the tiniest amount of vegetables. Full vegan diets, people that only eat chicken and fish, no other red meats, people who have done keto, people have done a whole range of things. And specifically I've just heard a lot of anecdotes last month and those people claim that the diet they went on was absolutely life changing. People giving examples of long term chronic health problems gone, energy levels sky high, serious chronic things eliminated just from following some of these, you could say in some cases extreme diets and some more commonplace diets. But to me, that just shows that there are a range of things that can work and it shows that people's bodies respond differently. Some person might have tried a bunch of diets and then the carnivore diet just happened to work for them, but someone else really wouldn't respond well to that. And they found that going vegan has been the best thing for them and giving them the most energy. We've even had Dr. Harry come on here and he's talked a lot about keto, which he's had great success with a lot of athletes and a lot of endurance athletes losing weight using the keto method. And he admits that he knows that their performance will suffer in the short term because of it. But for a lot of them, it's worth it to help them achieve their weight loss goals first and then they can go back to a more balanced diet to get their performance back up. But the point is, and this rule is that there are many ways to achieve your dietary goals and potentially your weight loss goals. And again, it's not getting sucked into X or Y or Z way is the best way. It's about finding what works for you and what's going to be what you can actually sustain and do consistently.

Yeah, it's a tough one. It's an interesting one. There's such variety out there. There's so many. This worked for me and that worked for you, and it's kind of all almost too confusing at some particular point. So if we strip it back, what are we trying to do here? We're absolutely trying to perform in our event or in our life as an optimal human being. We want to be running with all our cylinders functioning, and we're trying to do that as efficiently as possible. And definitely weight has an impact on our performance, not only as a swimmer, as a bike rider, as a runner, almost every event, boxing, they have to make the weight to be in a certain category. People, you know, jockeys have to be. There's just so many sports where, you know, weight does matter, unfortunately. But, you know, we all know as human beings, if, if we're, if we're carrying excess, excess weight, it's going to hinder our performance. Whether it's just every day working, you know, we're getting tired because we're carrying too much weight around. Our job involves physical, physicalness, yet we're overweight and we, you know, we're sweating on hot days and very tired by the end of the day. So. So weight not only is important in athletic performance, but it's also important in everyday functionality. So the modern Western society, you would say that we're heading in the wrong direction with the percentage of people who are not at a weight that they'd be happy with. And that's the question I often ask people when I'm interviewing them to see whether they're a good fit for our coaching business, is what weight are you happy with? And majority of people will always tell me 2 to 5 to 7 to 10 kilo less than they are currently, which I'm quite shocked at because most of these people are already performing athletes, yet they're not happy with what their weight is at the current, you know, that time of the interview. So to me, it's a real issue. And people know from all they've read that if I'm a leaner athlete, I will possibly be a more efficient athlete, which means that I'll be a faster athlete. And that's the bottom line. So we're driven to try and understand about our diet. And what does the word diet mean? It means, what are you consuming each day? It's a diet of food. What am I consuming? It's not something you go on, it's something you do every day. You consume a diet of food. And to think of it the other way, like we've done it in Western society, is what diet are you on? Is the wrong way of looking at it. What are you consuming each day is your diet. And so it should be something that's been able to be maintained for the next 20 years if you're happy with the weight you're at. So you need to find something that suits you and there are many examples which you've just gone through. What suits you to maintain the weight that you're happy with. And you need to find out that and read and research and try things that may work for person A, but for you is absolutely useless. So everybody's metabolism is different, everybody has different gene pools, different hereditary. So all these things come into it. So it's important that you, like you do when you're trying to work out how many grams of carbs you need for a race, what suits you to keep and maintain the weight that you're happy with, to do the best in your performances. So I'm all for people trying things and practicing on themselves, but as long as it's balanced way of going about it and not an extreme way of going about it, because as we know, many times I've said anything that's extreme is unsustainable and you need to not do that in anything you're doing needs to have a really measured, balanced approach to it.

Yeah. One of the best lessons from Professor Louise Book, and she just spoke about this, she said if she could pass on any message, it's that exact message. And that balance is key. And whatever you do, it's got to be enjoyable and it's got to be sustainable. And like you said, it's your life, you know, so you've got to make it, make these decisions based on what you want for life. And I think that's really, really key way to finish off any talk or any discussion about nutrition.

Yeah, the balance thing, it's like the consistency thing. It sounds easy to do in. Oh, yeah, I'll just do the program. I'll just, I'll just turn up to train every day. But as we all know, consistency is really difficult, you know, to back up day after day. You know, example would be you've been away for a period and you went to touch training on Monday night and, and you've pulled up sore because you hadn't played touch for nearly 12 weeks. And that's going to affect your next day because you can't actually train because you're too sore. You've got really bad doms the next day and the next day. So straight away you're stressing the consistency part of your training program. And so the balance in your diet is the same. If you don't try to keep control of what you're consuming and be prepared to plan your meals and get the right food from the store and be on top of it, you're going to Fall short. And the easy option is I'll just get takeaway where it's not probably the best option for you. So really balancing is like the consistency idea. You need to actually try to be as balanced in your fueling and your nutrition as possible. And that doesn't mean starving yourself from chocolate or from alcohol or it means having a balance with it. And one drink is better than 20 and a whole bar of chocolate, one piece of chocolate is okay, but a whole block of it is out of balance. It's something that you need to have a little bit of discipline about. So balance goes with discipline. And if you can control your urges and give yourself the right amount of fuel, you won't feel that you need to keep eating. And we have such a sugar based diet over the last 30 or 40 years that it is very difficult to change the way we've done things for a long time. So for people who have got it right, it has not been easy. It's taken a long time of practice and experimentation and discipline to stay the course. And it's really easy to say that, but it's very hard to put it into practice. So I really want to emphasize that, that everybody has struggle with this. It's not just something that's confined to a group of people. I think everybody in the world has sort of got this feeling that I'm not really on top of a balanced, good, regular, consistent nutrition plan. And I want to get better at it. And the harder you work at it, the more it will come. And it's no different to training. The more you put into practice into the events you're training for, come when it counts on race day, you will have a better outcome. So doing this with your idea that I'm going to get as many good fuel systems into my body as possible with the right protein, the right fats, the right carbs, the right electrolytes, the right amount of hydration, then you will function better daily, you will get improvement and you will be a leaner athlete and therefore perform better because you've spent the time. You know, we talked at the start, nutrition is just as important as the program that you're doing. So if you get this right, it is a game changer for you. You know, the lean, mean, fast machine. That's no joke. If you are that person, you are going to perform better than the version of yourself that's not that person. And it doesn't mean you need to be extreme with this. It means you need to be balanced. And that is the message from all the nutritionalists that we've had on board is, is, yes, you can do things about changing the way you are, the way you feel yourself, but you need to do it in a methodical, balanced way and not do it in an extreme way where it's going to actually be detrimental.

And one bonus rule we wanted to touch on was, of course, we spoke about practicing all these things, but you have to practice what you're going to do on race day, before race day. And so a lot of people don't actually do a race simulation, which you should be doing anyway, to get your power numbers, to get your run PA numbers. And in that, you also need to practice your nutrition, because very rarely do you get an experience where you are performing for as long as you are on race day. And so you don't really know how your nutrition is going to go until you're in that position. And so therefore, it's really important to do a practice race simulation, to do a mock race to put yourself through that same kind of intensity and duration and see how your body responds to your nutrition plan. It just has to happen before. You can't be trying these things for the first time on race day. It's just too risky for all the work you've put in.

Yeah. And for those people who've done a lot of races, they've got the experience of what happened in those previous races. So that is a really contributing factor. But we have many people who haven't done an Ironman, who haven't done a half ironman, who even haven't done an Olympic distance for the first time. They've got no idea about the nutrition requirements because they haven't been able to do that in practice. Who can do an Ironman practice day to say to yourself, well, this is what I going to need on the real race day. But you can actually do a version of it. If you're doing one of those 120k days with the 10k run or 140k days with a 20k run, they're great simulation sessions to practice your nutrition at the intensity that you're going to experience on race day. And so some of the endurance days that aren't at that intensity of race day, they're not as accurate as those brick sessions that are specific to practicing what's going to happen on race day. So we do lots of endurance training where you're running way slower than the intensity you're going to run on race day, giving you an exact example of how quickly you're going to burn the fuel because you're trying to practice what's going to happen on race day. So it needs to be similar to the intensity that you're going to do on race day. So they're the key days and they're not happening every weekend, they're happening once or twice in a build. It might be spaced apart. Six weeks apart, 12 weeks out, six weeks out, then race day. So those two key sessions, they're really important because the intensity is what we're measuring our fuel consumption consumption against.

I know we said six lessons at the start, but we ended up with eight lessons. So there's a couple of bonus lessons for you. And, yeah, these are some of the key things that we've identified, that if athletes take these on, it will change the nutrition game for you and give you that extra advantage in this leg of the new triathlon, the fourth leg, the fourth discipline that is so important. So take these rules, apply them, practice them and put them into place in your training and your racing, and watch yourself perform, recover and get better in your overall performance. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next time.