Nutrition Plan for Ironman 70.3

Last weekend I had a moment: I put an hour in on the bike and hopped off to a 12.6 mile run. It didn’t seem crazy but in the direct sunlight I felt myself hitting a wall at mile nine. It wasn’t a bad one and honestly, considering I had just been drinking gatorade the whole time, I was probably due much more pain than I had. It was in that slow slog back to the house that I realized something:

You train so hard in swim, bike, run that nutrition is usually an afterthought.

So I started researching. What do people eat? How many calories should I expect to consume? When should I consume them? How do I avoid the “crash”? Is caffeine safe to use? What is available on the course? Should I plan to carry it or pick it up from aide stations?

So many questions and the more I looked, the more I realized: nutrition plans are like everything else, there’s no one right answer. Everyone does it different and the only constant seems to be, consume 200-300 calories per hour.

So here’s what I came up with. If you have experience at this distance, feel free to poke holes in it and share some thoughts. If you are researching your own race nutrition, I hope this helps!