 Over the past winter and spring we’ve been playing around with a gluten free diet: going completely gluten free for a few weeks then consuming gluten to see if it really makes a difference. The answer: Yes, but more so in some cases than in others. Turns out that Heather is quite sensitive to gluten and instantly notices basic discomfort from increased bloating, gastric distress, and diarrhea. Those symptoms indicate a lack of nutrient absorption as well and she feels more energetic on a gluten free diet. Trevor, however, isn’t that sensitive to gluten but likes to avoid it race week to limit any potential affects that it may have on his digestion.
If you have any un-explained GI issues, or even just find that you have to take bathroom breaks rather frequently during or right after long runs, it can be useful to try going gluten free. Try two weeks without gluten (you’ll be surprised how frequently it crops up), and then re-introduce pastas and breads (basically anything at all to do with wheat) in the third week. Make some notes in a food log about how you feel and see if there are any changes in your digestion when you consume gluten again. If it doesn’t bother you, then great, but if it does, you can take steps to eliminate a dietary stress to your system. Training and racing is hard on your body – the food you eat shouldn’t be!
Continue reading Gluten Free
And the winner is – Kendall. We used a random number generator on Random.org to pick one of the 20 comments. Kendall’s comment was number 14, and therefore the winner of a jug of Ultragen by First Endurance. We will send you an email directly, but please go have a look at the First Endurance website and pick your favorite flavor of Ultragen Recovery Drink.
Thank you all for sharing your favorite swim workouts. Have a look through if you ever need some new ideas in the water.
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 Want a the chance to win a FREE container of Ultragen by First Endurance? You can enter the draw with two simple steps:
Continue reading Win Ultragen by First Endurance
 We can all benefit from maintaining good eating habits on our easy, rest- days as well as through the hard training days. Don’t fall into the trap of (too often) rewarding yourself with junk food because you “deserve it”. Your body really deserves high quality nutrients, and those rest days should be packed full of nutritious food because you’ll have more time to prepare the good stuff.
Eating high quality food on rest days (lots of fruits and vegetables) will help ensure that your rest day is actually doing what it’s supposed to – repairing muscle and cell damage caused by hard training.
This is especially true after hard races. The craving for junky food is always at its highest after a race, it feels like a reward for accomplishing the task at hand. Yes you crave salt, but try getting it with a V8 instead of potato chips and fries. If you’re diligent about your food intake you can turn those race days in to your best ever training sessions. Good food first, party food later!
Continue reading Eat well on your rest days
 This winter has been the winter of a complete nutrition revamp for us (Heather and Trevor Wurtele – coauthors of all posts on the IMTT site). Some race issues that were slowly becoming a trend (in a bad way) had to be changed.
This post is not about all the factors that affect your race nutrition, just the nutrition itself. Specifically, the concentration and dilution of your carbohydrate intake. Okay, we’ll mention a couple issues first. Adequate training being the number one concern – if you haven’t done the work you will fall apart before the finish line, regardless of what you eat. Issue number 2: Pacing. Simply put, know your limits. 50% of the ‘nutrition’ issues in a race are actually pacing issues. You’ve gone too hard on the bike in order to keep up with stronger cyclists, then blow up half way through the run. There’s a reason why more men fall apart at the end of race than do women…and it’s not because woman are tougher, it’s because most are better at controlling their ego on the bike.
Continue reading Cabohydrates and Endurance Sport
 When it comes to having an occasional beer while in training, you probably are not doing yourself any harm. In fact, you could be doing yourself some good!! (as long as you are adequately hydrated). As per an article on www.allaboutbeer.com – If an “average” 12 ounce bottle of beer sported a Nutrition Facts label, this is what it would tell you:
Beer contains 150 calories.
Beer has no fat
Beer has no cholesterol
Beer is caffeine free
Beer contains no nitrate
Beer contains 1 gram of protein and 13 grams of carbohydrates
Beer contains significant amounts of magnesium, selenium, potassium, phosphorus, and biotin
Beer is chock full of the B vitamins (as anyone who has taken brewer’s yeast as a B supplement already knows), with impressive amounts of B3 (niacin), B5 (pantothenic acid), B6 (pyridoxin), and B9 (folate), with smaller amounts of B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B12 inotisol and choline.
Beer is 92 percent water
Continue reading Beer and your training
 We’ve learned this lesson for the second time recently, it’s worth paying attention to and one we won’t forget again.
Not all energy gels are created equal. 100 calories of this product, is not the same as 100 calories as that product…at least as far as your body’s ability to absorb and digest those calories is concerned. The carbohydrates are still there, but your body may reject that particular type of sugar so having more than one option could save your day. We have had much better success with carbohydrate products that have multiple types of sugar.
For example, some gels have only Long Chain Maltodextrin. Great if your body wants it, but not too helpful if it doesn’t. Other sugars to look for in gel products are; Ribose, Dextrose, Trehalose, and Fructose. Some types of sugar i.e. fructose have anecdotal evidence showing that they cause digestive upset, but everyone’s stomach seems to respond differently (especially with the stress and intensity of a race situation). We’ve had bad bonks, and bad GI issues with single sugar gels.
Continue reading Pay attention to energy gel sugar types
 An Ironman is a long day, that is for sure. Even the best are out there for at least 8hrs. Most seem to come in around 10-14, then the survival group, out there exercising for 15+ hours. It’s next to impossible to account for everything that’s going to happen on race day when you’re dealing with that amount of time. Even 8 hours is a ridiculously long training day. Here are some things to ponder.
Hunger at mile 90 of the bike, what should I do? Getting hungry at mile 90 of the bike is not a good sign, it generally means you’ve undershot your calorie intake and have some catching up to do. How are you going to do that before getting off your bike and running a marathon? Answer: slow down so your heart rate lowers and you can digest properly, take in a bunch of food and gradually get the pace back up. Ideally you would catch that problem before mile 90 as it can often be hard to eat at that point of a race.
Continue reading Think your way through it
 Today’s post is a long but Heather the science geek wanted to shed a little light on all of this antioxidant stuff that we hear about and give a bit more in-depth background to support the take home message: eating plant-based whole foods, not relying on antioxidant supplements, is paramount to your recovery and will help you soak up all those hard Ironman training sessions.
A paradox in metabolism is that while the vast majority of complex life requires oxygen for its existence, oxygen is a highly reactive molecule can damage living organisms by producing reactive oxygen species (ROSs – nasty things like the RUSs in the Princess Bride). ROSs are highly reactive ions or small molecules that have unpaired valence shell electrons. Huh? what? Basically they are just hyped up molecules that have all this energy and want to react with stuff so they grab at anything… say lipids in the membranes of your mitochondria. Enough unquenched, super excited, ROSs nipping at things and you can get cell death. Because of this, organisms contain a complex network of antioxidant metabolites and enzymes that work together to prevent oxidative damage to cellular components like DNA, proteins and lipids. Reducing agents, (I’m double-O-carotene) like Beta Carotene and vitamin C neutralize ROS’s and prevent them from causing damage – “leave that cell membrane alone, it’s me your after!”
Continue reading Exercise and oxidative stress – get your antioxidants from whole foods
Proper recovery starts as soon as your workout begins. Often we don’t maximise the quality of our training because we haven’t been thoughtful enough in planning our nutrition for the day. As a busy triathlete, having healthy energy bars (Raw Food Bars, Lara bars, VEL bars etc.), bananas, apples, trail mix… stashed away in [...]
A lot of us have grown up on peanut butter and if you love the stuff, it probably gets slathered on toast, apples, celery… as post training recovery food. As with all foods, variety is the spice of life, and it is good to mix things up so that you don’t get exposed to [...]
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