Episode 323: Proper Nutrition for Peak Racing Performance - Q&A with Scott Tindal of Fuelin
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Scott Tindal of Fuelin- Co-Founder & Chief Nutrition Officer
Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. This week, we have a special edition of the podcast featuring Scott Tindal, the co-founder of Fuelin, a personalized sports nutrition coaching program and app for triathletes. Fuelin is our partner and resource for everything related to nutrition, race fueling, and hydration. Scott has worked in multiple professional sports, from rugby to rowing to NHL hockey, and now he is one of the most trusted resources in the sport of Ironman Triathlon. He has worked with numerous professionals in the sport, including the great Jan Frodeno.
In this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon hosts a Q&A focused on race fueling and hydration. Matt and Scott cover everything from overcoming GI distress and planning pre-race meals to fueling for specific race distances and gaining insights on how to be precise about your nutrition. Scott shares his experiences of working with the pros and simplifies nutrition to a set of principles that any athlete can understand. He provides details to help with your nutrition and fueling, ensuring that you get the most out of your training and are prepared to excel in your races.
Make sure to tune in for Part 2 of our conversation with Scott Tindal next week. In this segment, Matt delves into the topic of personal performance. Scott will be sharing some valuable nutritional tips to help you enhance your cognitive health, longevity, and energy levels throughout the day, no matter what challenges you choose to take on.
Click here for more information on Fuelin and how to better manage your race-day nutrition.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:29 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:36 - 35:44 - The Meat & Potatoes - Episode 323: Proper Nutrition for Peak Racing Performance - Q&A with Scott Tindal of Fuelin
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
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 sports into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:25
Hey folks, today's topic is all about nutrition. We've got a Q&A session with Fuelin's co-founder, Scott Tindal. And yes, nutrition is one of the key foundational elements for you to drive to a platform of health and high performance. But how do you know how to focus on the right elements? Well, of course, you take a look inside. By leveraging Inside Tracker and assessing your biometrics, and then combining them with the peer-reviewed research, recommendations, and action plan from the team of scientists at Inside Tracker, you get to filter your focus on the stuff that's going to be beneficial for you. And so just go to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, use the code purplepatchpro20, and you can put some intention behind your habits to super fuel and ignite your platform of health and readiness to perform. I hope that helps. Today's a cracker. Enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:26
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and we've got a special edition for you. We have got two episodes in a row where we welcome Scott Tindal, the co-founder of Fuelin, our partner on everything around nutrition and race fueling and hydration, a fantastic world resource. He's worked in multiple professional sports, from rugby to rowing to NHL hockey, and now is one of the most trusted resources in the sport of Ironman Triathlon, working with an immeasurable number of professionals in the sport, including the goat Jan Frodeno. He's a wonderful resource. He's a lot of fun. He's got that little bit of Aussie side to him, and it's terrific. And I've asked Scott to come back to the show; he's been here many, many times to do a special session, a Q&A session. And today's episode is going to be a Q&A all-around race, fueling, and hydration. So we've got six or seven questions, and when I put Scott on the hot seat, he answers all of the questions. And then next week, we're going to come back and we're going to have another Q&A session with him where we're going to filter our focus down, not talk about triathlon at all, and instead, just think about life performance, some nutritional habits that you can develop to try and build your cognitive health, your longevity, your energy throughout the day, etc. And those are some crackers that we went through because we've already finished recording that one. This week, it is all about race fueling and hydration. There are some great questions. We're not going to do Coach's Corner this week. We're just going to get right into it. And so, folks, enjoy the show. Without further ado, I give you Scott Tindal, co-founder of Fuelin, and if you want to learn more about Fuelin, I should say fuelin.com/purplepatch. For all of the information that you need, you can reach out directly to the team. It's a wonderful resource to ignite your performance. Alrighty, here we go, folks. It is time, pardon the pun, for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 03:36
Alright? Yes, it is the meat and potatoes. And as I talked about in the introduction, I am delighted to welcome back my good friend and partner from Fuel in Scott. Tindal, Scott, welcome once again.
Scott Tindal 03:49
G'day. Matty, thanks for having me. Yep, as always. I'm happy to dive into some of your athlete questions. Some of these might be sprinkled with some of your own, I suspect. So let's crack on and get into it.
Matt Dixon 04:04
We will. Yeah, we're doing things a little bit differently today. We're going to call it the Scott Tindal Quick Fire section, and this is part one of two episodes we're going to do with you. I thought we've had so many questions over the last month or two, and what I thought we would do is separate and do this first whole section on race nutrition and hydration. And then next week, we're going to come back, and we're going to do a great episode more on the life performance of whatever you want to talk about, the platform of health, energy in the day, and showing up better in life, no matter what the arena we care about. So if you fasten your seat belt, I'm just going to hold you to task and read them out, and we'll hear what you say. Feel, uh, you're ready to lock and load,
Scott Tindal 04:47
Matt, let's go.
Matt Dixon 04:49
All right. Good stuff. So question number one, these are these questions. By the way, for you guys, the listeners, these came from the purple patch, athletes, as well as some of you guys, the listeners that we've had you trickling in over the last six to eight weeks, and pertinent where we're kicking off, we're deep now into the race season, so it's a great time. So here is your first one. And Scott, we're starting with, I think, a little bit of a dandy here. It's a great one here. So this listener said, I have a lot of digestion and GI issues in every Iron Man race I do, which, of course, is very, very common, and it often occurs by the end of the bike. I feel bloated. I often get caught up with bathroom breaks on the run. And I have tried every gel and chew under the sun, liquid nutrition, and real food. I would just like if you have any insights into maybe what the cause might be or how I could go about setting a path to improvements, That's good. It's a very common challenge.
Scott Tindal 05:50
Yeah, great question. Very common, I think, first and foremost, probably for this athlete, just understanding that there are no underlying medical conditions that could be contributing to this. So you know, if there is a family history of celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, or anything like that, you certainly want to get that cleared. FODMAP sensitivities—any history of bowel or stomach disease or cancer in the family—certainly get that looked at. Depending on the age of the athlete, that could be something to consider, but more likely, let's just focus on it's likely a nutrition and training perspective. My first thing would be to ask the athlete, How often are they practicing their race nutrition and hydration in training? That's going to be probably the most common mistake that a lot of athletes make, they go into a race and try and consume high amounts of carbohydrates and potentially fluids, and that causes issues because their gut simply is not used to doing that. So that would be the first thing I would be asking: how often are they practicing it? Are they doing their fueling at the race intensity that the coach is asking them to do? Is it at the expected race temperature? If you're always training in cool environments with the lovely fan on and doing it all very pleasantly, but then you're going and racing at Kona, and the temperature is very hot, that's going to have an impact on how you handle large amounts of carbohydrates. I think the other really important point here is managing hydration and understanding hydration needs about carbohydrate requirements. So off the top of my head, I'm thinking, okay, is this athlete trying to get all their carbohydrates from fluids? They're overconsuming total fluids to get their amount of carbohydrates, and in doing so, that's causing excessive fluid intake. So then, understanding the minimum amount of fluid that they could apply carbohydrates to and drink those, they could potentially increase their carbohydrate intake through solids such as gels or blocks. That is something that I would be asking, getting the athlete to consider and explain that further. The final problem, or the final issue, could be the actual amounts of carbohydrates they're consuming relative to their energy expenditure or power output. So they might be consuming a mixture of maltodextrin, glucose, and fructose, but they don't require that. They don't need these multiple transportable carbs because their output is not that high, and maybe they only need 60 or 70 grams an hour and could do that just on maltodextrin. So that's sort of the question I'd be asking the athlete, and I certainly want to sit down and talk to them about that in more detail.
Matt Dixon 08:41
Can I ask another? I guess two, two little related points or considerations from my side, where a lot of athletes tend to say, Oh, these don't work for me. These chews, these bars, which, of course, are more of a taste component than that, but you didn't mention sort of that as a leading subject. And I'll just make, oh, I'll go back in the ages; power bars are terrible, or Cliff bars are great, and, you know? And I just did that because they're old-school. So rather than talk about more modern nutrition, Quite often, that's not the culprit. There is some synergy, like, okay, this is what tastes good, that I can get down, etc. There is a personal preference. But the stuff that you talk about tends to be much more of the predominant sort of point of investigation. Is that a fair enough point?
Scott Tindal 09:29
Yeah, I think, look the type of product that the individual chooses to use is going to play a role, but it's probably like you think of a hierarchy in terms of trying to troubleshoot here, and you know, I'd probably say yes, the palatability and those ingredients are going to be important; as I said, it relates to maybe what the ingredients are in that product. But I think probably more likely is that even if, with really bad taste or not, it's such a great product if you practice a lot with it, there is potential that you can strengthen the gut and train the gut to tolerate that in higher amounts.
Matt Dixon 10:06
That's great. And then the one other just point of consideration, the more broad lens from the coaching lens, is the tendency for athletes to show up to these races overstressed and overtired, which of course diminishes the gut's ability to transport this stuff as well, just more of the coaching side of stuff. That was just my point. But I think that's a pretty great answer to a very interesting question to kick us off. So, let's move on to question number two because it's somewhat related to something that you said in there. So I'm just going to read it out, and it's great. This athlete said I was listening to the approach of some of the pros around their nutrition and hydration in racing, and a thought struck me: they seem to be racing at a much higher intensity than I can hold, which is, yeah, that's pretty true, and their races often last potentially hours less than my humble performances can deliver. And so the question is, what are the considerations and differences in demands of, let's say, a 12 to 16-hour Ironman versus an Ironman athlete that's doing seven to nine hours like the pros do?
Scott Tindal 11:17
Yeah, it's a great question. And this comes down to, I think there's several parts to it. So firstly, probably discussing relative versus actual energy expenditure and power, or relative and absolute power, because this athlete might be working at a relative intensity of, say, zone three or above, which is their race pace, but their actual energy expenditure, or their actual power, maybe only sitting at 150 watts, and that's going to be very different to say, let's talk about a professional female by sitting at 240, 260 professional male. God, I mean, they're pushing well over 300 watts now as an average. So their actual energy expenditure is going to be very different, but their relative intensity is the same. That does play into how much they should be considering consuming. So if you take this athlete and say, Okay, well, their absolute power is a lot lower, then theoretically you'd be saying, Okay, their energy intake could be lower than, say, a professional athlete. The caveat to this is that the age group athlete that you're describing is going for a lot longer, so net, net, maybe their total energy expenditure across the time, because one's doing seven and a half hours and one is doing 14 hours works out, probably the age group athlete expending a little bit more. So what you've just got to manage is what that intake is for those hours that they're doing. Now, if we think about, okay, the professional athletes pushing out a lot more power, and maybe the age group athlete is pushing out a lot less power, we can still confidently say that for say, a female athlete on the bike pushing out 160 170 watts, if they're doing that for certainly more than three hours, and as a male athlete, pushing out anywhere between 210 and 220 watts consistently for Three hours or more, they're going to benefit from 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour, okay, which is important, because even though their total energy output is lower than that athlete based on total calories, they're going to require still a decent amount of energy intake to continue to perform at the level that they're performing at, and again, relatively speaking, they're working hard. It's just that their actual athletic ability isn't as good as the professional sense of the difference between an age grouper and a professional. So the long and the short is, if you're pushing again as a female athlete, somewhere between 100 and, let's say, 160 watts or more for that Iron Man pace, and a male, 210 to 20 watts, and you're doing that for more than three hours, you are likely going to benefit from higher amounts of carbs, at least up to 90 grams an hour. And getting to that level probably means listening to question one: How often are you practicing it? Are you practicing it in the right environmental conditions? Are you practicing it regularly? Are you practicing at the intensity of the bike? Are you practicing with the products that you intend to use, so you can see the relationship between question one and question two?
Matt Dixon 14:39
Yeah, and I mean, it dovetails nicely. And it's, in fact, a whole arm of, and knowing this isn't a promotion for fueling, but this is a whole arm of what you help athletes navigate through the testing, the understanding of their body, and integrating. And then, when you work with someone like me as a coach, we integrate these with specific simulators. So that you have the opportunity for the athlete to practice this in the conditions, as close as we can, obviously, at the intensity, and then we start to go on a journey because it is that to build up the capacity to get to those levels and understand what is working for them and doesn't work with them, so they can go in with what's this revolutionary word, that's right a plan. It's a great answer for you.
Scott Tindal 15:22
And just just on that, Matty. And I think it is; it's something that Dr. Alan McCubbin often refers to, and I love stealing it. But it's like, you know, the first time you did, you know, a hard bike session, it probably hurt. Your muscles got sore, and you were like, if you said to yourself, Whoa, I'm never going to do that again because I got sore. I'm just going to sit back in zone one all the time. You're not going to improve. And it's no different with pushing higher amounts of carbs in. We're not saying you have to make yourself sick, but you might make yourself uncomfortable when you take in these higher amounts of carbs, and it may not feel great the first time. The second time, you take in the same amount, same product, same intensity, and same duration. You're like, that wasn't so bad. The third time, that was pretty easy. You're training your body to become accustomed to the stress that's being applied to it. That is called adaptation, and that is how you improve. It's no different from training. Nutrition is the same. You can train your gut and your body to cope with these higher amounts of carbohydrates if you practice them.
Matt Dixon 16:30
And that's proven; that's, you know, that that's not just observational; that's proven, which is, which is great. All right, so let's dance on to number three because we promised quick fire. And this is a favorite one. We transition a little bit here. So here are some ABCs for you. I love this. This question from Anthony says I would love to hear you discuss pre-race meal ideas around these areas. Number one: two to three days before the race, what should that look like? Number two is the night before the race, the dreaded pre-race meal, and number three is the morning of the race. So we're outside of race fueling here. We're just talking about the days leading up—72 hours, 24 hours, or 18 hours—and then the morning of the race. What do you think of these?
Scott Tindal 17:16
Okay, part A, in race week, you're considering doing a carbohydrate load, certainly for any sessions or races lasting more than 90 minutes, certainly any races lasting more than two hours. The carbohydrate load will start at least 48 hours before the start of the race. In the 48 hours before, you're probably aiming for around six to eight grams per kilo of body weight. In the 24 hours before the race starts, you're aiming for anywhere between eight and 12 or more grams per kilo of body weight. What does that mean in terms of actual food? You're probably minimizing vegetable intake, and you're minimizing fiber intake. You're focusing on high-glycemic foods with high caloric density, with a focus on carbohydrates. So you're likely going to be starting to reduce a little bit of protein and certainly some fat in there, with a focus on getting total calories from carbohydrates, foods that you would consider using, certainly on the day before for the actual load, Kid cereals, maltodextrin, just in water, white rice, white bread, white pasta, fruits like banana, pineapple, using some chews or blocks, Haribo Gummy worms—they're good. And then just layer in some fats and protein. So you can still consume some olive oils and some nuts. You can consume chicken or simple white fish, depending on your preference and your dietary preference. If you're a plant-based athlete, you may just choose simple tofu, and that's what you're trying to do. You're just focusing on getting a lot of carbohydrates in without the bulk. And that's the mainstay of that period.
Matt Dixon 19:00
Well, it's high-octane stuff that's interesting. What about the morning of the race? Okay,
Scott Tindal 19:07
So then you go to breakfast. What you will have done is also practice this. Okay, so on the morning of the race you're doing, you're choosing a race day breakfast that you've practiced in training several times leading up to the race so that when you come to race day breakfast, you're removing any anxiety about what I should be eating. It is just automatic. You know exactly what you prefer to eat on a race day because you've practiced that before race day simulations. Now, a couple of options could be, depending on who you are as an athlete. I like overnight protein oats with maple syrup, fruit salad, and a couple of slices of toast with some jam, aiming for somewhere between sort of, you know, trying to get two to three grams per kilo of carbohydrates in those two to three hours before the race starts. Yes, other athletes, staples, and favorites of people like Holly Lawrence, Skye Munch, Ben Canute, and Jan were just simple boiled white rice, yogurt over the top, some blueberries, maple syrup, bananas, and then toast with jam, and they would easily consistently consume that, and it's obviously in the amount specific to their body weight. Again, probably, if we're not even talking grams per kilo body weight, somewhere in that sort of 150 to 200 grams of carbs in the two to three hours leading into the race. So a lot, again, a lot of food.
Matt Dixon 20:39
It's, and by the way, you're, you're, you're helping me here because we dance on to the next question and we're going to talk about the pros. So, you just, there's
Scott Tindal 20:50
one, one bit Matty, you just missed the night before. I know we sort of covered the night before, but I just want to hit. I just want to touch on the night before. And I just did a reel on Instagram. We're talking about this because it's one of the most common mistakes I see with athletes: they think the night before is a carbohydrate load. No, it's part of the carbohydrate load. That big bowl of pasta or that big bowl of rice—all those carbohydrates, whatever you're consuming—are part of the total carbohydrate load. Remember, you're aiming for somewhere between eight and 12 grams per kilo of body weight of carbohydrates. That meal in the evening may contain 100 or 150 grams of carbs. You've still got somewhere between five hundred and six and seven hundred more grams to eat throughout the day. So that's important. A simple meal the night before, I know the athlete asked for simple things again: go back to white rice, yogurt, maple syrup, with maybe some protein, some milk. That might be what's eaten for lunch and breakfast, or it could be a version of white rice. So just chicken, white rice, sweet chili sauce—something as simple as that very bland, non-gastronomic, non-Jamie Oliver—but it gets the job done. You know that it sits well. You know you've practiced this, and you know you're getting the total calories and, most importantly, the total carbohydrates. Oh, and then the last point, try and finish by 6:30, 6:00, 6:30, so you're front-loading the day before, you're getting all those carbs in early, early, early, so that that last meal, 6:00, 6:30, finish that, you're trying to get to bed by, you know, hopefully, 7:00, 7:30, try and get some sleep because you're probably going to be up at three or four in the morning. Yep. And that's important as well.
Matt Dixon 22:38
perfect. Is it? It clears it out. Fantastic. So let's move to the pros because this is, this is an interesting one, actually, and this is funny for me to ask because one of the first triathletes that you worked with was a Purple Patch pro. It was the catalyst for much of building a system to solve the challenges around this complex sport, and it became the fueling system of which now we have a lot, or you have a lot of pros working with you. You just mentioned Jan Frodeno and a host of others. So here's the question: It seems like loads of pros now leverage the fuel system. My question is, is it a challenge to work with elite athletes who may be stuck in their ways or have existing systems or strategies that they feel have previously worked for them? I get a very similar question to this; of course, it must be hard working with the pros. And with me, it's like, actually not; they're pretty coachable, but so I'm interested in your perspective here as their guide and nutrition.
Scott Tindal 23:45
Yeah, I'd say every athlete is a challenge in their own right, whether they're pro or not. But before I get on that, Matty again, I just want to say thank you because, as you did say, it all starts with Sarah, and you believed in what I was doing early on and allowed me to then build this out so others can benefit from it. So I just want to say thank you to you for that opportunity. It certainly means a lot to me and the team. So thank you. Look, to be honest, most of the pros approach us as opposed to us approaching them, and we prefer this. So it means that they're probably open to learning and making suggestions immediately because we're not approaching them. And I think that's probably the first part. Take Jan. I think this is a great example. You know, the goat, he's pretty successful, but he reached out to me, and he, you know, was receptive to doing something different to change the game, as he realized that if he didn't do something, he was, you know, going to be left behind. And if you're not adapting, you're dying. And that was always something he thought about. And so, look. He changed his day-to-day fueling around sessions, and we tweaked some of his in-session fueling. We didn't change massive things. He continued to use Morton. We just increased the amounts that he was taking in. And, you know, his energy expenditure was huge. So we just figured he needed more octane fuel for the Ferrari. And so it was just more about increasing the amounts in and around training for him. But he was very receptive to that, despite, you know, having so much success. And I think that speaks volumes about him. And you know, if I think of Holly, Skye, Ari, Kyle, and Ben Imogen, they're all the same. They're receptive to what we're doing. And I think if you look at the results of those athletes I just mentioned, it sort of speaks for itself. So you know, they're embracing the change in nutrition, from daily fueling to in-session fueling. And I think those two separate parts are very important. I think so many athletes at the moment are focused on session fueling and just thinking, Oh, that's nutrition. It's part of that puzzle. What you do outside of the training is also crucial to success, and so being open to those two elements, I think, is what is the recipe for success for these athletes. And as I said, these professional athletes are very open to it, and I say that only as a very positive step in the right direction.
Matt Dixon 26:33
Yeah, the one point of perspective that I'll add to it, is that you started to work with Jan quite late in his career, similar to, actually, an athlete that I coached many years ago, but Chris Lieto, who joined me late in his career, was willing to really rip it up and start again in many areas. And I think that's a common mindset for high performance in anything. Is this growth, is this never-ending evolution and always chase of passion and personal improvement, and you see it across, and that's what makes high performers, aka professional athletes, so coachable, so open, and so likely to reach out for external wisdom and support to get them where they want to go? So that answer doesn't surprise me at all. We're going to ask one more question. It's been great. It's been hard-hitting. It's going to be around hydration. I mean, this is an interesting one. It's a polarizing topic, and this one's a little bit longer of a question, but I think it's worth reading out every part of it. Okay, so this was a listener who came and said, I recently listened to two pieces on hydration. The first was watching the Tour de France, where on the first stage of this year's race, the commentators were saying it was a very hot and hilly stage. By the way, coming out of Florence, Italy, it said Matteo Jorgensen drank 16 bottles of fluid and still, throughout the stage, lost seven pounds. So throughout that stage, give or take, it was five hours that it was consuming 16 bottles of fluid. So that was the first piece that he listened to. Then he happened to listen to a podcast on hydration with the South African scientist Ross Tucker, and as a part of that podcast, he claimed that athletes tend to overhydrate and they should only drink to thirst. And they were saying that across all of the events, the vast majority of athletes tend to overhydrate. So the ask of the athlete is, Could you outline your thoughts or response to these what seem like highly divergent pieces of education and information? I'm entered in an Ironman 70.3, so a half Ironman for listeners in six weeks. And I'm completely confused.
Scott Tindal 28:49
Context. I think that's why there's a divergence in what is being discussed here. One is talking about an elite athlete who's doing something fairly extreme, whereas what Ross Tucker's probably talking about is that average age group, not even an athlete, just someone probably involved in recreational sports, a fun run, things like that. And there is that distinction there, and I'll just go over that. As you know, the Tour de France is a huge effort, duration, and energy. Sweat is produced to cool the body. This athlete's probably producing a huge amount of heat, thus needing to cool himself down by drinking a lot. I think that's, you know, a given, depending on the environmental temperature as well. I don't know what it was like at this stage. I imagine it was probably pretty hot. That's going to amplify that as well. So I think that's Ross Tucker; he's probably referring to, as I said, the everyday athlete, and drink to thirst was brought in specifically to combat hyponatremia, which was happening in these fun runs and things like that. Because athletes or individuals were being bombarded with marketing around you need to drink this much water, you need to drink eight glasses of water, or You need to drink this much Gatorade or this much sports drink to be hydrated and perform, which was misleading because, yeah, the reality is drink to thirst for those types of fun runs and things is probably absolutely fine, and great advice for those. Now, where there does come a little bit in between, again, like all good things nutrition, there is a gray area. You're going to have individuals who have huge sweat rates, and so understanding that sweat rate at the given intensity at the given type of exercise you're doing, I believe, and we believe it fueling, is important to understand. It's a bit like the sodium, you know, sweat sodium concentration. The majority of people will have a very normal sweat-sodium concentration. There will be the outliers with a very low, and then the outliers with a very high, and they will require extra amounts of sodium. I'm not going to get into the full sodium, but that's, again, where we sit. There are always going to be individuals who benefit from more sodium now, just like with hydration. If you understand your sweat rate on the bike at the intensity you're going to be racing at, and you can build up multiple tests, i.e., sweat rate tests, and again, an understanding of your average fluid loss, what your average fluid intake is, and then what your recommended fluid intake should be, and you're starting to get that picture for on the bike and the run, you can manage your hydration, I would argue, and we would argue more specifically, to enable better performance. It's not saying that you just need to drink more. You need to understand what you need to be taking, and then you can plan out your hydration plan on the bike to have a great run off the bike. And that's important. And there will be a difference between, say, running and riding a bike. Generally, a sweat rate on the bike is going to be lower than on the run because one is non-weight-bearing. Compared to weight bearing, energy output or heat generation is generally going to be higher in the run component. But for someone who, specifically, we're talking about triathlon, you don't want to become Yes, 2%–3% body weight loss from dehydration is fine to have; however, you don't want to be coming off the bike 3% dehydrated knowing that you've either got a half marathon or a marathon to come. Would you go and do a half marathon or a marathon standalone in a two or 3% dehydrated state? No, you wouldn't. Could you do that in that? Yeah, you could, but you're probably not going to perform as well. So managing your hydration on the bike to as close as probably less than 1% body weight loss or less is probably going to result in you having a better run off the bike. And that's certainly something we talk a lot about at Fuelin, managed very specifically with a lot of the pro athletes, and then the age group athletes, who do at least 10 sweat rate tests on the bike on the run at the expected temperature of the race, have better results because they understand their needs. And as you said, Matty, they have a plan.
Matt Dixon 33:26
They have a plan. It's revolutionary. It's a great way to end this week, so we'll take a breather. We'll see you next week. We're going to shift our emphasis, and we're going to start talking about daily performance. But, Scott, I think we're going to need many more of these. I've got an arms list worth of questions on racing and fueling, hydration, etc., so we'll have you back in short order for that. But I appreciate your time on that and some valuable and simple things to go and execute. So good stuff. Listeners, you all know it is fueling.com/purplepatch. If you're interested in any follow-up questions with Scott and the team or if you want to see some of the programming, Scott will appreciate it, and we'll see you next time.
Scott Tindal 34:08
Thanks. Matty is always enjoyable.
Matt Dixon 34:12
Guys, thanks so much for joining, and 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. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also, share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, 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, 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, keep smiling, do whatever you do, and take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
athlete, race, hydration, talk, nutrition, carbohydrates, fueling, Scott, amounts, drink, ross tucker, matty, week, practicing, bike, pros, question, consuming, good, purple