Episode 314: IRONMAN Europe’s Game-Changing Partnership With Precision Fuel & Hydration – an Inside Look With PFH’s Andy Blow
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There is some exciting news in the world of Ironman. All Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events across Europe, including the Vinfast Ironman World Championships in Nice this fall, will be supported by our friends at Precision Hydration.
Access to Precision Hydration is a big change from having Gatorade delivered on course. It is fantastic news for our athletes who are competing there.
Since the news broke, our athletes have had many questions about the specifics behind the changes and how they will impact their fueling and hydration plans.
In this week's episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon interviews Andy Blow, founder of Precision Fuel and Hydration. They discuss the recent announcement and its implications for athletes competing in these races.
Matt and Andy discuss the products that will be offered on the course. During the conversation, they detail how to develop an optimal fueling and hydration plan based on the changes and highlight the strategy to ensure you fuel your race success.
This episode offers valuable information and guidance for all athletes, ensuring you are well-prepared and make informed decisions regardless of where you race.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:54 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
04:02 - 13:33 - Coach's Corner
13:30 - 28:19 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 314: IRONMAN Europe’s Game-Changing Partnership With Precision Fuel & Hydration – an Inside Look With PFH’s Andy Blow
28:21 - 30:16 - Purple Patch Squad Information
30:18 - 50:18 - Andy Blow Cont.
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
Hi. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:24
Today's show is brought to you by InsideTracker. Now, InsideTracker is a tool that I use, as well as many Purple Patch athletes use, to leverage insights from taking a look inside assessing biometrics via blood work to get some really precise focus on where we should put our energy to yield not just sporting results but also to develop and improve the areas that are going to improve our performance across life as well as the quality of our life and even longevity over the years ahead. There are many key aspects of all components that yield better performance gains, and the results are trackable. By reassessing, you can see some quantifiable insights into whether your energy yields a return on investment. And that's what I love. I should also point out that InsideTracker has a fantastic app that integrates with tools such as Aura Ring so that you can have a one-stop shop. And I even know that they've got a sneaky app development coming up soon, in which it's going to yield and draw insights on a week-to-week basis on whether the efforts and energy that you put around what you're eating, how you're sleeping, and how you're exercising aggregate into whether you're improving your daily performance and your future self or whether your actions have a negative impact. Some really powerful stuff, all of it peer-reviewed by some really smart folks involved in the program. And you can get involved too. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete; all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and use this code. Purple Patch Pro 20 You can get 20% off everything at the store. Alright, enjoy today's show. It's a cracker.
Matt Dixon 02:15
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and folks, we've got a cracker this week. It's a pop-up episode. This week, we noticed some really exciting news in the Iron Man world. And that's the fact that all Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events that are happening across Europe, including the Vinfast Ironman World Championships in Nice this fall, are all going to be supported by our friends at Precision Hydration. That is a seismic change from having Gatorade delivered on course to now having access to precision hydration. It's wonderful news for our athletes who are racing over there, and I'm sure you might agree as well. So our athletes, since this news broke, have had a ton of questions about some of the houses where this is going to occur and what it means for their fueling and hydration plans. So I reached out and asked Andy Blow, the founder of Precision Fuel and Hydration, to join me for a discussion. The purpose of today's episode is both informative and educational. So this is very important. I wanted to ask Andy: what and how is precision going to show up on course? What can we expect? Are we going to be delivered tablets, powders, or premix bottles? Are we going to get gels? Are we going to get chews? Other components like that. I also asked Andy to get a little bit deeper, go beyond precision, and give some of his recommendations on how to develop, step by step, the optimal fueling and hydration plan now that this is a reality. The episode is packed with everything you need to know, and I'm sure it's going to be helpful in your racing. Before we get into the meat and potatoes, why don't we quickly go through Coach's Corner?
Matt Dixon 04:02
Yes, folks, Coach's Corner. So we always like to do this now, as we've reformatted his show a little bit. I'm going to give you some insights and perspective, and I'm going to try and keep this a little bit shorter. But I do want to give you a glimpse behind the curtain of some of the thinking that we're doing as a coaching team right now, about how we're prescribing and building training sessions, as well as some of the supporting education. Now, as you captured at this show, we're moving into early-season racing; the weather is warming up, and we've got a lot of racing ahead of us. We've also got a little bit of fatigue creep coming because we're starting to turn up the volume on the training intensity a little bit as well. And so, with that in mind, what's on our minds? Well, last week, we went through some of the physiological aspects of how we're structuring the training from the stimulus side. Next week, I'm going to go into some of the education and how we're supporting athletes in cases or areas around self-management, some on the nutritional aspects, and stuff like that. This week, I want to talk a little bit about workout design that goes beyond physiology. So what we're focusing on is that there's a big shift at this time of the season. When we think about this, our emphasis right now and how we build these training sessions have started to evolve. There are a few main focus points that we build into almost all of the training sessions. And then, in addition to the actual integration into the training, we reinforce this with the discussions in our private community and some of the feedback and questions that we get, as well as insight on the live and on-demand video coaching that we do. So that creates the combination where we're trying to empower athletes, make them smarter, but also develop not just their physiological readiness but their race craft to yield a return on their efforts. So the first thing around the main point of this is race skills. At this time of the year, and we've started to integrate this over the last three to four weeks, we're actively building skills associated with racing faster into the training sessions. So what does this look like? Well, a lot of the swim workouts right now have got sighting, both in terms of upskilling and in terms of really trying to dial in the mechanics, as well as some of the postural readiness to be able to do it consistently. So let's just arbitrarily say imagine if I said go 10 one hundred at a threshold effort, we'll now start to integrate where a lot of those hundreds will include sighting in a swimming pool, three times every lap, developing the skill so it becomes a part of your swim stroke, and ensuring there isn't too much of a delta between swim speed with and swim speed without sighting. So that's a hugely valuable component, because we understand from last week's episode, when we talked about swim speed, that we want to have the skill reinforced and we want to be able to swim in a straight line so that we get this best speed return. So a lot of the training sessions are integrated into that really, really valuable, really important. We also do a little bit of self-awareness with pacing development, not just by using your flashy new goggles with timing but by developing the inner animal so that we can get the best speed return for a longer distance effort, as well as get a sense of awareness so that we can have athletes taking out speed without absolutely blowing up. So a lot of components there. And that's just one example. I'll give you one more while I'm here. What about on the bike ride? Well, we've had a lot of focus, but we're building the training sessions right now around three core elements. Number one, of course, is physiological stimulus; do we want it to be a threshold workout or do we want it to be an endurance ride? That, of course, is the baseline foundation of it. In addition, we're integrating two other main elements. Number one is terrain management. So we are trying to help athletes develop their craft of getting the best speed return relative to their efforts. And it's right in the construction of the training session. So we leverage the Velocity platform that simulates outdoor terrain, including how you build into little rampers and rollers coming up hills and how you crest over the top. And it is an incredibly real world. So that enables us to help athletes get faster relative to whatever power they're able to output. And that's valuable. And then the third element is self-awareness and pacing into that. And that becomes important. How do you learn pacing? What approach works for you best? The third big element that I'll just highlight today on Coach's Corner is a shift in our focus on strength training. So we focus a lot on athlete development, speed, return, and coordination. If you've been consistent in strength over the last few months, you've done a lot on joint health; you've done a lot on pure strength. Now what we want to do is convert that potential into speed. And then we also want to have a parallel focus on tissue health because the training load is going up. So injury risk is increasing. So therefore, we start to think about injury prevention and strength. But more importantly to that, for me, is getting a return on the input of strength to help you get faster and better resilience so that you can race faster. And so that starts to become a shifting focus. This is the point where we see a lot of athletes dropping off of integrated strength training. So we double down right now. We bring it back in video-based sessions so that athletes can be successful. So how does this all relate to these components of what we're doing at Purple Patch? What are the key takeaways that you can draw for your journey if you're not coached by Purple Patch? Well, number one: don't just chase fitness. I want you to chase race readiness and skill development. If you think about building your structure for your training plan and there's a whole focus on physiology—easy days, longer days, faster days, stronger days—whatever it might be, that's important. But realize that you're going to get the best returns by also developing a strong sense of self-management and pacing and also yielding skill acquisition, whether it's sighting, whether it's learning your efforts going uphill in running, carrying speed downhill, or terrain management on the bike—this is the stuff that is the absolute amplifier on your speed returns, no matter how fit you get. That's where the big yield is. So you want to be thinking about these components. Of course, we can help you. But if you're going alone, that's what I told you to cement in your mind. On the strength training, well, if you committed to strength in the offseason, that's great. But please, please, please don't turn away from it. Now. Don't turn your back. Because I believe this is the moment just before an inter-race season, this is when the benefits begin to emerge. But they're only going to emerge if you stay on it. So it's a good time to have a recommitment to strength to double down and say the rest of this year I'm going on the journey. If you do that, you're going to reap the benefits, and even more so, you're going to get to the next offseason at the end of this year primed to take it up another level. Because at the end of the season, you don't go back to square one. You keep building, keep building; unless you stop right now and forget about it, then you are right back in the basement. The elevator goes up and improves, but if you turn it off, it goes right back to ground level. Alrighty, guys. So with that, that's a glimpse into a show. We're not going to do anything else around this episode, apart from one thing: remember the webinar. We have a fantastic webinar coming up on May 17; it's 9 a.m. Pacific; it's open to all our listeners; you can come and join us; it's free. This is version 2.0 of the most popular webinar that we've ever done. It's about success in an Ironman and a half Ironman, by the way, on a hard and hilly course. There's a lot of personality out there as far as terrain, and we give you all of the insights, no matter how fit you get, on how to best distribute your effort across a hard and hilly course to ensure that you're successful across all three disciplines. And so we're going to be talking about some of the insights that I've learned, some of the skills and actions that you can take so that you can manage your pacing, so that you know how to navigate the uphills, how you can get speed return on the downhills, and how you can distribute your resources throughout a race. It's pretty in-depth. It has a thorough Q&A associated with it as well, so that becomes a really important component because you can dive in deep to get the education and my wisdom, but you can also ask me any questions that you have. It's going to take about an hour all in; it's complimentary. You can attend live, and if you're unable to attend live, then feel free to sign up anyway because we will send you the recording, including the thorough Q&A session, and there's nothing like learning from others’ questions as well. So I hope that helps. I'll leave that link in the show notes. You can also reach out to us for anything at info@PurplePatchFitness.com. But without that, it's one for the triathletes this week. Let's dig into the show with Andy Blow, founder and CEO of Precision Fuel and Hydration. It's a cracker. You'll enjoy it. Barry, It's time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 13:30
All right, it is the meat and potatoes, and goodness me, we've got a positive emergency edition here. Andy blows Precision Fuel and Hydration; welcome to the show once again, I should say.
Andy Blow 13:44
Thanks Matt. It's good to be back again. This time from the other side of the pond, so we found a time that works for us both.
Matt Dixon 13:50
There you go. Yeah, we're—well, I'm drinking my morning tea, and you're drinking your afternoon beer, so it sounds like it's perfect across all fronts. We wanted to put this together, and it means throwing the show together over the last 24 hours, because of the really exciting news that, throughout the rest of this year, precision fuel and hydration will be the on-course hydration facilitator for all Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events through Europe, including the Vinfast Ironman World Championships in Nice this coming year, which is, firstly, congratulations. What a great addition to all of the races there! You must be excited.
Andy Blow 14:37
Yeah, yeah, we are Matt. I say this unreservedly in that the office is buzzing that we've managed to pull this one off because, like you, I've been involved in the sport of triathlon for several decades now. And you know, through thick and thin, for better or worse, Ironman has been the brand that inspired me the most wholeheartedly. You know, I've got VHS tapes of Dave Scott and Mark Allen running down Ali‘i Drive together that are virtually worn out because of how much I used to watch them. It was my main aim in triathlon in the late 90s and early 2000s to get myself a ticket for Kona, which I managed to do in the end. And, you know, so, and that was actually, maybe not especially poetically, but it was 20 years ago that I did Kona in 2004. And to think that if you'd told me then that 20 years later, we'd be a brand partner of Ironman, I wouldn't; I probably wouldn't have believed you.
Matt Dixon 15:40
Well, I'm going to ask you how it came about, but I want to give some context first for the listeners, because you guys, I think, are in your 13th year of business. Is that right?
Andy Blow 15:50
We are Yeah, 2011 was when we started.
Matt Dixon 15:52
2011. So for 13 years, and when I think about yourself, as a leader, of the organization, but also just the broader precision fuel and hydration company that you are, for the last 13 years, you've been wholly dedicated to not just developing products that are going to help athletes, but also boots on ground, helping athletes, individually and collectively through education. I think you've become, and most people agree that this is one of the leading hydration resources as an organization in the world. And I know it's a huge passion of yours, and we've had you on the show; we've talked about it so many times. But I think what the athletes are getting out of this is not just a product off the shelf that's been thrown together, and you throw in some money, a sponsorship, etc. But for me as a coach, this is just a wonderful step for the athletes. And I want to unpack that. So I guess I guess first just a summary, how did it all, how did all this come about? It's out; it's a little bit out of the blue for me; let's call it this. So how did you...
Andy Blow 17:01
It's a bit out of the blue for us to be honest with you, Matt. You know, we didn't get out of bed on the first of January this year and think we're doing a deal with Ironman this year. We've seen the value in—you know, a lot of our customers or our Ironman athletes or triathletes in general—and although we spread across a lot of sports, we've kind of gotten that triathlon DNA from my background. And that's always meant that a high proportion of athletes are doing swim-bike runs. We've regularly turned up at Ironman events, either in an official or unofficial capacity in the past, so we've often bought Expo space at Ironman events and exhibited and had a good response. And we went to the Nice World Championships last year because it was on our doorstep. And we wanted to be there and support our athletes and caused a minor kerfuffle, I suppose in some ways, because although we were doing everything, you know, with that was that was that we could rightfully do, you know, just by promoting our brand, it ruffled the feathers of Ironman. I think because we weren't an official sponsor and we would do it, we were quite loud. And we were very there, shall we say, from a promotional perspective. And I think that we were probably already, if you like, on IRONMAN's radar, but that cemented us as an up-and-coming brand, I suppose, in their eyes. And it was quite flattering to get a call a few weeks ago, when, for whatever logistical reasons, Ironman needed some assistance in Europe with finding a partner to provide hydration products. Providing hydration products for several 10s or even 100,000 athletes over 40 races in a short space of time is quite a logistical challenge. And the first thing I did when I sort of got the call was to say to Sam and Johnny, who, you know, run our operational and logistical side of the business, and sort of said, well, you know, just hypothetically, guys, if we needed to supply X amount of hydration tablets for Y amount of athletes over Z amount of months, could we do that, you know, effectively, and when they came back and sort of said, well, actually, we think we could, it opened the door to them talking seriously to Ironman and saying yeah, we think we can fulfill the logistical needs for this operation. So, okay, what is it? What does it look like for us to do this, then, to Ironman's credit and the credit of our team, everyone got their heads together very quickly, there was a lot of problem-solving, and we managed to pull something together in literally a few weeks? That means that yeah, now we're providing the hydration across the season for the rest of 2024.
Matt Dixon 19:35
Well, what we want to do is provide some really useful recommendations and advice. Here's the landscape of these Ironman and half-ironman races. Here's what's on course: let's answer some questions around what it means as far as the hydration side, but also some first steps in how people can start to build their action plan to fuel and hydrate their journey effectively, and so that's the crux of our conversation here. To kickstart that, I think we should go through some of the logistical side, and I'm sure there are questions. When I first heard it, I thought, What are you going to do? You're going to give everyone a tube of tablets to give out if they're going to have to pick up a tablet and throw it in their torpedo. So, first, what's it going to look like? I know it's based around the fact that your orange tablets have 1000 milligrams, but just give the listeners some insight into what this is going to look like, practically, how you're going to deliver it, what you're offering, et cetera.
Andy Blow 20:37
Yeah, so the product that we're supplying, you're right, is the orange-colored, not orange-flavored, it's a citrus flavor, but orange-colored tablet pack that we do, PH 1000, which has 1000 milligrams of sodium per liter and is a low-calorie, like virtually zero-carb product, which we can get to in a minute. So it's for hydration purposes because we're the hydration partner. And that product is not going to be available in tablet form. Because tablet form is not much used to when you're racing, you need a drink. So it's going to be mixed, at the right concentration, into barrels. And then that's going to be decanted into bite bottles on the bike. So as a competitor, you'll be handed bottles as you normally would from an aid station that fit in your bottle cage. And so you can pick up bottles of pH 1000 during the bike ride, as well as water and, I believe, cola as well. And then you'll also be able to have water, pH 1000, and cola in cups on the run. So all premixed products are so easy to access, basically when you're on the course.
Matt Dixon 21:40
So the easy way to think about it is to summarize: on the bike, water bottles that fit on your bike—that's always a question that I get—that is the effective replacement of the prior drink, Gatorade, and we'll get to the calories in a second, but that's it, and then on the run, rather than grabbing a sort of paper cup of Gatorade, it will be the 1000 milligram solution mixed correctly already that you can just drink on course period.
Andy Blow 22:08
Yeah, that's what I say exactly.
Matt Dixon 22:10
Okay. And then the calories that we'll get in a second on the course. Those are Maurten gels and bars, fruit, salty chips, and all of that stuff. And we'll talk about that when we get to the action plan. Okay, super. So then the next thing to unpack, which of course is the deviation that we have here, is this drink, unlike Gatorade, which has quite a lot of calories, so in prior years some people would have relied on Gatorade as a source of hydration as well as a source of caloric replenishment; this precision hydration is effectively water and electrolytes only with no, or very, very low, calories. And so, can you go through a little bit of the potential benefit to athletes from that and some of the ramifications?
Andy Blow 23:05
Yeah, definitely. And that is a big change for a lot of people to get their heads around, and I completely understand that, but when you're racing, as you know, we talk about this all the time, there's three levers you need to pull nutritionally: fluid, sodium, and carbohydrates. You can get all of those three things from traditional sports drinks like Gatorade, which usually has about five to 7% carbohydrate and around 500 milligrams of sodium per liter. They can be good, and they are a really good product, normally for short-distance events when you want everything in one bottle and you just need primarily carbs but a little bit of fluid and a little bit of sodium. They work wonders on that. When you get into the longer races, I've always been my preferred route if you like. The reason we came up with the pH line of low-calorie tablets to start with was that separating your hydration intake, your fluid and sodium intake, from your calories brings numerous advantages over the long distance. For example, on a very, very hot day, you need to drink more than you do on a cold day because you're sweating more. If you're getting most of your calories from your drink and you drink twice as much or three times as much as we sometimes see between the coldest and the hottest events, you don't need three times more calories, so you'll be overloading on calories or underdoing the calories at either extreme. There's only that kind of Goldilocks point in the middle if you're using an all-in-one drink. So by having a low-calorie or zero-to-near-zero-calorie electrolyte replacement drink as the primary drink that enables you to control those two levers together, fluid and sodium, you can make sure that you can get adequately hydrated, and then you can worry about getting your calorie numbers in separately, usually via bars or gels. Maybe in some people's cases, the more sophisticated athletes might use a bottle of gel or a bottle of very, very strong premix carbohydrate drink that they'd take on the bike with them from the start. But basically, you're sort of separating those two. And I think that there's a—while there are other ways to skin a cat, when it comes to your race nutrition, we do know athletes who do races entirely on liquid calories and that kind of thing. It's a higher-risk strategy. The safe way is to get fluid and electrolytes, right, and get your carbs in separately. So, I think getting people to, you know, people to get their heads around that and understand what they can get from these different products is important.
Matt Dixon 25:35
It's a little bit of a forced change. Change is always difficult for people, but it's a forced change to think about their fuel and hydration a little bit more strategically. And as a coach, you sort of everyone's going to have their preset, hopefully tested and practiced before in their training. But they're their preset caloric consumption, and I'm going to come back and sort of re-explain it through my coaches lens, or represent this in grams per hour of carbohydrate, but someone might be taking in 60 grams per hour, 80 grams per hour, 100 grams at the high end, 120 at the end, whatever their appropriate caloric intake is, and that stays constant, and then what you're saying there is relative to conditions and needs, you can throttle forward and back and respond on day, your hydration, and your electrolytes as well. So it creates that open-door flexibility sort of thing on that side.
Andy Blow 26:33
That's exactly it. And then the other question that we've been getting a lot of is we do PH 500. We do PH 1000. We do PH 1500. Because within the hydration vertical, different people often respond better to different amounts of electrolytes. So 1000 milligrams per liter, which is what's in the on-course drink, is relatively strong; that's about twice the sodium strength of the standard Gatorade; it's a little bit stronger than a Gatorade endurance, which is about 800, just over 800 milligrams of sodium per liter. And we've had people who have been saying to us, Well, what if I'm not a salty sweater, I'm not a big sweater, and I don't need a lot of sodium? And the answer to that would be that water is being given out on course as well. So you would take less frequent bottles of pH 1000 and more frequent bottles of water for your hydration. And then, on the flip side, the question I would be asking as an athlete is: I'm a very heavy, salty sweater; you know, I'm losing well over 1500 milligrams per liter; I need more than 1000 per liter, on average, to get me through a hot iron man in good shape. And the answer to that is that things like we do an electrolyte capsule, lots of other brands do as well. Knowing what you've got in your electrolyte capsules and taking additional ones to sort of fortify alongside the pH 1000 is the way to increase your intake. So that flexibility to fine-tune your hydration intake still exists. And, from the data that we've gotten, you'll know this: from the sweat testing that you guys have done at Purple Patch, the average sweat sodium loss in athletes is between 900 and 1000 milligrams per liter. So hence, we picked the pH 1000 as like the one on course drink because it does hit the middle of the bell curve quite nicely.
Matt Dixon 28:21
Let's take a quick break. And let's talk about Purple Patch coaching or the Purple Patch tri squad. You know what we do? We help athletes like you get faster. In the process, we refuse to compromise on the other key components of your life. We work with you to try and improve performance not just in sports but across life. So how do we do that? Well, first, we deliver a training program that truly integrates into your life. It's so flexible that it works with all the fluctuating demands of life. We also support that with incredibly comprehensive education across every aspect of performance, filtering out the complexity and the contradiction to get you into actions that are simple, effective, and actionable. Whether it's around race fueling, nutrition, sleep, recovery, integrated strength, race craft, or whatever it might be, we are here to help you with education. And when you compound that with a really smart and accessible training program, you get consistent, you get smarter, and you get faster. All the while, you have a whole coaching team and a dedicated, like-minded community that is in your corner for support, accountability, and feedback. And so, what do you get out of this? What does life look like? You get results, and you get time back. You get confidence in your program, and you get control. It's very simple, folks. Step number one: head to the squad page at the website PurplePatchFitness.com and reach out for a complimentary consultation. We can explain the program more, we can answer your questions, we can also understand your situation to see where you are at best fit within the ecosystem of Purple Patch, and we can get you on the program within minutes. And by the way, we back ourselves, and we care about your success and enjoyment. So we have a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee. All right. With that, let's get back to Andy and the show. Thanks for listening.
Matt Dixon 30:18
The one thing that I think athletes are going to benefit from, and this is almost an impossible question to answer because it's going to make it sound like you're sort of selling your product, But the one thing that's the benefit of having this precision is the lack of taste fatigue that tends to come with the product. And I think that's because you've done so much extensive testing of all of your products, your gels, and your hydration under both situations of athlete fatigue and high temperatures. So some sort of neutral element to it is probably going to help versus most people that have done an Ironman or half Ironman get sick of the sweeter taste that comes with a lot of the other products. So I think it's going to make it a little bit easier to carry on drinking under the load that you need over all those hours. Is that fair enough?
Andy Blow 31:10
Yeah, very much. So the reason we've never deviated to this point from having a single very mild flavor to all of our drinks and the taste is universal across the drinks is that we spent an inordinate amount of time and energy tuning that flavor by testing it in a heat chamber, by testing it with athletes in hot conditions, and essentially trying to turn the volume down to the minimum. Where other people seem to want to turn the volume up on flavor to make it stand out, we tried to turn the volume down to the minimum. So it's what's the minimum amount of flavor that we can give this, and I can credit you actually with the comment you made once about; it just gives you a little bit of personality. You know, that's what we're aiming for with the flavor, but we and the personality are very introverted on this one. Yeah, you know, this is not an extrovert flavor. And I love strong-flavored drinks some of the time, but not when I'm doing them. You know, for me, I'd rather have something plain and simple, and you know, get as much of it in as I can.
Matt Dixon 32:11
I think this is important for athletes. And this goes beyond precision. When you think about what you're consuming on a race course, You're not trying to replicate what you want to eat at dinner or what your favorite dessert is; this is, and I think this helps the mindset; this is functional fuel and functional hydration. So, the taste profile that you want is not offensive, that you can carry on drinking, and that you don't get tired of. So you want something in this case to fly under the radar that isn't crazily, crazily salty, crazily sweet, whatever it might be. You know, I might, I might love key lime pie or caramel flavor ice cream, but I don't want to have that at our 10 of an Ironman, and I think that is the premise. But, and I know we're deviating off course, let's get into an action step, then some of the practical side of stuff. We talked about some of the other stuff, of course. And it should be clear that this is a hydration deal that you've done, so you won't be delivering precision, precision blocks, precision gels, they won't be at the aid stations that will be Maurten than with their bars and gels, etc.
Andy Blow 33:27
Yeah, and it's...
Matt Dixon 33:28
Yeah, go ahead.
Andy Blow 33:29
So what I was going to say is that it's probably worth diving into at that point to just give you an overview of what's in those products because, you know, Maurten gels and Maurten bars will probably, to my mind, be available globally;, with IRONMAN, they've got a long-standing global deal. Those products deliver about 25 grams of carbohydrates in a standard Maurten gel, 25 grams of carbs in a standard Maurten caffeine gel, and 100 milligrams of caffeine. And the Maurten solid bars, depending on which one you have, have around 40 to 42 grams of carbohydrate in a whole bar. And I think those bars come in two pieces. So it'd be like 20 or so grams per piece. So it makes the math, you know, not too onerous to do in that if you are aiming for something like, you know, 75 grams, which would be a typical amount for a lot of athletes aiming for per hour, you might do that through three gels or, you know, a couple of gels and at one and a half bars or something like that. And that's where it's going to, I would imagine, if you're not carrying some of your nutrition, which is slightly a topic we should probably also talk about, but if you are relying on picking up fuel on the course and picking up drinks on the course, then you can tune your sodium and fluid intake using the pH 1000, and then independent of that, there's not a huge amount of sodium in the Maurten gels, which is about 20 milligrams, I think in a standard Maurten gel. But that's a relatively small amount. In the scheme of things, when we're talking about athletes taking several 100 or 1000 milligrams an hour, that's a relatively small amount. Then really, you can focus on saying, I'm going to get my carbs from here and I'm going to get my hydration from here.
Matt Dixon 35:20
As a coach, by the way, I would just say, ignore the sodium; that's where you're getting your sodium; keep it simple; don't make the math too complicated; see it go from there. Let's go down. Let's talk about carrying your fuel—just a little bit of a broader topic, but carrying your stuff as well. So this is, of course, if you're wholly dependent. And on the bike, this is logistically challenging, but you can draw from the Maurten products; you've got the Precision Hydration. Where's your recommendation on people carrying their sort of chosen products versus getting stuff, of course?
Andy Blow 35:57
I would say on the bike on an Ironman, there's a pretty big benefit to carrying most of your calories if you can. And that's based on the fact that then you can use stuff that you've tried and tested in training. Also, that level of self-sufficiency means you haven't got to dice with the aid stations, especially if you're in a busy part of the course. If you're a kind of mid-pack athlete, those aid stations get pretty hectic, and there is a risk factor for not getting what you need. There are risk factors for crashing; there are risk factors for all sorts of things that you don't want to, you know, you don't want to be controlling. Like a lot of the pro athletes that we work with, they will try and be apart from water; they will try and be entirely self-sufficient on the bike. So they've got all of their calories and all of their electrolytes, and they're just looking at taking fluids. You know, they're just looking at taking additional water on board because that keeps it low-risk and simple. So, you know, we've got our flow gel, which is like a runnier version of our standard gel, which you can put into a measured bike bottle, and that'll give you one pack of that gives you 300 grams of carbs, which is a good way towards what a lot of people will need on the bike during an Ironman...
Matt Dixon 37:11
And that's three-plus hours of fuel in a single water bottle delivery system.
Andy Blow 37:17
Yes, it's like a 16-ounce, 500-milliliter bottle that'll hold that. Usually, what we see is that a lot of athletes tend to keep it very simple; it's one of those 300 grams of carbs in the flow gel. And then topping that up with a range of energy chews and caffeine gels—if you're someone who wants to add caffeine to the regime, that's a relatively compact way of making sure you've got all your calories with you on the bike—you can start with your bottles apart from the one bottle that's got your flow gel in. You've got electrolyte drinks, or, you know, if you're going for a Flo gel plus a high-carb drink mix, you can start with that and then move on to picking a handful of gels up later on. What I would say is, though, that even if you think you're going to be self-sufficient on your race nutrition plan, make sure you fundamentally understand exactly what's in all of the products that are on course. Because if you know shit hits the proverbial, then you know you need to be able to adjust. We had a great example of that a couple of years ago with Leon Chevalier, who's who did Ironman. Maorca went over a speed bump, lost half of his nutrition in a bottle, but quick thinking enough to work out, did the math in his head know exactly how many grams of carbs were in that bar, knew how much sodium picked up, picked up more bits and pieces on the course, and made up his numbers almost perfectly. But that was only because he knew exactly what he dropped and what he needed to pick up. You do need to be mentally, you know, sort of switched on to those kinds of possibilities to get it right.
Matt Dixon 38:48
So that makes sense on the biking portion. And we talked about the options there. What about the run? The run is a different thing you come on; you're not carrying a big backpack for the most part, so what's your advice kind of the course? We've got the same situation in aid stations; you've got access to Precision Hydration across the run course, but any recommendations for people as they set up their plan?
Andy Blow 39:16
Yeah, I'd say one of the recommendations we usually make is especially if you're someone who, if it's a hot race, if it's humid, if you're a big sweater and you know hydration is going to be a challenge on the run, (A) you probably should have set yourself up well with drinking plenty on the bike, but (B) run out, don't be afraid to run out transition carrying a bottle. As long as you dispose of that responsibly at an aid station where they allow you to, then really, you'll probably have nailed that in the first three or four kilometers, you know, the first two or three miles and not a problem. It's a benefit. Then you can have whatever drink you want, because, to your point on taste fatigue, you know you can have anything in that bottle, and then that will help get you off on the right foot. I would say a lot of athletes are going to want to carry some of the gels or chews or whatever of their choice to begin the run, but it's unlikely you're going to want to carry enough to see you around the entire run. So maybe you're a bit, yeah, maybe you're a bit more reliant on aid stations on the run than you are on the bike, which is fine, because it's a lot easier to grab a gel off the table from a volunteer when you're running at, you know, less than 15 ks an hour rather than biking at 40 ks an hour. And, beyond that, we also know that deeper into the age group field, like walking through aid stations, can be a great tactic anyway in terms of prioritizing nutrition and hydration and giving yourself a disciplined amount to walk rather than just becoming an ad hoc walking shuffle. But what I'd say overall is again, know what's in the products. Those Maurten gels have 25 grams of carbs; that's probably going to be your go-to for additional energy. There is also cola on the run, 100 mils of cola. So I would imagine each cup is going to be, you know, it's really hard to say, but most cups are going to be between 100 and 200 mils of cola, roughly. The math is easy because you get about 10 grams of carbs per 100 mil of cola; it's about 10% carbohydrate solution. So I would be going. I'd be hedging my bets and saying, Look, if I doubt a full cup of cola each time, that's probably going to give me 15 grams of carbs, or something like that. So you can kind of do the math in your head. On the run, because I was a big sweater, I'd always carry salt capsules or electrolyte capsules. And then I'd actually be dumping those in on top of some pH 1000 on the run, but if you're less of a salty or big sweater, you could either survive and exclusively pH 1000 or a mixture of pH 1000 and water.
Matt Dixon 41:47
Perfect. I want to come back. And just coming back to the sort of 15 milligrams just to remind people that Precision gels are 30 grams, just to give people a reference point. Maurten gels you said are 20 or 25 grams.
Andy Blow 42:02
So 25 yeah
Matt Dixon 42:03
Five grams of carbs. So that's about 15 grams in an average sort of on-course cup of cola; they're just going to give you that. So a couple of them is effectively a gel worth of carbohydrates as a broad barometer. And then I went on to briefly use a big umbrella term: just while I've got you on caffeine advice, people always ask about caffeine. Should I take it right before the race? Should I take it during the bike ride? Hold it for the run. Any thoughts on the addition of caffeine? Very broadly, I know it's individual.
Andy Blow 42:38
Yeah, well, I would say the first thing is answering the question, "Is caffeine for me?" Often, that is a very subjective choice. It's like, essentially, if you're a habitual caffeine user in your day-to-day life and you tend to respond either neutrally or pretty well to it, there's a good chance you're not going to have an adverse reaction during an event. So I would say to use it. You know, there's no benefit. If you drink coffee every day and suddenly decide to abstain from coffee on race day, that could be quite detrimental because you kind of get used to this stimulant effect. What I would say is that, you know, try and test any caffeine strategy you're going to use in racing training, but for most people, a lot of people, it's something like, depending on stats you read, 80% of adults in the Western world start their day with something caffeinated. And, you know, if you're one of those people, then start your race day with something caffeinated; the habit that you would use before training and racing is fine. We see a lot of more serious and professional athletes incorporating a caffeine gel about 15 minutes before the start because that gives you a bit of glucose in the system. Also, caffeine takes between 20 and 60 minutes to get into the bloodstream, and it takes close to 60 minutes to peak in the bloodstream. So actually, for them, that's what starts kicking in towards the end of the swim, which is a good time to get an additional boost. And then from then on, it's really about dripping, kind of dripping caffeine in. The performance dose is about three to six milligrams per kilogram per 2.2 pounds of your body weight. So with a little bit of math, you can work out roughly what that is, but for most people, it's going to be two or three caffeine gels on the bike, and it might be another one or two on the run. Because as you get towards the end of an Ironman, the caffeine's half-life means that it's the bit that you took before the swim is kind of already metabolized or being metabolized out of the system. What I would say is that the number one kind of mistake with caffeine is maybe saving it until, say, the last hour of the run or something like that. (A) you can get substantial benefits earlier on by using it, and (B) if you take it in the last hour, it's going to be helping you once you've crossed the line as opposed to before you crossed the line. So sugar gets into your bloodstream and is effective quickly. 10, 15 minutes, caffeine; it's more like 45 to 60 minutes, so just bake that into your head. If people want to get into the weeds on that, we've got three articles that kind of walk you through caffeine use for triathlon and endurance athletes on our website. And going into our knowledge of and finding those would be a really good place to start.
Matt Dixon 45:17
Good place. And just for folks that are not familiar, half-life is effectively the time that it leaves the system and transfers through. So this can be cumulative, and the give or take with caffeine is about eight hours. And that's why you sort of reference it at the front. By the time for most athletes, by the time you're eight hours into an Ironman, you've still got some to go, but that first gel is getting rid of it. So I think that point is not saving it to the end is important because athletes think, you know, caffeine an hour to go, that's going to get me home; it's like, no, that will just make sure that you don't sleep at night. So, you're not going to anyway, because you're so overstressed. So, Andy, thank you very much. I guess. My last question is, if folks want to understand more or want to get some advice and further advice from you or your team, where should they best go to understand the products more but also maybe get the next real practical individual steps on education or formula in their action plan for fueling and hydration?
Andy Blow 46:24
Yeah, and genuinely, Matt, this is the bit that we're most excited about. Because, as you will know, we're geared up to talk to a lot of athletes and help them with their nutrition plans. That is why we exist. So if they go to our website, precision hydration, or precisionfuelandhydration.com, and go to either of those, in the top menu bar there's an Ironman landing page, which talks to you about everything that we talked about, exactly what's on course, and that kind of thing. You can book a free video call with the sports science team, which, as we're saying in our blurb about this, isn't a hard sell; it genuinely is not. We're not trying to sell you something; we're trying to answer your questions. Most of our team is made up of sports scientists; a lot of them are athletes; and a lot of them are triathletes who've done an Ironman or a 70.3. So you're going to talk to someone who understands what you're trying to do and wants to help you. If you're not the kind of video call type, just send us an email, and we'll respond to it. You can also send us a DM on Instagram. You know, we're open for business, and we want to talk to you. So reach out; we've got a load of articles on our Knowledge Hub. So yeah, basically, come and find us online. Reach out in whatever way you feel most comfortable with. And we'll get back to you. Oh, and very importantly, what I haven't mentioned is that, specifically if you're racing an IRONMAN European race, our fuel and hydration planner, which is on the website, has all of the Ironman races now baked into it. So you don't have to enter the details; you just select the race that you're doing. It knows what kind of weather conditions are likely to be happening, and we can give you some advice on your hydration and fueling strategy as a basis. So if you are relatively unsure at the moment about where to start, I would say to start with the fuel and hydration plan.
Matt Dixon 48:00
Fuel and hydration planter, and they're all in there. You choose your destination—I'm going to Nice, or I'm going to Hamburg, or whatever it might be—and then you've got all the specifics already inputted in there, which makes it very helpful for us.
Andy Blow 48:12
Yeah.
Matt Dixon 48:13
So, well, best of luck for the year. And we're excited about this. We wish it was global. But we're glad that's a great first start. Thank you very much for all the work that you and the team do to help athletes ultimately be successful. So I appreciate it, Andy.
Andy Blow 48:33
Also, thanks, Matt, and yeah, thanks for helping us get the message out. As I said at the start, we're buzzing for this one, and it's great. It's great to be able to announce it and get it out there.
Matt Dixon 48:42
Good stuff. Alright, take care.
Matt Dixon 48:46
Guys, thanks so much for joining. Thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube, and you will find it there. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe and share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. If you have any questions, let me know. Feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. As we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@PurplePatchFitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show on the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends, but as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, and keep smiling while doing whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ironman, hydration, athletes, gels, caffeine, race, drink, sodium, calories, people, Gatorade, products, ph, bike, electrolytes, aid stations, precision, bottle, milligrams, carrying