15: How to Avoid GI Issues, Cramping, Bonking, Nausea on Race Day

Full transcript of the episode:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Fuelled Triathlete. My name is Andrea. I’m your host.

And today we have a continuation of the topic from last week. Last week was all about the three parts of a nutrition and hydration race plan. So we talked about fluid, sodium, and carbohydrates, and how to figure out how much you need to be able to put together a race nutrition plan for a long distance triathlon. Today you were talking about the things that could possibly go wrong nutrition-wise on race day.

What are the causes of these things and how to prevent them so that you can plan ahead again, if you’ve never done a long distance triathlon like a half or full Ironman distance what to watch for, what to make sure you’re including or excluding from your nutrition plan, or maybe you have done a lot of races in the past and you’ve experienced these. These are things that you can do to prevent that from happening again.

So we’re going to be talking about runner’s trots. So that’s when you have like, urge to go to the bathroom, diarrhea gas, pain, bloating. We’re talking about muscle cramping today. Bonking, hyponatremia and nausea. So all of these can have a nutrition component to them. So let’s get right into it. First up is Runner’s Trots. It can be painful, uncomfortable. What are the possible causes of this. A first possible cause can be consuming more carbohydrates than you’re used to on race day, then in training. I’ve talked about in long distance triathlon, we want to aim for 90 to 120 grams of carbs per hour. That’s been shown for performance. Not everyone needs quite as high as 120 grams, but these can be higher carbs than some people are typically used to doing. So, the thing that you want to avoid doing is consuming more carbs than you are used to in training. So this is why it’s so important to come up with a race plan and practice it in your training so that you know what you can tolerate and you need to give your gut some time to be trained, to learn, to be able to absorb that high amount of carbs and to be able to use it. Because ,if you’ve used lower amounts in training and then suddenly on race day, you think, okay, this is when I need it going high carb. That’s great and all, but you probably are going to experience some GI upset.

So make sure that you, in that training, take that couple of months and figure out, you know, if you are aiming for 90, 120 grams of carbs per hour, you give your body time to work up to that and trial it out and make sure that you can tolerate it and absorb it. So kind of just goes back to that thing, nothing new on race day, I guess, along that same lines as well, just using products that you’re not used to.

So you don’t want to just pick up something that’s on the race course that you’ve never used in training. If you’re going to use what’s on the race course, look up ahead of time what they’re going to have available and use that, or bring your own enough nutrition to be able to use.

The next one to consider is that if you are consuming more than 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour, you want to make sure that you’re consuming a variety of types of carbohydrates, which are known as a multiple transportable carbohydrates.

So we want to have a mixture of both glucose and fructose. Basically in our digestive system, our GI tract, once we start to consume these carbohydrates and they go into our digestive tract, out of our stomach, our digestive tract has different channels for different types of carbohydrates to be absorbed into the blood and used by our muscles.

So we have different channels for glucose, for frutose. And up to 60 grams of carbs, you can absorb about 60 grams of carbs per hour of glucose. But if you start giving just all 90 grams of carbs per hour of glucose, And then it’s going to kind of back up those channels. So mix up your carb sources so that some go towards that glucose channel, some gore go towards that fructose channel, and then you’re going to absorb them

well, they get into your bloodstream and are used by your muscles. So, how do we know something has a mixture of glucose and fructose? Well, you can check the label and see that there’s different types of carbohydrates. So I’ve looked at some sports products that people can use and I’m going to give you ideas of what to look for in the ingredients list to know that there’s different types. Skratch, for example, Skratch has sports drinks, they have chews. In their sports drinks, they have cane sugar and dextrose. So looking at this, you might think none of this is fructose or glucose. But they are. So cane sugar, table sugar, this is made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose. So glucose and fructose are kind of your basic simple forms of carbs. Other types of sugars may have these two types of sugar’s combined together.

So glucose and fructose combined to make sucrose, which is also cane sugar, table sugar. Skratch also has dextrose. So dextrose is just glucose molecules linked together. Precision hydration, Maurten, and GU they have maltodextrin, sucrose and dextrose.

So maltodextrin is glucose molecules combined together. Sucrose, if you remember, from earlier, we said that has glucose and fructose and dextrose is a combination of multiple glucose molecules. So many products do contain these.

You may run the risk, though if you’re consuming more food choices. Certain types of foods may not contain a combination of both. So we want to maybe look at the foods you’re using. Where are those carbs coming from where the sugar is coming from.

So another possible reason for GI issues on race day is that, you know, sometimes our race day we’re either we feel really good we’re training at a higher intensity than usual, heart rates up higher, higher rate of perceived exertion, a lot of different things going on. So you kind of want to make sure that when you’re practicing your race nutrition plan, you’re not only practicing it on long, slow, easy rides, but you’re practicing at higher intensities as well. So that you know, that you can tolerate these types of foods when your heart rates higher. When you’re training harder.

GI issues can also come, a big thing is dehydration. So dehydration, we’re losing more than 2% of our body weight in fluids.

We talked a lot about how to minimize dehydration in last week’s episode, but what dehydration can do is it can lower your blood volume. So even have less blood flow to the gut to go for digestion. So it’s important to keep in mind that when we are exercising, digestion’s already slowing down. So our blood flow, typically, if we’re sitting at rest, we eat a meal, a lot of blood flows going towards a digestive track and we have the ability to really focus on that digestion. But when we’re eating or consuming fuel while we’re exercising, we need more blood flow to our muscles, to our heart, to other areas to keep us exercising. So digestion kind of slows and dehydration just slows that even more and makes it more difficult to digest these types of foods.

So one big thing is really focusing on. Are you hydrating enough? That cause that can be a big culprit for a lot of GI issues.

So you also want to watch for not eating too many high fat, high fiber, high protein foods during exercise. So we talked last week in putting together race day plan that sometimes you can use real foods, but make sure that you’re not consuming too much fat, too much fiber and too much protein.

These take a lot longer to digest. So if it takes long to digest, that’s sitting in your stomach a lot longer. If you consume too much of these on the bike, don’t fully digest them, you may have some issues on the run. Focus primarily on getting your carb intake up during per hour during training.

Not only what you eat during your race can affect your GI issues, it can be related to what you’re eating on the race morning and also in your days leading up to training. So take a look at your race day breakfast again. Is it something that’s maybe a little bit too high fiber too high-fat ,too high protein. Make sure again, it’s primarily carbohydrates. Moderate to low amounts of fat and a bit of protein.

Really it’s high fat, high fiber that can cause some GI issues. If you want to learn more about eating pre race and pre-training check out the how to avoid Runner’s Trots. One of the early episodes, I think episode three or four. It definitely goes more in depth into how what you eat before training can potentially cause runner’s trots or GI issues and what to have instead. So, this is a big thing, and I work a lot with my clients when I’m working on a race day plan with them to figure out how to carb load properly. So when you’re increasing carbohydrates, there is that risk of increasing fiber, depending when you’re not making the right carbohydrate choices, because fiber is only found in plant foods and primarily carbohydrates like grains, starches, all that kind of stuff, fruits, vegetables. So you want to watch for how much fiber you may be consuming in that day, couple days, leading up to the race, try to keep that lower.

At least not more than you’re used to. So really when we look at runners, trots, and some GI issues during training, it can be a lot related to how we’re hydrating during, what we’re doing during, and it can be related to prior. So practice it, train your gut use products that you know you can tolerate nothing new on race day.

The other thing is that maybe you’ve tried everything you can also look at maybe taking ginger can help soothe your stomach during a race. Certain gels contain ginger in them. So a lot of those more maple syrup gels, there’s Brix, endurance tap ,these have some blends that have ginger in them. There’s different types of ginger chewy candies that you could have.

For me personally, last year when I did my first race, I did take a lot of time to practice what I was doing in training, but I was also dealing with kind of some stomach issues. It was either gastritis or stomach ulcer. So, eating things that were a little bit more acidic were causing a lot of pain in my stomach. And that was actually happening during long bike rides, either getting some stomach pain or reflux. So I actually brought Tums and was taking Tums, I think one every hour on the bike.

I did find that did kind of help to settle my stomach and not have some of these, these issues. So this may be something that you could look into too if you’re someone who deals with like acid reflux. You know, sometimes just where we’re sitting on the bike, we’re not totally fully upright, we don’t have that gravity to really help us digest everything.

Okay, so getting into our next one is all about muscle cramping. So muscle cramping can have, a nutrition component to it and sometimes it’s not necessarily nutrition related. So the nutrition component can be when there’s some electrolyte, depletion, particularly sodium. So when we’re not consuming enough electrolytes in combination with the fluids that we’re consuming, particularly sodium, this can put you at risk, potentially a muscle cramps, or be a reason for muscle cramps.

And the reason for that is because sodium, which is an electrolyte, plays a role in muscle function. So it plays a role in the relaxation and contraction of muscles. So when there’s not quite enough sodium there may be loss of the proper muscle function. So, this is why sometimes people may experience muscle cramping, especially more so on hot humid runs versus in cold weather, but you may still experience muscle cramping in cold weather, or maybe when you’re hydrated properly.

So muscle cramping may not necessarily always be related to dehydration or lack of sodium. It may be related to muscle fatigue or poor conditioning of the muscle. So if your experience this in training, it could be a more high intensity training, pushing yourself, doing something more than you’re used to, whether in training or race, and that can lead to muscle cramps.

Now that brings us to bonking or hitting the wall. This is really something that can have a nutrition component to it. So bonking or hitting the wall basically means that our muscle glycogen stores have been depleted. What fuels our body during a race or during training is our muscle glycogen stores. So these are basically the storage form of carbohydrate in our muscles. I kind of like to describe this as the gas tank of your car, your fuel source. And then you also have sugar in your bloodstream, which is going into your muscles to fuel you. So our muscle glycogen stores, when those are fully topped up, that can last about 90 to 120 minutes of moderate to high intensity exercise.

So a half, full Ironman definitely much longer than those. So if we’ve gone through those muscle stores too quickly, by not consuming enough fuel during training, this can lead to hitting the wall. So how can we avoid hitting the wall or bonking? You want to make sure that your carb loading, maximize those carbs stores. They last 90 to 120 minutes when they’re fully topped up or fully stored. So if you’re not consuming enough carbohydrates in those days, leading up to your training, which is proper carb loading, then that’s you run the risk of that. Have a full episode, all about mistakes to avoid when carbo-loading. One of the first five episodes ,but what you can do is I would say for half or full Ironman, you want at least two to three full days of carb loading, where you’re consuming about eight grams per kilogram of your body weight in carbohydrates. And you are probably tapering at that time, so your activity levels are decreased as well, which allows your body to store more of those carbohydrates in your muscles. So you’re pretty much in those days, you’re limiting your fats and protein. You’re still eating these foods, but most of your calories are coming from carbohydrates.

Make sure these are lower fiber carbohydrates, not too many vegetables, whole grains, high fiber foods. But this is one thing that you can do. And like I said, head back to one of those earlier episodes to learn all about how to carb load properly. So you want to be carb bloating, but then you also want to make sure to avoid bonking or hitting the wall that you’re consuming enough carbohydrates or adequate carbohydrates during your race.

If you’re consuming enough carbohydrates, then your body can use that as fuel and spare your muscle glycogen stores. So if you’re topping up your body with some additional fuel for your sports drinks, gels, whatever that may be, your body’s not using as much of your gas tank or your storage form. So it’s going to last longer than that.

120 minutes. At least around 90 to 120 grams of carbs per hour, maybe a little bit lower during the run. But, go back to last week’s episode, learn a little bit more about the carb goals. But this is where training your body to be able to tolerate those higher amounts is really going to be helpful for making sure that you not only not bonk or hit the wall, but you finished that race having more energy at the end of it and you’re feeling good.

So next up is hyponatremia. This is a rare but serious condition and it means that the concentration of sodium in your blood becomes dangerously low. So sodium plays a really important role. It isn’t electrolyte and not only helps us retain fluids, but it’s really important for our muscle function. So when it becomes too low, there can be some really negative side effects to that. It can include, nausea, headaches, confusion, irritability, muscle weakness, short term memory loss. When it becomes a lot more serious meaning there’s a higher degree of a low sodium concentration, it can actually lead to muscle spasms, cramps, vomiting, seizures. And extreme cases loss of consciousness or decreased consciousness.

And how do we avoid that? It can be more common when you’re just drinking water or you’re drinking excess water without enough electrolytes in them. So really important to make sure that primarily the fluids were drinking during a half or full iron man have some electrolytes in them.

And if you are someone who is a heavy and salty sweater then you may need to consume excess sodium as well. So salt tabs, or high sodium drinks. You also want to make sure that you’re not hyper-focused on just drinking as much as you can. I know I’ve had people I’ve talked to who say, you know, I have like a really high sweat rate, and I’ve been dehydrating the past, I’m just going to focus on drinking as much as I can. So you really want to make sure that you’re not drinking more than your sweat rate. So last episode, we talked about how to figure out your sweat rate, because that can be dangerous too. We don’t want to drink more than we actually lose in our sweat. So that’s one thing to think about. We want to make sure we’re not just drinking only water. We have adequate electrolytes in those fluids as well

okay. So last up is nausea. What can cause some nausea to happen during a race, or sometimes you may experience kind some nausea or that feeling of having to vomit when you finish your race.

This can also be related to hydration. It can be dehydration, lack of sodium. But it can sometimes also be over hydration. So it’s one of the symptoms of hyponatremia. It can also be related to low blood sugar. If you’re not consuming enough during a long race or high intensity , blood sugar can be, can become low because some of the fuel to our muscles is coming from our blood sugars. Sometimes it can be also eating too much though. So we’ve taken in a lot more carbs per hour than we’re used to. I talked about in the beginning, how this can relate to some digestive issues, but may cause some nausea as well. You also want to look at your eating before training or before that race. So make sure that you’re not eating breakfast too close to the start of your race. I oftentimes have my clients eat three, sometimes four hours, their main meal before their event. They have tons of time to let it digest. And then they have a snack an hour or two before, and then a gel 15 minutes before, just to kind of top up their fuel sources. But they’re not eating a large meal one to two hours before .

Things that may be out of our control that are not necessarily nutrition-related could be when we exercise at an intensity we’re not used to or exerting ourselves even more can lead to feelings of nausea. Also overheating. We can’t always control the temperature and how our body responds to that. But doing what you can do to keep yourself cool. My last race they had ice in towels that you could take to cool yourself off. If your race has that take advantage of it. If they have extra water, you can take. Dump on your body, down your shirt, ice down your shirt, anything you can do to help keep yourself cool if it’s going to be a really hot.

Okay. So thanks for listening today. I hope that helped give you some more insight onto planning your race nutrition. Last week, we talked about fluids, sodium and carbs and how to figure out how much you need. And today we talked about how to prevent possible nutrition concerns that can happen during a half or full iron man.

So we covered Runner’s Trots., Muscle cramping, bonking, hyponatremia, and nausea. I talked a little bit about some different supplements that can have multiple transportable carbohydrates. If you are looking for something new to try, if you go into the show notes, for Skratch Labs, I have a code that you can use to get 20% off your first order of scratch and they have different blends to use during training. They have a super high carb mix to help you meet your high carb needs. I really love their chews to use just before a race or sometimes during the bike. And then have some different hydration mixes, too. So if you use the code fueledtriathlete and that’s fueled with one L unlike the title of the show. So it’s F U E L E D T R I a T H L E T E. You can get 20% off. So, thanks so much for listening today. If you have any ideas for future shows, send me a message @andreadietitian on Instagram and as always would really appreciate if you can share this post or share this podcast with your fellow triathletes and training buddies and leave a rating and review have

a great day!.