Over the past couple of weeks I've been honing my nutrition for race day. Here's where I think I'm at with what all I need to consume:
Pre Race Nutrition:
This has stayed pretty consistent over the past months. I eat an almond butter, banana, and honey sandwich and drink a bottle of Ensure. It' about a 700 calorie meal and I generally feel stuffed after it but it keeps me full for a while which will be good since it will be a while until I get to start eating things again on the bike. Here's a pic of a variation of the above meal with strawberries instead of banana and english muffins instead of sandwich bread:
Pre Race Nutrition:
This has stayed pretty consistent over the past months. I eat an almond butter, banana, and honey sandwich and drink a bottle of Ensure. It' about a 700 calorie meal and I generally feel stuffed after it but it keeps me full for a while which will be good since it will be a while until I get to start eating things again on the bike. Here's a pic of a variation of the above meal with strawberries instead of banana and english muffins instead of sandwich bread:
Hydration:
I did a sweat test to determine how much liquid I should be drinking. The sweat test consists of weighing yourself (without clothes on) right before going for a one hour run where you do not consume any liquid. Then you weigh yourself right after (again without clothes). You take how much weight you lost, convert it to ounces and poof that's how many ounces you need to consume an hour. My test yielded 19 ounces (which was over one pound!).
Now that still seems like a lot of liquid for me to be drinking especially on the bike where I do not sweat as much but at least now I've got an idea of what I should shoot for.
As for what kind of hydration, I've been using Osmo Active Hydration. It's specifically made for women so I believe it's giving me what I need electrolyte wise. It's got a light flavor which I really appreciate since I hate consuming nothing but super sweet things while working out. I plan to take two bottles of Osmo Active and one bottle of water with me on the bike course. I plan to just live off of the run course (drinking water mostly and whatever electrolyte mix they have at the aide stations).
I did a sweat test to determine how much liquid I should be drinking. The sweat test consists of weighing yourself (without clothes on) right before going for a one hour run where you do not consume any liquid. Then you weigh yourself right after (again without clothes). You take how much weight you lost, convert it to ounces and poof that's how many ounces you need to consume an hour. My test yielded 19 ounces (which was over one pound!).
Now that still seems like a lot of liquid for me to be drinking especially on the bike where I do not sweat as much but at least now I've got an idea of what I should shoot for.
As for what kind of hydration, I've been using Osmo Active Hydration. It's specifically made for women so I believe it's giving me what I need electrolyte wise. It's got a light flavor which I really appreciate since I hate consuming nothing but super sweet things while working out. I plan to take two bottles of Osmo Active and one bottle of water with me on the bike course. I plan to just live off of the run course (drinking water mostly and whatever electrolyte mix they have at the aide stations).
During Race Nutrition:
I read that based on my weight and the fact that I'm a woman, I should be consuming about 200 calories an hour. I plan to do with this with a mix of solid (bars) and semi solid nutrition (gels). I recently tried ProBar Meal bars which have all of the nutritional value you need in a meal and it sat really well in my stomach so I plan to use that on race day. It has about 400 calories and I'll chop it up in chunks for easy bites. For gels, I plan to take with me Hammer Gels. They have a bulk container where I can put 3-4 servings in and add a little water to help it go down easier. I will consume one of these on the bike and take one with me on the run. Ignore the Bonk Breaker and Honey Stinger Gel in the above picture they did not make the final cut ;)
I read that based on my weight and the fact that I'm a woman, I should be consuming about 200 calories an hour. I plan to do with this with a mix of solid (bars) and semi solid nutrition (gels). I recently tried ProBar Meal bars which have all of the nutritional value you need in a meal and it sat really well in my stomach so I plan to use that on race day. It has about 400 calories and I'll chop it up in chunks for easy bites. For gels, I plan to take with me Hammer Gels. They have a bulk container where I can put 3-4 servings in and add a little water to help it go down easier. I will consume one of these on the bike and take one with me on the run. Ignore the Bonk Breaker and Honey Stinger Gel in the above picture they did not make the final cut ;)
So that's the plan! I hope to consume about 600-800 calories on the bike and about 400 during the run. Here's hoping I did my calculations correctly!