Race Day Nutrition

If I remember right, my heart rate monitor told me I burned around 10,000 calories the last time I did Ironman Coeur d’Alene in 2008. You can’t take that much in during the race – a calorie deficit is inevitable. But you have to dial in your race day nutrition as best you can so you don’t run out of energy out there on the course. With nearly zero science behind this, but a pretty good amount of trial and error and experimentation, here’s what I’ve arrived at as my race day nutrition for Ironman Coeur d’Alene 2011:

After a couple of web searches it seems the general belief is that one can consume an average of 250 calories per hour during endurance racing, with the high being around 400 calories per hour. It’s much easier to consume these calories while cycling than running (of course, you can’t at all while you swim). That said, it looks like I have about 480 calories per hour planned on the bike for this race. Now, I should clarify that the chart above is what I am making available to myself for the race, not necessarily everything that I will consume. I figure I’ll probably actually ingest only about 80% of this, so on the bike it looks more like 385 calories/hr and on the run more like 230 calories/hr. I’ll respond to this post-race to share how it all "went down."