TriDot Podcast .219

Fueling Your Endurance Journey: Nutrition Tips for Successin Any Endeavor

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Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley: Brand new episode of the TriDot podcast! Thanks so much for listening. It's going to be a good one today. I have two friends from Precision Fuel and Hydration with us, and we will be talking about how to fuel different types of races. We are a triathlon podcast, but I would say that most triathletes, at some time or another, dabble in other adventures throughout the year. Does our fueling strategy need TO change for road running, ultra running, cycling, swim-only events, adventure races, and so much more that we can get into? We'll find out what the team from PF&H have learned. Our first guest is a crowd favorite, Andy Blow from Precision Fuel and Hydration. Andy is a sports scientist with a degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath. An expert in sweat, dehydration, and cramping, Andy has worked with multiple Formula One racing, NBA, NBL, MLB, and Premier League sports teams, as well as many professional triathletes. An elite-level triathlete in his younger days, Andy has finished in the top ten of IRONMAN events, as well as winning an Xterra World Title. Andy, welcome back to the TriDot podcast!

Andy Blow: Good to be back, Andrew! How are you doing?

Andrew: I am doing well. I will note for the people, Andy, we were supposed to catch up and record this conversation in Kona. We were busy, y'all were busy, we never crossed paths. So here we are doing it remotely, but it was good to see you there on the island. Did you guys have a good time in Kona?

Andy: Yeah, too many dolphins to swim with, and turtles to find time to record a podcast, so we had some good excuses.

Andrew: Also joining us from the Precision Fuel and Hydration team is Emily Arrell. Emily is a sports scientist at PF&H with a first-class BSc honors degree in Sports and Exercise Science from the University of Bath. She first joined the team a couple of years ago as an intern alongside her degree. Emily comes from a team sport background, having played football from a young age, and playing in the top female University League in Bath. Since joining the team, she has worked with PF&H’s elite athletes in a range of sports, to help them dial in their fuel and hydration strategy. And when I did IRONMAN Waco, Emily was actually the one who helped me with my fueling strategy. I'm sure I'm one of the elite athletes you allude to, isn’t that right, Emily?

Emily Arrell: Absolutely, Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Andrew: The elite-est athlete you've ever consulted with. I am Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always, we will roll through our warmup question, settle in for our main set topic, and then wind things down with our cooldown. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew:  When you care a great deal about a certain team, athlete, or sports story, sporting events can have an incredible power to move us emotionally. Andy, Emily, for our warmup question today – from all of the sporting moments that you have watched, either in person or on the telly, what was a moment that especially moved you? Emily, what is this answer for you?

Emily: It's a tricky question, Andrew. I think for me, it's actually quite a recent one. As someone who's played a lot of football and watches a lot of football, I think it's last year Messi winning the World Cup with Argentina. Obviously he's done a lot of great things in his career, and I watched a lot of Barcelona for years and years, and kind of followed his career. And just to see him reach his ultimate goal, really it's the one thing he hadn't done, and to be able to take that off was  just a great moment to watch.

Andy: Andy Blow, what is this answer for you?

Andy: I'm going to stick with the stereotype, and the Brits talking about football and soccer. Because I grew up playing the beautiful game, and in the World Cup in 1990 was in Italy, and I was 12 years old, I was on holiday in France with my folks. And England, we had a great team. We had Gary Lineker, we had Paul Gascoigne, and it was like, real potential. Then the inevitable happened, but there's a famous moment with Gazza, Paul Gascoigne, when he committed a foul in, I think it was in the quarterfinal, which would have meant that if England had gone through, he'd have had too many cards and would have missed out. It might even have been the semifinal and he missed out in the final – I’ve got to get my facts straight – but I just remember the famous images of him crying. I remember, I was only 12 years old, it's probably one of the first sporting memories I had that really stuck with me, that we sat in this in the bar on the campsite in France with loads of other England supporters watching this. And yeah, the devastation was real. Yeah, big emotional moment for a football fan.

Andrew: Well, I know the cameras are often very, very fond of capturing young children crying in the stands when something happens to their team. Could that have been you on the day, perhaps?

Andy: Absolutely, yeah.

Andrew: So Andy, very interestingly, going to – I don't want to say a negative moment – but a “not as happy for your team” moment, but emotional nonetheless. Emotions can be positive at the game, or they can be negative at the game, based on how your team or athlete is doing. So yeah, a very interesting side. We celebrate Messi with Emily, we lament what happened to Team England with Andy. My answer here, I'm going to give a shout-out to Serena Williams, American tennis player. I did also grow up playing the beautiful game. I was decent at it, not amazing at it. I was a much better tennis player. So as a tennis fan in the last couple of years, when Serena Williams went into the U.S. Open, and it was just known by everybody that this was her last tournament, and she's done. Her matches just became must-watch TV, because you never knew which match was going to be Serena's last match before this historic tennis career came to an end. So I would watch in the evenings, and she had two or three matches in a row where it looked like she could lose. And just the heart of a champion, not in the best fitness, not in the best form, but just finding ways to rally past really strong opponents. She won two or three matches she probably didn’t have any business winning. And it was just fever pitch in New York City with the crowd as they were just cheering Serena on, match to match to match. And obviously she finally did lose and her and her career came to an end, but that was just a really – I was never specifically a Serena fan, but watching her in that tournament kind of close down her career just with such ferocity, was just really, really special as a tennis fan. So I'm going to give a nod to Serena as a fairly recent memory in my mind. I was very much caught up in the hysteria of that U.S. Open run that she had.

We're going to throw this question out to you, our audience, like we always do, make sure you are part of the I AM TriDot Facebook group. Every single Monday when the new episode comes out, I pose our warmup question to our community. So go find the post asking you – what was a sporting moment for your favorite team, your favorite athlete, that really struck a chord with you emotionally? Can't wait to see what you have to say.

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

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On Episode .129 of the TriDot podcast, we heard all about the Precision Fuel & Hydration case studies, where they examined how an athlete fueled and hydrated during a specific race. We'll fast-forward over a year or so, and they have now conducted over 400 of these studies with athletes in a variety of endurance endeavors. So I asked Andy and Emily to join us again, so we can learn from what they have learned from these studies, in regards to how athletes need to fuel for different types of races. First things first here today, for any of our listeners who are unfamiliar with the PF&H case studies, just give us a quick rundown of what these are, how they're conducted, and why you started doing them.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So a case study is just a full analysis of everything an athlete eats and drinks on a race day. What that actually entails is post-race, myself or one of the sports science team will get on, normally a video call with an athlete, and we'll talk through exactly what they ate and drank. So it’d be that the morning of the race, about 30 minutes before the start of the race, then what they had during. So if that's a triathlon, that would be broken down into what they had on the bike, and then what they had on the run. And that's a lot of detail, so how many gels and the flavor of every gel, how many sips, how many bottles, everything like that. Then we also talk about the subjective details of the race. Did they have any GI issues, did they cramp at all, that kind of thing, to get the whole picture. Then we take that away, we run it through sort of our calculator spreadsheets that we've produced, our big database of products, and from that we produce their headline numbers. That's an analysis of the amount of carbohydrate they've consumed per hour, the amount of fluid that they've drank per hour, and then the relative sodium concentration of their intake. We call them the three levers of their kind of fueling and hydration strategy. We also give their caffeine as well, and other little bits and pieces. From that, we look at how those numbers compare to the scientific recommendation. Are they bang-on, hitting what the science says they should be taking in per hour in terms of their carbohydrates? And we rate that, so we give that a green. Or are they just outside the recommendations, then we'd give that an amber. Or if they're quite far outside the recommendations, and maybe that could be impacting their performance, then we'd rate that a red. And we do a little bit of a write-up and say maybe what they could improve, what they could do differently next time. And that becomes a page on our website for anyone to go and have a look and see what numbers they've hit and how they've hit those numbers.

Andrew: Yeah, and you're being very humble in saying you do “a little write-up”, because it is more than a little write-up. I find these case studies fascinating, and your social media team does a fantastic job of putting out some images that kind of show some people's headline numbers in a social media graphic. And I hope a lot of our audience by now, as these come up on the podcast, I hope they've gone and looked at some. Because they are very, very fascinating, just to get – not even a peek, they’re very in-depth write-ups on what an athlete did the whole way through. Emily, have you found – particularly some of the pros, we all know how competitive the pros are – are they okay with you just really airing out their laundry on how well they fueled an event? Do they ever say anything about when they're scored an orange or red, on not having fueled properly for an event?

Emily: I think so. Sometimes we do get a bit of pushback. Maybe they question some calculations, and I have to prove how I've done it. But no, most of the time I think they're quite welcoming to the feedback, and they want to work with us as a bit of a process. And once we've done it over multiple races for the same athlete, we can really see the progress that they've made.

Andrew: So Andy, take us back a step into why you started doing these in the first place. Because for the brand, part of why we believe so much in PF&H products and love working with you guys, is you haven't just created a gel and an electrolyte tab and sold it and just sat back. You are active on the ground with athletes. You study the space, you're always working to refine your products, and refine your process of how you're working with athletes. So how did the case studies become part of your own research in the first place, for you to start conducting these and posting these online?

Andy:  Yeah, they started out really as the manifestation of what we were – the industrialization, if you like – of what we were doing in a very artisan way with individual athletes. We would usually have a call with an athlete we were working with in the build-up to event, to refine their fueling and hydration plan. We'd then have a call with them after the event to debrief and gain as much detail as we could about what they ate and drank, in order that we could analyze it and see how influential that was in what happened in their performance. See what we can learn from it, and also to add it to a –at that point it was kind of a figurative version of a database. We would just have therapy notes, or Google Sheets or whatever, on certain athletes so that the next race they did, we could go back to it, refine based on it. And at some point we sat down and looked at that and went, “We need a process around this if we're going to build this into something to create value.” Because it makes it easier for the athletes and for us, if we've got all of the information in one place. Then what we actually found was, with permission, we took one of the athlete’s data and put it out on social media, and put it in our newsletter. And at that point, the response that we got from people who were following us and reading our stuff was really explosive. The people were like, “Wow, this is super interesting.” It stimulated a lot of conversation and a load of feedback. And at that point, that's when the marketing side of my head kicks in and goes, “Well, if this is really what people want to read and hear about, let's give them more of it.” Because there's kind of a virtuous circle. We learn more, the athletes learn more. We get people send us questions, so we get an insight into what the audience that follows us wants to know and what they want to learn. It becomes this giant feedback loop. And full credit needs to be given to Emily in terms of taking what was, as I say, like a handmade artisan but not scalable product, and sort of turning it into a solution, turning it into something with a database behind it and a level of rigor and organization. And I think what's been brilliant about the process is not only have we increased the quantity of output, because we've got this industrial system behind it now, we've actually improved the quality at the same time. We're able to do a better job, because Em can bash into the spreadsheet if you have a Snickers bar during the race, or if you have a certain type of energy gel or a certain drink. We can put that in, the volume of it that you had, and it will immediately spit out how much carb, how much fluid, how much sodium you’ve consumed as a result of that and add it all up. It takes a lot of the heavy lifting out, so it's been a real upgrade to the service that we can offer athletes.

Andrew: Who was that very first athlete that was willing to allow their data to go out in an email form, that kind of started this whole thing? Do you remember?

Andy: I don't know if he was the very first, but one of them was Sam Appleton, the Aussie triathlete. We published some data around Sam, I remember from one of his early IRONMAN races, and also from Challenge Daytona. I think one year we put out stats, and at that point it also included some other stuff around like his bike powers and whatnot. And people loved reading that insight that they don't normally get. So credit to Sam, he's still an athlete on the PF&H roster, and a big part of what we do. Thanks to him for being a trailblazer there.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. I was probably at that Challenge Daytona. I'm usually at that race, so I was probably there when he was racing that one. Anyway, for the purpose of what we're talking about today, I really wanted to pick y'all's brains on just how athletes are fueling for different types of events. Because our athletes do run-only events, they do trail events, they do ultras. They dabble in cycling-only events, there's all sorts of things that somebody with an athletic endurance sport spirit can go out there and partake in. So I know in these case studies, you have done more than just triathletes, you've worked with all sorts of different types of athletes. So talk to us about the types of athletes and the events that are now in this case studies collection.

Emily: Yeah, definitely. So when Andy last spoke to you, I think we had just under a hundred case studies in the database, and about 40 of those who were triathlon, the other a mix of different things. And now we have about 400 in the database, and I'd say 200 of those are triathlon, and the rest are a mix. So we have 100 running case studies, but that's split about 50/50 between ultras and marathons. Cycling is one we've been looking to increase recently, and get more gravel races specifically in there. We have about 50 cycling ones specifically. And then we have more niche ones as well, we recently got some longer duration swims. We have some swim-runs in there, but there are some other ones as well. But in terms of the real data, there's lots on running, triathlon, and cycling. And most of them are top-level elite athletes, and a lot of the time it's success stories in these races, so they've done well. There's some where there's errors, and there is the occasional DNF, but most of the time we've worked with these athletes, we've helped them refine the strategy. As Andy said, we have a pre-race call with lots of the athletes, we help them put the plan together. So very often their strategy is quite good.

Andrew: Yeah, very cool. I'm excited to dive into it. I know we're going to hear a lot of the stories behind some of these case studies as we talk about fueling for different types of events. Andy, I am curious, because I am obviously a big fan of using Precision Fuel and Hydration products. That is the case for a lot of our team, a lot of our core coaches. So I know just being friends with you, talking to you often, that the feedback you get from athletes, as you are working on these case studies, has often influenced the product line. You've come out with new products based on what you're hearing from athletes, you've refined your products based on what you hear from athletes. What are some examples of how you as a company have used the case studies to improve and refine the brands you have in the marketplace for athletes to consume?

Andy: Yeah, we absolutely use that, because it is frontline feedback for us. The most glaring example really is the introduction of the caffeine gel into our lineup. We were not sure about the adoption level of caffeine or not. We got some industry statistics, we even took a straw poll in the office from all the athletes like, “Do we feel like we need caffeinated products or not?” But when we looked at the case study data, we saw that 80% of the athletes doing longer races in our case studies were using caffeine.

Andrew: Yeah, sure, myself included.

Andy: So immediately you get that very definitive feedback, that 80% of our potential customer base are likely to want to use caffeine. Why are we not providing them with a product that meets that need? Why would we want them to have to go elsewhere? So the caffeine gel, which is our only caffeinated product at the moment is, you could attribute that significantly to the work that we've done on case studies in terms of informing that. The other one more recently, which you'll have seen, is the Flow Gel, which is of a lower viscosity. It's the same ingredients as our standard gel, which is a little bit set, but we've reengineered the way that we make it so that it flows better, so that you can pour it straight into a bike water bottle, or into a soft flask for running. You can carry, in a standard 16 ounce water bottle, over 300 grams of carbs. That was in response to learning in the case studies that what a lot of athletes do in triathlon and gravel in particular, is they’ll empty a dozen gels into a water bottle, so they've got all their energy concentrated in one place. So we figured that if a load of our audience are already doing that, why not make a product that's actually made for that? Why, in 2023, do we need to be squeezing ten little tiny patches of gel out? We don't do it with tomato sauce. You go to the restaurant and use tomato ketchup in single serves, but at home there’s a big bottle with a squeezy lid. Like, why don't we do that with gel?

Andrew: Yeah, and it's funny, because right before that you had a couple of different products come out, and I saw our athlete community really excited about some of the different products. And I'm like, “You guys have no idea what's about to come out. When Nice, France happens and the team releases this new Flow Gel.” And I personally will be using this on course the next time I start racing middle and long again, very, very excited about that product.

But let's get into our promised topic to our audience, just learning from you guys on what you're learning from how athletes are fueling for different types of events. Do we need to change our strategy based on the race that we're doing, or are our numbers our numbers? Let's find out. My first question I want to ask about, before we get into different types of races, let's just talk about triathlon. Roughly 50% of the case studies are triathlon events, so what have you learned from those in terms of how athletes are fueling for different distances? Does our strategy need to change whether it's short course, middle distance, or long course? Does our strategy need to change if it's something like an Xterra or an extreme triathlon? What are you guys seeing in the data?

Emily: Yeah, we have loads of triathlon data now, and we've learned a lot from it. I think overall the actual data and the trends are quite similar between middle and full. If we just look at the overall per-average carb intake, it would be relatively similar between the two. It's 80 grams per hour for full, and 77 grams per hour for a half, so it seems pretty similar. That's the overall per-hour intake that includes the swim time, the run time, the bike time. But when we actually look at the breakdown from bike to run, that's where you kind of start to see some differences. In full distance it's a lower drop off, so it goes from 96 grams per hour on average on the bike, which is pretty high, to 73 grams per hour on the run. Then for middle you have a greater drop off, so the average is 92 on the bike – pretty similar on the bike to a full – but then 60 grams per hour on the run, so we see a much greater drop-off in the fueling. Similarly in the hydration, I think it's as you'd expect, but there's a lot of data backing that up now. So for obviously a shorter run, people are getting away with taking on less and fueling less per hour. Then if we look at different types of triathlon, the headline numbers are pretty similar, and the targets would be the same for carbs, the fluid, and hydration. The sodium would be a lot more individual. But what changes more is the logistics, so how people are actually hitting those numbers, how they're carrying their nutrition, how they're breaking up per bottle. For something like Norsemen where you get support, it's obviously a bit different in how people do it, but the overall numbers are relatively similar.

Andrew: Interesting, yeah. And that makes a lot of sense, that whether you're doing that triathlon on a mountain bike on a mountain path, or they're doing it going up hills in Iceland and you have a support crew, the numbers don't change. What your body needs doesn't change, just how you can get that changes. That makes a lot of sense. Andy, anything to add there?

Andy: Only that we were surprised. Maybe we shouldn't have been, but we were surprised by just how high some of those numbers actually are. When you talk about the fact that a few years ago, 60 grams an hour was considered to be a lot of carbohydrate, there was this theoretical ceiling that maybe 90 was as much as people could do. The average on the bike in our triathlon data set is 96g an hour. As Em said, that skews towards successful elite age-groupers, professional athletes. So what we're not trying to say is that everyone should be aspiring to those numbers.

Andrew: Sure. I could not hit those numbers. No, I would throw up if I tried hitting those numbers. And Andy, we've talked before with you about training our gut. Like, it takes some gut training even for the pros to get to those numbers, correct?

Andy: Absolutely. We're just publishing a set of data on Leon Chevalier, a French athlete who we've worked with since the start of his long-course career, where he started off at about 80 grams an hour, and has progressed all the way to 116 grams an hour, on his way to race at the IRONMAN World Championships in Nice this year. So there's the gut training piece, and the other part of that conversation that's very valid and worth having is that Leon needs 100-plus grams an hour, because he's pushing 300 watts on the bike, and running a 2:30, 2:39 marathon.  If you’re pushing 150 watts on the bike and running a 4:30 marathon, your actual rate of energy burn is not as high, so the requirement and the benefit from pushing your carb numbers as high is perhaps not going to be there. But yeah, honestly, when those stats were first presented I was like, “Maybe we should rerun the numbers, because we’ve got mistaken in our calculation.” It was pretty high numbers.

Andrew: Yeah, I'm always really good about sending questions in advance to our guests, but this admittedly is one that is not on the sheet, so we'll see if you know these stats off the top of your head. But as we're talking about triathlon-specific events, let's talk about the breakdown between more elite athletes, whether they're pros or elite age groupers, versus people like me. I am in the data set as a very average middle-of-the-pack triathlete, with my 12:30-something IRONMAN finish time. What are you seeing in the differences between those more elite athletes who maybe need more carbohydrate because they're burning more, versus our mid-pack and back-of-the-pack folks who maybe don't need as much? What are the differences in numbers you're seeing?

Emily: I think we're seeing exactly what you'd expect, which is taking on a little bit less, but it doesn't drop down to like 60 grams per hour overall, it would just be slightly less in terms of the overall grams per hour. But when you look at other differences, and look at like male and females, there's less of a difference. But when we do compare our pros and our amateurs, you see the pros taking on slightly more.

Andrew: Yeah, which is very, very interesting. I think it's good for us to know that it's less, but not a ton less. And when we do see those really cool graphics after something like Nice – we see the graphic hit social media on the PF&H social media account, Leon Chevalier took 118 grams of carbohydrate per hour – it's good for us to know not to aspire to that. It's cool knowing that the rest of us can dial it down a little bit from there. Really, really helpful.

Andy: I think the way to think about that, Andrew, is that it's not the ability to take 118 grams an hour that's making Leon a great athlete. It's because Leon's a great athlete, he needs 118 grams an hour to support the rest of his metabolism. There is definitely this horse-cart here, not cart-horse.

Andrew: Copy that. Reading you loud and clear, over and out. Let's shift to talk about running some. That’s some good triathlon conversation there, and you can absolutely go back and listen to previous episodes we've done with Andy to hear more about how to fuel for different triathlon-specific events. I'm going to move us on to running events. A lot of our community does marathons, 5Ks, 10Ks, ultra events throughout the year, at different times of year. When triathletes shift their focus to standalone running events, does anything need to change in our fueling and hydrating approach?

Emily: It's a good question. I think a big part in the recommendations in the headline numbers is the duration and intensity of their run or the event and race they're doing. That plays a big part in terms of what they'd be aiming for in grams per hour and things like that. Hydration is a lot more individual, so that's the biggest thing that might play a part in the difference in those headline numbers. Bringing it back to triathlon, if we compare, in our data set, marathon and an IRONMAN marathon off the back of the swim and the bike, it's a little bit different. We're actually seeing people fuel better and fuel a little bit more in the triathlon, so our average on the run would be 73 grams per hour. But when we take our standalone marathon data set it's a bit lower, 65 grams per hour. And I think that's probably what you'd expect. Off the back of the bike and a swim where you're feeling low on energy, you're able to fuel more, and obviously the logistics are a bit different as well. We are seeing our marathon runners take on slightly less. And that's not saying that they need to take on slightly less, it's just what we see in the data. The recommendations are pretty similar – higher carbohydrate levels help fuel you and increase your performance – but in our data we are seeing lower numbers for marathon standing on its own.

Andrew: Okay, so part of that sounds like, when we're starting a marathon or a half-marathon in a triathlon event, we've already burned a tremendous amount of calories. We're in a deficit, and we're trying to keep our body moving for the remainder of the event. Whereas for a standalone marathon, you're just trying to fuel properly to get to that finish line. You're not starting that marathon or half marathon at an energy deficit, is that correct?

Emily: Definitely. So for a marathon, you'd hope that our athletes on the start line are going in well fueled. They've had a big carb-rich breakfast, they've carb-loaded, so they're going in with high glycogen stores, ready to keep fueling and keep that up. But by the time you get to the IRONMAN marathon, you're already in quite a deficit and need to keep yourself going.

Andrew: Yeah, good to know. So I will do half-marathons, but I have yet to do a standalone marathon. I do want to eventually, I am curious to see what kind of time I could hit. So it's good to know that when we race triathlon a majority of the year, we kind of get that triathlon fueling mindset inside of us, that we just have to stay fueled. “I can't die in that run.” So we do need to shift our mindset going to a standalone running event, that you need to fuel, but not as aggressively as you do for a triathlon. That's very, very interesting. Emily, do you see that ultra runners – that are going over a marathon, that are going 50K, 100K, 100 miles – are they fueling more like triathletes, or is it still kind of similar to a marathoner?

Emily: In terms of the numbers, I’d say it’s similar to a triathlete. We're seeing higher numbers, I think it's around 72 grams per hour for our ultra runs, and that's over like 10 to 11 hours on average. So we are seeing higher, but when we look at how they're doing that, what products they're using, it's a little bit different. Obviously for ultras, where you're going at a lower relative intensity, there's a bit more real food and some solids in there as well as gels and drink mix.

Andrew: Yeah, super helpful. I've got one of my cousins that actually lives near me, and he'll tell me stories from his 100-mile races, 100K races. where he's stopping and having quesadillas at the aid stations, where you would never see a quesadilla at an IRONMAN aid station. So yeah, very different types of food that our ultra-run community eats, but very good for us to know that. Again, I see in our groups, several of our triathletes love dabbling in trail running, and love doing an ultra. And I think that same mindset – if an IRONMAN appeals to you, why wouldn't a 100-mile trail event appeal to you as well? Super helpful there, guys.

So Precision Fuel and Hydration has long been used by cyclists, but this year actually you became the Official Nutrition Sponsor of a World Tour team. So the PF&H bottles were all over the broadcast during the Tour de France and other marquee cycling events. Andy, what was that experience like, and what did the team learn about the fueling needs of cyclists from that experience?

Andy: Honestly, for me, stroking my own ego, it was one of the coolest experiences ever.

Andrew: It should be! Yeah, good for you!

Andy: Because if you’d have told me when we started this business, essentially in the shed in my garden – that one day the products we'd be making, and the advice that we'd be giving, would be used by some of the actual best riders in the world, in the Tour de France, in the Milan-San Remo and in all of those epic kind of iconic events – I would have either fallen off my chair, or probably wouldn't have believed you. And further on that point, to have people I haven't seen or heard from for years, texting me pictures they've taken of their TV screens saying, “Look at your bottles in the Tour de France!” is just unbelievable. Also, Lotto – I have to give the team a shout-out, because we worked with lots of athletes, we’ve worked with lots of teams over years, we've worked with lots of great people, but the Lotto team has been an absolute joy to work with. The reason they wanted to work with us is – like most of the Pro Tour teams, they could have their pick of sports nutrition partners.

Andrew: Absolutely, yeah.

Andy: But a couple of their riders – shout-out to Victor Campenaerts, who was the hour world record holder – Victor was using our products a few years ago off his own back, and he put them in front of the team and the promoter of the team and said, “If you want to be serious about giving us the best performance stuff, check these guys out.” So he brought the team to the table and we went to the table to talk to them, and even at that point I thought, “Well, they're going to want like millions of dollars from us and we have to convince them to do this.” But they wanted to actually work with us, seeing us as a performance partner for the team, not a sponsor of the team.

Andrew: That’s super cool.

Andy: So we've integrated with a nutritionist, we talk to the Riders, we've learned a lot and we've reformulated some of our products. We've developed an entirely new product for their purposes, something called the Carb Only Drink Mix, because we didn't appreciate just quite how much carbohydrate they wanted to get in a liquid form, and they couldn't do it without overloading on the sodium with some of our more blended products with electrolytes. So we developed the Carb Only Drink Mix with them. And being around – one of the guys on the squad, Raff, one of our sports science team, he's been intrinsically working with them at some of their races, even being given a jersey and being a soigneur, effectively he’s handing out bottles in the road. We've got video of Raff – and hats off to him for having the balls to do this – standing in the middle of the road when the peloton rides towards you at 40 miles an hour, and he's handing bottles off to individual riders as he goes. So our exposure to all of that has been fantastic. And we're constantly talking to them about modifications to products and what comes next. So when you get real-time feedback from people who are operating at that level, and also from people who are consuming that much of your product – like, nobody in my estimation uses more product than a World Tour cycling team. They do so many hours of training, they just use so much product. So the turnaround on feedback is strong. They will tell you what's working and what's not working, and it's allowed us to sharpen up our game for sure.

Andrew: Andy, just as we're talking about it being a “pinch me” moment for you, seeing your bottles on the Tour de France course – I remember scrolling social media one time, and George Russell, Mercedes driver in Formula One, had a picture. He wasn't in a sports context, I think he was on a beach, but he had a PF&H bottle in his hand in his Instagram photo. I took a screenshot of it and texted it to my wife, who watches Formula One with me. That was pretty cool to me. So seeing your bottles on the Tour de France course, is that the one that tops the list for you? Or is there anything else that really tops it in terms of cool moments for your brand?

Andy: Yeah, there's that, and you've mentioned the Formula One. I think someone else sent us that during the football World Cup there was a tube of our pH 1500 electrolytes caught in the background of the England dressing room on the shelf with Jack Grealish, who's one of the top football players. And although there was no reference made to it or no comment to it, that was pretty cool. We've had a similar thing in the dressing room of the England rugby team, too. The other one for me as well, which is not so much a public one, is that we got sent a jersey from the Green Bay Packers, which I think I've told you about before, signed by Aaron Rodgers. Because the Packers have been a sort of a longtime customer of PF&H. So just knowing that what you've done, what we do as a company, is trusted by some of these people at the very, very sharp end of sport – people who could basically choose to do what they like or use what they like – when they do, when it's not part of an endorsement, when it's part of them just saying, “Of everything I could use, I'm going to use your stuff,” that's quite satisfying.

Andrew: Yeah, very cool. So we talked about the Tour de France, and you got to work with those guys hands-on. So from case studies with those guys, and case studies with just standalone cyclists who are not on a World Tour team, what have you learned about how triathletes should change their fueling approach when they head into a cycling-only event?

Emily: A similar answer to what I said earlier about running, but it greatly varies depending on the duration and intensity of the ride that they're going to do, and the race that they're going to do. I think what Andy said about the Tour riders, that we've seen them hitting really high carb numbers, and our cycling case studies do show that on average they’re at 87 grams per hour, so at the top the recommendations, closer to 90, compared to our running ones which sit lower and closer to 70. But again, it's the logistics that change a lot from race to race and between the disciplines. I think with cycling it's lots about these carb-rich bottles, so using Carb Only Drink Mix, or using the Flow gel as a way to get these strong and high volumes of carbs and carry that with you, and not have the faff of opening wrappers and bits and pieces like that.

Andy: Yeah, I would echo, just sort of emphasize that I think the biggest difference we see is the use of liquid carbs really overall, because of the nature of cycling. Cyclists expect to get a lot of their calories from their bottles, and they get to a high volume of fluids. So we were amazed with how many bottles of Carb Only Drink Mix some of the Lotto riders were crushing the single stage of the Tour, and I think that's because cycling is very stochastic and unpredictable. There can be sprinting – if the race is fast, the chances of getting a gel out of your pocket and having time to take your hand off your handlebars and do that, whereas getting a bottle and taking a mouthful of drink is a lot easier. So we'd have expected, I think, more of a shift towards gels and bars for their energy, when we're seeing them take it a lot in terms of liquid carbs.

Yeah, it is interesting. And I imagine just for our listeners, I do know we have some folks that do things like mountain bike events, and cyclocross events, and crit-style racing where it is unpredictable like you're talking about. So maybe they need to trend towards getting their carbohydrate, getting their fluids in through the fluids. And maybe some of us that do those century rides where we're riding a hundred miles just for fun on a weekend with some friends, and we're not so worried about our time, we can probably enjoy the bars and enjoy the gels and not be in a hurry there. That's interesting to hear as you're talking about those learnings. So the next category for our folks, you mentioned earlier at the top of the show that there are swim-run events. I know, Andy, you're a big fan of doing swim-run races. There are some swim-only events. They're not as common, but there are some swim-only events. I think it becomes very difficult to fuel during a swim-only event. What are you seeing from your swim-run athletes or swim-only athletes in terms of what they should do for fueling?

Andy: Yeah, the interesting thing about swim-run and swim-only is the level of self-sufficiency that's often required. I suppose if we start with swim-run, I've done a lot of that, and typically those races will put you out in the wilds with very limited access to aid stations, so you’ve got to get creative about what you're carrying. So figuring out how to get enough gels and things inside your wetsuit, or we wear these kangaroo-pouch kind of vests that go underneath, which have pockets in the front so you can unzip the front zip and access those. It's amazing how much you have to be prepared to carry if you want to fuel properly, because you might do a nine-hour race, which has only got like four or five aid stations in it or something like that. You probably also have to carry a soft flask or drinking vessel, because a lot of these events are very eco-conscious, which is a good thing, but it means they don't give you cups, so you have to carry your drinking vessel. Then you have to be very strategic about how much you drink and when, and that sort of thing. With open-water swimming, I suppose that you could put into two distinct camps. We've worked with athletes that are doing these 10,000-meter, 10K, or big ocean swims which are unsupported. So they're kind of mass-start, and there just is no aid station. They sometimes have sort of special needs aid stations, where you can put something like a bottle or a bag or gel, and you have to swim across to a pontoon and find it and grab it and eat it. But a lot of the time the athletes don't bother with those, so we've heard stories of people putting gels in their swim trunks, in their wetsuit and that. But all of that is quite tricky and logistically challenging, so I think it's probably fair to say a lot of the time we see swimmers fueling sub-optimally. Not necessarily because they're not aware of the numbers they need to be hitting, but because it's practically difficult. Then you've got the other category of long-distance swimmers that we work with, who are the ones who are doing the kind of channel crossings or ocean crossings, who will have a support boat.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andy: They're not allowed to touch the boat, and they're allowed to have people feed them, but they have to do it all hands-free. So they'll either throw a bottle into the water, or they'll hold them a cup on a stick, which the swimmer has to take. We've just started conversations with a guy called Andy Donaldson, who's worth having a look for on Instagram and on Google, because Andy just broke an incredible world record for swimming the seven major channel crossings in the world within one year, and breaking the record for a number of them. He got in touch because he used our gel. We didn't know about this, but he used our gels as part of his fueling strategy for those.

Andrew: Wow, cool.

Andy: And it's been insanely insightful, just starting to chat with him recently about how he orchestrates it. There's a video on his Instagram, actually, of how he takes a feed bottle. So a lot of the time, he’ll dilute some of our gels into water, so they’re super consumable.  We actually think he’dl get on really well with the Flow Gel, but he’s had no chance to try it yet. But just learning that it's a lot about the logistics, but this has stimulated loads of conversation in our office, because we were talking about recommendations for swimmers, and maybe we need to be real that you're not going to hit 90 grams an hour when we're swimming. But he makes it a priority to hit 100 grams an hour, is what I'm learning. So actually, he said overcoming the logistical hurdle of getting 100 grams an hour in is worth it for these really long swims, because of the performance benefits that it brings. We're only getting started on that kind of extreme open-water swimming journey, but we're quite excited about it.

Andrew: So what I'm gathering, whether it's swim, bike, run, or triathlon, all three is – I think I anticipated this conversation being more about the certain numbers we should be hitting in each sport, and the numbers aren't dramatically different. It's just the longer you go, the more you need; the shorter you go, the less you need; and when you do triathlon, the three disciplines as opposed to a single discipline, you need more by default just because your body's doing more. So going from triathlon to a single sport, you're dropping down a little bit, but not a ton. And a lot of this conversation has been about the logistics of getting those feedings, because the logistics change from sport to sport to sport. Because sometimes you're supported, sometimes you're not, sometimes there's aid stations, sometimes there aren't. So very insightful conversation across swim, bike, and run, and I hope our people have really taken a lot away from what you've learned from the case studies and the athletes you've worked with.

I do have two questions left, and the next one gets us out of endurance sports and perhaps into adventuring and “sports” sports. Because chances are, if you are a triathlete, if you are running and swimming and biking, you're probably attracted to other outdoor activities. You're probably attracted to playing some team sports or some solo sports that require fueling and hydrating. Some folks do things like hiking, some folks like to climb, some folks like to ski and kayak. Some people play in adult leagues for basketball, soccer, tennis, and some people are super-addicted to the latest craze of pickleball. So when our triathlon audience finds themselves playing pickleball, or going for a hike, or going on some kayaking adventure with some friends, playing some pickup basketball for a couple of hours down at the gym, how should we properly fuel and hydrate all these different types of endeavors that aren't necessarily endurance sports, but need to be fueled and hydrated for?

Emily: Yeah, you nailed it a minute ago, Andrew. I think lots of the recommendations go across between the disciplines. The kind of overall headline numbers transfer, it just depends on the duration and intensity of what you’re doing. But the main thing is how you do that, and the logistics around how you fuel and hydrate for your specific event that you're doing, or the game that you're playing. Something like pickleball, where you might be playing a few times if you're playing like a tournament, it might be about how you rehydrate. You start optimally hydrated, and how you refuel between different matches and bits and pieces like that, there's different factors that come into play. With the shorter events, with games, football, it's about going in well-hydrated, going in well-fueled, like you would with your triathlon, but it might be that you take on much less during, and you just keep yourself well-hydrated and well-fueled throughout whatever kind of game or event that you're doing.

Andrew: Yep, super interesting. Andy, anything to add there as an adventurous spirit yourself? I know you get in the great outdoors and do a variety of things yourself. What do you find yourself doing whenever you're just going for an adventure with the lads?

Andy: Well, you and I can agree on one thing, Andrew, it's the PF&H chews are pretty good for snacking.

Andrew: Mmm, yeah!

Andy: I've always got a pocket full of those, and I’ve found it's especially useful. When I was in Spain last week with my kids, I took them on a bit of a hike. I called it a mountain climb, that was probably over-stating the hill that we climbed up. But we climbed up this hill, and we did it first thing in the morning before breakfast, and luckily I had my pocket full of PF&H chews to keep everyone's blood sugar levels, at the point we could all stay friends. So my main thing on those is that they're always a bit lower intensity. Clearly if I'm just going for a hike or whatever, I’ve not got as robust a plan as I would with a marathon, but I always make sure I've got what I need with me, and usually that's a pocket full of sports nutrition. It’s pretty convenient, even if you forgot it there from a week ago. It's not going to go out of date, and it's going to be usable. So yeah, keep your snacks on hand, and eat before you get hangry. That's usually my best advice.

Andrew: You know Andy, I think us as triathletes can take everything so gosh darn seriously, that I think it's good for our people to hear from a fueling and hydrating professional, “Hey, if you're going to just do something that's an adventure with the family, an adventure with some friends, play some pickup basketball or whatever – yeah, take some snacks, make sure you don't get hangry, but you don't have to overthink, over-analyze, over-prepare for everything in your life.” If you're going to do a proper Grand Canyon in-and-out climb, or go scale a mountain or something, think it through. But there's some things that, just make sure some snacks are on hand and you'll be fine.

Andy: Yeah, take the pressure off and make it about the experience and not bog it down in the detail.

Andrew: Yeah. So last question for today, I already alluded a couple of times to how fun it is to see on the PF&H social media channels, and on your YouTube channel, you do a good job of highlighting some of the more interesting or noteworthy case studies that go out. Particularly after huge events like Nice or Kona, you're highlighting how some of those pro athletes fueled during those endeavors. When the PF&H team goes and does a race together, you'll show some of the numbers of how some of the guys and gals fueled those swim-run events or whatever the team went out and did. It's very interesting, and again I hope our people go to the website and fire up some of the case studies and see some of the really cool work that Emily and the team is doing, because they are really cool. Everybody wants to go and see how Leon fueled Nice, how the big athletes fueled the big events. It's cool to go see that, and learn from that, and see what they did. But also, our numbers are our numbers and their numbers are their numbers, so I shouldn't be trying to do what Leon did. I can look at what Leon did, but I shouldn't try to replicate it for myself. So what would you say to our athletes as they go look at some of the case studies, as they see the posts on social media summarizing what a certain pro did here or there? How can we look at these case studies and learn from them, have some takeaways that maybe we can apply to what we're doing, while also keeping what we're doing what we should be doing for us and hitting our own numbers, if that makes sense? That's a convoluted question, but I hope you get the point.

Emily: Yeah, it makes sense. I think it's a great question. And although the majority of our cases are kind of elite top-level successful races, I think there are lots of key takeaways, one of them being the headline numbers. See the actual headline numbers, what people are achieving, and a key part of that, how they're actually hitting those numbers. I think that's one of the main questions we get asked, and our customer service team gets asked a lot is how athletes are actually carrying that amount of fuel or the hydration that they need, and you can see that in the case studies. And from that, you can use the whole database, you can look and find cases that are similar events to what you're doing, or similar athletes to you – similar losses, sweat losses – and take inspiration. They're not, as you said, so much to be copied, but take inspiration from the strategy that they used, and from that, go away and do a similar process to what I do day-to-day, and analyze your own intake. Find out your headline numbers, what you've been hitting in training and races previously, and see if you can use the case studies to help refine your strategy and use that process yourself.

Andy: I would add to that, there's nothing to stop you doing case studies on yourself. That's how we started out, is I look back at my own athletic career, and I go back through my old training diaries. Very rarely would I ever record what I ate and drank in key training sessions and stuff. If I've got a debrief I've written for myself on an IRONMAN back in the day, it would include that stuff, but it wasn't in a lot of detail, and it never felt like that was an area that I made huge progress on over time by learning from some of those mistakes. The hydration piece was more like that for me, because that was so bad it was catastrophic. But I didn't really involve my fueling, because I didn't record it and I didn't iterate it, So I think, to use Emily's phrase, take inspiration from the case studies, not just from the numbers that are in them, but from the process that's gone through. If you can do that, or do that to a level that you're confident with on your own performances, then there's a huge amount to be gained from that.

Andrew: Leave us with this today. From the case studies you've done this calendar year – at the time we're recording and posting this podcast, it is the end of 2023. I think I asked this question last time when we talked about the case studies specifically, but what is one case study that you would tell our audience, “Hey, this is just one that I found especially interesting from this calendar year,” that can be the first one our folks go fire up and go watch after listening to this episode? We'll do Andy and then Emily, and then we'll call it a day. Andy, what do you think?

Andy: I would say it's sort of one/two. I would say go and look at the two that we've got from the stage of the Tour de France where we've got Maxim Van Gils and Victor Campenaerts. Maxim finished second on the stage of the Tour de France that finished at the Grand Colombier, and Victor finished solidly. It was a big day out for both of them. For me, if you want to get a true insight on what it takes to ride up the front of the pack and off the front of the pack in the Tour de France, then you'll get all the detail you want there. And that's not something that's commonly available, so that'll be my top tip.

Andrew: That sounds very interesting, great perspective there. Andy, I'll tell you this, while we were watching the Tour de France, my wife asked me one day, “Hey, what team are we rooting for? Are we rooting for anybody?” And I was like, “Yeah, we're rooting for this.” I showed her the jersey of the team. I said, “We're rooting for that color jersey, because they're riding with PF&H as their fueling source.” And she was on board, we rooted for them the whole tour. Emily, what is this answer for you?

Emily: It's a tough one, there are so many. But personally, I'd say Leon in Nice, his case study. Because I've worked with him for over two years now, and for me to see the progress in all his numbers and the refinement of his strategy was great, and to have that case study and the numbers and everything to show the progress over the last two years. And we can compare the stats, like Andy discussed earlier, from where we first worked with him at IRONMAN Bolton two years ago, to Nice and see the progress that he's made. So I'd go with that one.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Vanessa Ronksley: It's cooldown time! And I'm Vanessa, your Average Triathlete with Elite-Level Enthusiasm! Joining me today with a Coach Cooldown Tip is Mike Rucker. Mike has an incredible background as a veteran of the US Army and National Security Agency. He currently works as a federal sales director in the national security field, and we can definitely say that he is very successful at everything he does. Mike is an All American NCAA Div-1 swimmer, Kona qualifier, and a member of the US Army World Class Athlete Program. He has been coaching triathlon since 1996, and has been with TriDot since 2018. Mike loves coaching beginners and elite athletes, and enjoys establishing the fundamentals with them, and then optimizing their performance. Welcome to the cooldown, Mike!

Mike Rucker: Hey, how are you doing today? It's a great day to be alive, great day to be a TriDot athlete.

Vanessa: Oh, it sure is! It is such a wonderful day. It's a little bit chilly here, I had my scarf completely wrapped around my neck and my puffy jacket on. But the sun is shining, so I don't think you can ask for anything more than that.

Mike: Certainly.

Vanessa: I have very fond memories of my dad breaking out the banjo and having family sing-alongs in our basement around the campfire, and I hear that you used to build, repair, and even play the banjo with your Uncle June.

Mike: I did.

Vanessa: Yeah, do you still play?

Mike: Rarely. I no longer have an actual instrument, which I need to acquire again. Actually my son-in-law does, maybe I'll just borrow it. But yeah, so Uncle June, his name was actually Walter Flannery. World War II veteran, had one lung left, and that was his kind of hobby/craft. So I used to hang out with him after my grandfather died, and I would watch him shake the wood, and then actually use the leather skins, and scrape those down and get them very thin, and stretch those over the metal frame of the banjos and tighten them up, and then actually shape the neck and get that to the right shape to be able to tune and hit the right notes. Then do the cross and the strings, and then how to tune that, and how to pick. So I'm not a five-finger picker, I'm just two-finger, just the basic stuff like Foggy Mountain Breakdown and some of those. But I used to listen to a lot of bluegrass music, go to a lot of festivals. Even in college there were a lot of people that we would just have impromptu jam sessions there in somebody’s basement. Somebody would play a banjo, somebody would play a violin, somebody would play a guitar, or stuff like that.

Vanessa: What a wonderful way to spend time with other people, doing something like making music and building things.  It’s so wonderful.

Mike: Yeah, that's a talent I need to get back into and get back into practice.

Vanessa: Yeah, absolutely! So switching gears completely, we're going back to triathlon, what tip do you have for us today and our listeners?

Mike: My tip today focuses on open-water swimming. Statistics bear me out on that, where it's around 70% of triathletes out there, their most uncomfortable discipline is the swim. So we have TriDot Pool School that helps overcome basic technique stuff, but unless it's in a pool, sprint-type of triathlon, most swims are going to be open water sessions. So there are no walls, there are no lane lines, navigation is above water, so you have to accommodate sighting and so on. But mostly it's just getting comfortable with actually entering that water. Your visibility isn't as good as a nice clean, clear pool, especially in a lake or some of the places down south here where the water's got a lot of organic tannins in it and it's like swimming in tea. So visibility is very limited with that, then you really have to focus on being able to sight, and breathe, and navigate, and all that. So we had a triathlete recently, in the I AM TriDot Facebook group, that posted about how he'd been to Pool School, he had great technique and all that, but the thing that terrified him most was an open-water swim, and that alone would prevent him from that. So we slowly got him matched up with local groups, and even some TriDot athletes there, that he could swim with and practice. And really, that's what it comes down to, is we prescribe the swim sessions to help build and develop, but then almost all the coaches say, every single time, “Get as much open-water swim practice as you can.” Because what I've seen is, people can hit consistently great times in the pool, but then they get in open water, and they suddenly slow down 10% to sometimes 50%, because the level of comfort that is not there, their breathing is way off, they can't see anything or their goggles get jostled or fogged up, and so on.

Vanessa: All sounds familiar.

Mike: I think a previous tip is to stop, get the fog out of your goggles and so on. But some of those things are things that we can help with drills in the pool on navigation. You know, every ten strokes pop your head up, take a peek, and keep going. I did a triathlon down on South Padre Island, and it was on the bay side. There's the ocean side and then the bay side, and the bay side actually had a pretty stiff current. It was around four knots, and it was a flood. So until you found that eddy, that seam to get out of that current, you were going to struggle, and several people did. So because they combined it with a sprint, you had to do two laps.

Vanessa: Oh no!

Mike: So you’ve not only got it once, you've got it twice. But then taking advantage of that type of current also is – like Escape from Alcatraz for example – then you ride that current back, on that flood back end, that that four knots adds a tremendous amount of speed. So where, for example, you're going like 2:15 per hundred out, and then you're struggling a little bit, and then suddenly you're coming back about half that speed. That's something to also get used to that you're not going to find in the lake usually. Maybe in a river, where you've got a current-assisted swim. But that's what I would recommend the most, is where you get as much open-water practice as you can. Always be safe, I always have a buoy, I always have a companion or somebody on the kayak.

Vanessa: Now with the prescribed program that TriDot gives, we have our two swims a week. How often would you suggest to your athletes to add in or to make one of those an open-water swim?  Or do you just have them add in an extra one?

Mike: Well, it kind of gets back to “it depends”. So the closer to race week, I would say add those in at least once a week, if not just plain-out substitute for a swim session. Preferably not the speed session, which is usually Fridays. But most people, when they have time and access, it's going to be on the weekend. So if you want to stick to the two prescribed sessions, and then leave room on when you have that available time to add another open-water session, it's never going to detract from your training stress, it's going to be additive. But as a coach, I like to throw those in as basically an aerobic swim. You may or may not get a score out of it, you may or may not get anything in terms of points, but in terms of benefit, you get the benefits of familiarization, improving your navigation skills, and also dealing with calming out or eliminating your anxiety.

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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