Taking a Shot: Top Triathlete Nutrition Tips

The Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, is like no other race. Never mind the pressure that comes with competing in the pinnacle of all triathlons. No matter how much recon the world's best conduct on the course - arriving early to the big Island to scope out the routes for the swim, bike, run - many top triathletes agree that the key to Kona is nutrition.  

Why is it so difficult to keep up with caloric intake and hydration at Kona? Two words. Heat and humidity.

UniversalSports.com interviewed several of the top Kona triathletes, plus a Clif nutritionist to see how they combat the extreme conditions.

"In Kona - in that heat - it's just tough to keep putting food into your body," says Terenzo Bozzone, a two-time Kona competitor from New Zealand, who has watch from the sidelines in 2011 due to an Achilles' injury. "Your stomach shuts down a lot earlier in the heat and it almost wants to refuse you to allow food into your system."

"You simply can't digest the number of calories that you're burning, so you just try to minimize the damage," adds American Ben Hoffman.

Even the professional triathletes are still working out how to take in calories and hydrate in the heat of Kona, but Clif nutritionist Tara DellaIacono-Thies says it's all about the salt.

"The heat and the humidity physiologically are going to require that you get in more sodium and more fluids," says DellaIacono-Thies. "Triathletes may not have planned to lose as much sodium and that leaves them more susceptible to cramping, so thinking ahead about what the temperatures will be like and having a back-up plan [is important]."

Most important - no matter what your individual plan is - don't forget to fuel.

Linsey Corbin, who has finished as high as fifth at Kona, tries to eat every 20-30 minutes.

"You don't eat during the swim, but as soon as you're on the bike the time on your watch goes off and you're constantly monitoring, ‘Am I drinking enough,' ‘Am I talking my salt tablets every hour on the hour?' Every thirty minutes it's like, ‘boom,' you take a Cilf gel. I try to get in 300-350 calories/hour on the bike. On the run it's every 3-4 miles."

Clif gels, Bloks, and the electrolyte drink are the hands down favorites among Kona competitors, but first-time Kona entry Tim O'Donnell likes to add a little sweetness after the gel, Blok, drink rotation.

"Towards the end of the bike I start drinking some Coke just to get a little more sugar and caffeine in," says O'Donnell. "Maybe throw in a mini-Snickers or Milky Way to leave a little treat in the middle of that grueling bike."

The other key ingredient - carbohydrates.

"Anywhere between 30-60 grams of carbohydrates per hour is really going to help you maintain the sugar level in your blood to deliver energy to working muscles while you're out there on the bike, or the run, or the swim," says DellaIacono-Thies.

"That's why we came up with the Bloks and the gels - to help the athlete have a convenient way, proportioned and premeasured, to deliver some quick, easily digestible carbohydrate that can fuel their muscles."

It is up to each athlete to figure out where they fall in the 30-60g range and the only way is by trial and error.

"I'm still playing with it," says Tyler Stewart. "My body does not do well in the heat. What has seemed to work the best for me so far, on the bike I eat a lot of Clif bloks. That's all I can eat. I eat like eight packages and then by the time I get to the run I'm really down to Clif shots and Coke and whatever kind of sports drink they have on the course. I've found for me that less is more."

Stewart once gained 17 pounds in water weight during an Ironman. She doesn't want to repeat that incident.

"[Nutrition] is one of the trickiest things about Ironman. It's something that is very hard to train for because you're never going to go out and exercise for 9-10 hours straight at that intensity unless you're racing, so it's hard to recreate that environment to test your nutrition. Obviously with Kona coming up it's something I've been working really hard on."

So as the athletes gain on-the-fly experience, what is the worst case scenario? In triathlon lingo it's called "bonking" - running out of fuel for your muscles, which can be very costly.

"It is possible to recover from that - bonking or hitting the wall - but it definitely takes a toll on your overall time and it slows you down while you basically pound gels and drinks to come back," says DellaIacono-Thies.

"You will not be able to make up or replace everything you've lost during the event, but to minimize that loss and really fuel to prevent dehydration and bonking is critical."