How To Fuel During An Olympic Distance Triathlon

Hey, I'm Ben Greenfield, and you may have read my recent article in Lava magazine about how to fuel for short distance racing. And I just wanted to shoot this quick video to give you an idea of how I set up my bike and how I recommend to my athletes that they set up their bikes for fueling for an Olympic distance race. Now, in that article, I mentioned that during a sprint triathlon, you really don't need to take anything at all with you on the bike. But for an Olympic distance triathlon, even if you don't necessarily need the carbohydrates, sometimes that slight bump in blood sugar can help you go a little bit harder. Now the question is, how do you get it? Gels, bars, liquids? What works best? Well, the intensity of Olympic distance triathlon and specifically how hard you're probably going to be going on the bike during that 40k time trial dictates that the best solution for you is going to be something that's quick and easy to digest and that's very aerodynamically favorable for you to carry. And that kind of right off the bat leaves out, for the most part, like gels taped to your top tube or shoved in your jersey or bars and that you're reaching and grabbing and unwrapping and eating and trying to chew on while you're attempting to breathe at a high heart rate. And really it leaves what is my favorite solution for Olympic distance fueling, and that is a liquid calorie source. So the most aerodynamic way to set up your bike based off of wind tunnel data is something like this, where you have a front mounted water bottle holder on your aero bars and the water bottle simply slips into this. It's very easy to get in and and out on the fly as you're riding. This particular device that I have on my bike is called an XLAB Torpedo. There are other devices that can achieve a similar objective, but this is more aerodynamic than having a water bottle that's kind of the standard vertical water bottle that kind of goes underneath the aero bars. It's more aerodynamic than me putting a water bottle on my down tube or on my seat tube. And basically what you'll do is you'll take a powder, like a carbohydrate based powder. It could be something from goo or power bar or it really doesn't matter. Most of the major brands have carbohydrate powders that you can mix into your water bottle. All you do is you put enough calories in that water bottle to where you'll be getting somewhere in the range of 250 to 300 calories of carbohydrate per hour. Now, for a fast Olympic distance bike split, that means 300 calories in one bottle and you're good to go. For slightly slower bike splits, you may need to put a little bit more than that, but ultimately all you really need is a bottle of fluid with enough calories to get you through that 40k time trial. Olympic distance Triathlon for the bike split. Now, as you may have read in the article, for the run, you can grab a gel and have a gel right around the 5k mark of the 10k run of Olympic distance triathlon. And for most of the athletes that I work with, that's all they really need. But as far as the bike goes, an ideal feeling for the bike. Grab a water bottle, put some carbohydrate powder in it, shove that water bottle onto a front mounted aero bar, and that's the best way to go. So I hope that helps you out. I'm Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com check out the full article over in Lava magazine, which you can read more about@lavamagazine.com of course. And have a great training and racing season.