Why Your Race Pace Matters For Triathlon Nutrition

That fabled 'race pace'… Let’s talk about why it can have such a big influence in your racing performance.

Truth be told this topic a big issue I see with triathletes. They have some solid training blocks coming into a race, feeling great, pumped for their race... But come race day it all just unravels, they get stomach upset or feel like they're crashing.

A lot of the time this is actually down to nutrition and not failing to practice at the right intensities. So read on and learn how to make sure you don't run into this issue. Or swim or cycle into it.

Nutrition can contribute to poor racing performance

So we’re talking about race pace today and why it matters for your nutrition. I mentioned that scenario at the start of things going well in training but then on race day... They really don't!

Tummy upset, diarrhoea, cramps. Really not what you want when you race. But this is often down to nutrition and changes during training and racing.

So let's just give you a bit of background science so you can understand the context here.

When we have something like a gel or some sort of sports product to help fuel our exercise, we put it our mouth, we swallow it and it goes to our stomach.

It then passes through our stomach and into our intestines, and it's here that we absorb it to be used by the body. It gets absorbed through the walls of our intestines and into our blood stream to then be used by our muscles.

So that's a pretty easy to understand concept.

The issue here is when we add exercise and varying intensity to it.

As our exercise intensity increases, the blood flow to your abdominal organs reduces. This because the blood is instead being diverted to your muscles to keep them fully supplied.

This is a normal response, and imagine it like this: you're being attacked by a lion, or a tiger, or some other beasty. You need to be able to run away as fast as you can - or fight them if you're so inclined - rather than supply your gut with lots of blood to digest the food that you’ve just eaten.

And although a triathlon isn't quite the same as fighting with a terrifying beast, the stress response is the same. As you work harder, blood flow to your abdominal organs decreases.

The end result? You can't absorb as much as you could if you weren't exercising.

How does nutrition link to race pace?

So, let's go full circle... Why do triathletes commonly get tummy upset or problems when they race?

You got it! Because they haven't fully practiced their race day nutrition at race pace.

It's sooo common for triathletes to maybe test just a gel or a bar during a ride rather than their full race nutrition set up, or to practice it during an easy ride, run or brick session and think 'yep, I'm fine!'. But their overall intensity and stress level is different to what it will actually be like on race day, and actually it's likely they won't be able to absorb as much as thought.

Now you don’t have to practice a full race and do everything, but you need to make sure you give it a good go.

A brick session is a great time to practice your race nutrition, and the longer the overall session the closer it'll be to simulating a real race.

And the added bonus to all of this? You can see just how realistic your race pace is to sustain 😉

Because let's be honest we all like to think our tempo pace, race pace or ftp is higher than what it really is! 😆

So, the bottom line: practice your race nutrition using the actual products you're going to use on race day at race pace, maybe a couple of times over, to make sure you can tolerate it OK.

If you get any sort of stomach upset you can reassess things, perhaps slightly reduce how much you take on board and then go experiment again.

Fingers crossed you'll get to race day and feel super prepared from a nutrition point of view and ready to smash out a new pb!