12 Weeks before Geelong 70.3 (Testing Infinit)

Monday will be the start of my 12 week program. This means the training will move from 8 to 10 hours a week up to 15 hours, with a couple of 20 hour weeks thrown in for good measure. Naturally all of this planning assumes that my body will hold up (it does not have a good track record).

In preparation of this training load, my recovery period ended this morning with a 100km bike ride and tomorrow will hopefully see me run 17km. Up till now I've been getting away with only one ride per week (usually 2 to 3 hours). While this obviously worked well for the Sprint Distance Triathlon last weekend, a Half Ironman (90km bike leg) needs significantly more bike mileage. So from now on I will endeavour to get in at least 2 rides most weeks, with a longest ride of 140km. I'll also increase my running by doing short and slow recovery runs (about 5km) every other day. It is planned that my long run will slowly increase and hopefully I'll manage at least one 25km run (which would be my longest ever training run).

It is also time to start thinking about (and practising) race nutrition. With this in mind I recently purchased a bag of Infinit nutrition. In Ironman I used Endura Optimiser, but I think Infinit is more specific to my needs (Optimiser is primarily a recover drink that can also be used for race nutrition).

The Infinit mixture can contain anything you want - you configure the ingredients on the website before ordering. Basic elements that can be configured are Electrolyes, Carbs, Calories, Protein, Amino acids, Strength of taste and caffeine. To start off I picked a pre-configured mix called 'Go Far' in Lemon & Lime flavour. This is highish in Carbs, no caffeine, medium in everything else and has an osmolality of 271 (concentration of dissolved particles). The osmolality of our blood is around 300, so anything under this figure is easily absorbed.

Using Infinit means all your rehydration and nutrition requirements are in your water bottle. No more need for bars, gels, sports drink and water - it greatly simplifies everything. However it does implement a level of inflexibility. When the temperature increases, you need more hydration. With Infinit this would mean consuming too many carbs because everything is combined in one bottle. So you would have to pick up extra water bottles from the aid station, assuming you had somewhere to store them. And conversely, if it is too cold you probably need less hydration but still need the same amount of carbs. This was my problem at Ironman Melbourne where I simply was not sweating enough (barely sweating at all), resulting in me taking 3 toilet stops on the bike.

I trialled the Infinit on my 100km bike ride this morning. Leaving home at 6:30am, it was not exactly warm and while the weather was pleasant, it never really got hot. As a result I only finished the first water bottle at the 80km mark, although I tend to under eat (and drink) on training rides - probably why I'm experience unwanted weight loss at the moment. In general the Infinit seemed OK (much better than some of the other drinks I've been trialling), my first change would be to tone down the strength of taste. When I sampled it the night before (when I was mixing the bottles) it tasted good. But it often happens that you are more sensitive to sweetness when exercising and need a milder strength taste. It is difficult to comment upon the other aspects, I'll need a much harder training session to get a better gauge. At the moment the taste is not as good as the chocolate flavoured Optimiser, maybe next time I'll trial the Fruit Punch flavour.