Skip to content
Ironman, Bolton UK

Race Report - Ironman, Bolton UK - Tina Miller - 2013

August 2013, I found myself standing at the edge of Pennington Flash lake near Bolton lining up with a couple of thousand other competitors, waiting for the start of Ironman UK – not only was the longest triathlon race I had ever done, a standard distance, once, I had also never run a marathon! 

One of my fears about competing in an Ironman race was running out of energy.  It was going to be a very long day for me.  As my bike rides got longer in training, I tried out several different nutrition strategies, gels, carb drinks and real food.  Sometimes I got it right and others spectacularly wrong.

RACE DAY:

On race day, I got up at 3am and had a large bowl of porridge with banana.  On the journey to the swim start I sipped on Lucozade Sport and about 15 mins before the swim start had a ZipVit ZV7 energy gel.

I have to say that on the bike I was almost religious in my nutrition and drinking regime. I had borrowed another Garmin and had set up alerts to go off every 20 minutes. When the buzzer went I sipped either High Five Zero or High Five 2:1 carb drink and had a bite to eat. Even if I didn’t feel like it. I had a variety of food in my pockets; two bagels with strawberry jam and peanut butter; a couple of flapjacks and a ZipVit strawberry chocolate energy bar. I also stopped at one of the feed stations for a banana. That might sound a lot but I was out there for over 8 and a half hours. 

THE RUN:

I saved the gels for the run. I favour the High Five electrolyte gels for runs as they are easy to take and don’t need water. I had a bite to eat while in transition and then took a gel as I headed out onto the run. 

There was a 16 km route to Bolton centre followed by 4 laps of 8 km of the town. I took one gel toward the end of the 16km and then one per lap plus I always had a drink at each feed station, so every 4 km.

I never ran out of steam and finished IM Bolton in 14:31 which was about 2 hours quicker than I expected.

POST RACE:

My stomach was in turmoil after I finished though. I couldn’t face the free pizza and nothing appealed much. In the end I had a McFlurry ice cream which had absolutely no nutrition value whatsoever but hit the spot completely. These days after long training or race days I have a banana/chocolate/peanut butter milkshake sometimes with added protein powder.

NUTRITION \ WHATS NEXT:

My nutrition strategy has moved on a bit since 2013 too. I am mostly taking part in Olympic/Standard Distance triathlons this year with a view to qualifying for a GB Age Group spot in either the World Champs in 2017 or the Europeans in 2018. I did manage to qualify for a spot in the European Duathlon Champs this year which take place in Soria in April which is exciting and daunting in equal measure.


About the Author
TINA MILLER
Check out Tina's Instagram, Twitter & Website.
Previous article Benefits of Using Nutrition in Training