Powerbar advice can get you hurt
April 5th, 2007 by Nikola Tosic
When I was in Port Elizabeth I bought a bunch of stuff at the Expo. While I was waiting in the line I was standing next to the PoweBar stand. PowerBar was represented by a very young female dietician. She was a bit overweight and did not seam to have much endurance training experience, but she was there to give out advice to athletes who will handle the Ironman race the next day: Take one gel for every hour of the race. It will be enough if you also drink energy drinks.
I heard it and even though I knew it is complete nonsense I gave it a thought. PowerBar is a huge company, big budget, lots of people, lots of sponsored athletes etc… They must know what they are talking about. PowerBar is such an authority. I must be the one that does not know stuff. PowerBar must know. And this girl was PowerBar. She was telling people one gel per hour is fine.
Than I calculated. You can get 100-150 kCal per gel and than, I don’t know, maximum twice that from a drink. If you drink a lot that is (if it is a very hot race). Maybe you can get 300-450 kCal per hour. At most, for a 11h Ironman race, that is less than 5000 kCal.
Anyway, I remembered that when I did my race I ate like crazy. I took a gel every 20-30 mins. I ended up eating more than 20 gels and around 3-4 bars. I can not even remember how much I ate. I just ate ate ate… and it worked. I never boinked or had any cramps. I just kept going and followed my pace and finished feeling good.
Everybody else I know that does the Ironman races seriously goes for at least two gels per hour + energy drinks + bars occasionally.
I am sure that what PowerBar suggested to so many people at their Ironman South Africa 2007 Expo stand was a complete mistake. You can not do an Ironman with so little calories. And, as I heard from few friends, some people actually suffered due to this information.
I do not think PowerBar does not know what they are doing. What I think is that Expo organizers are very lazy and try to save money and hire the cheapest staff for their stands. This kind of behaviour needs to be reported to the PowerBar Inc. so people that represent them do not offer such disinformation anymore.
Ironman is not a joke. It is an easy race if you know what you are doing and if the info you got is correct. However, if you make mistakes with your pacing and nutrition you can end up in living hell. Look at Chris McCormack and Luke Bell. Both have suffered a lot due to bad nutrition and planning.
Who knows how many age-groupers have suffered during Ironman South Africa 2007 thanks to the PowerBar advice at the Expo.
And hopefully, South African distributors of such brands as PowerBar, will take more pride and diligence in their representation of these brands. And it would be nice if they pay more respect towards their customers by hiring properly informed and educated staff and offering athletes proper information.
Be sceptical…
April 6th, 2007 at 2:50 am
This is exactly why i started my own Energy Gel company because i feel that people should be educated and not just go by what the side of the container or in this case by what a pretty girl says.
The stuff printed on the side is just a guideline but it needs to be changed according to a couple of factors like How hard am i pushing ?? How long am i going to be going for ?? and How hot is it ??
I also believe in the old saying of if you havent done it you cant give advise to others, so in saying that i think your correct in not listening to somebody who doesnt have a endurance bone in her body.
Finally i think you should play around in training and see what works best for you, for me i take a Whasp Gel every 30min and its a 50g serving not a 32g like GU or a 41g like POWERBAR and then i still eat bars and drinks on top of that.
I think the average person looses around 600 cal per hour in a race like Ironman and the body can only put back around 450cal per hour.
A good energy drink will give you around 200 Cal per hour, i was shocked to see Powerade been given out, as this is not the type of drink you should be getting into your body in a ultra event.
So you do the maths people, 2 gels should give you around 260 cal and a full bottle juice around 200cal which puts you in the zone of what your boday can absorb..
I believe in try , try and try again as the best motto, play around in training to see what works best…
April 11th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Nutrition providers need to be very careful with the advice they dispense. Not everyone is the same and I have read that Normann Stadler takes 20 gels during an Ironman plus eats a couple of bars but does not use an energy drink.
As you can see in Raynard Tissink’s post, he uses less than half of that.
I was just amazed at how many people suffered toward the end of the race and while a portion of that might well be down to insufficient training, I do believe a lot of it was due to a poor nutrition plan.
Race day is way too late to see what works, you should be training on full race nutrition at least once a week for 3 months so as to give you time to figure out what works for you.
Personally I use the Powerbar range and find it works well. I train using my race nutrition plan on my 2 long days and this allows me to experiment with the various caffeine and sodium permutations so that come race day it is second nature.
Some people say that the 4th discipline in Ironman is nutrition (in Olympic triathlon it may well be transitions but in an Ironman those are largely irrelevant) and therefore it should be give the same priority as your other training.
April 15th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Hi Nikola, Marlene Carter here from PowerBar SA. Thanks for bringing to our attention the information you overheard at the expo. The individual who dispensed the alleged advice certainly does not represent PowerBar, nor Ironman……(it’s rather a mystery! - neither of our organisations had any dieticians on hand at Ironman.) What we did have however, were well qualified and trained staff members who are fully informed as to the superior energy and nutrition benefits of PowerBar products.
You are certainly correct in that a gel per hour would provide insufficient energy for an Ironman event. If indeed the advice that you overheard was given, I am comfortable that the majority of Ironman athletes would have known in advance of the race what their nutrition requirements would be on race day. It is well known to them I’m sure that PowerBar is the Global Nutritition sponsor, and all of our retail outlets are well informed and capable of giving sound nutrition advice for Ironman. In addition, the various PowerBar websites offer a wealth of training and racing information - all of which is derived from the PowerBar Nutrition Resource Centre. In fact, here is a link to an article on our web site which gives great insight into the science behind the need for gels and the benefits thereof: http://www.powerbar.co.za/index.asp?goto=fetch&afid=5&pt=article&itemid=1934&typeid=1
Interestingly, and as you will see from this article - the gels are interchangeable with our PowerBar Endurance drink: the same amount of carbs and sodium are derived from either - it’s a matter of preference ultimately. The carbs and sodium delivered by either the PowerBar Gels or the PowerBar Endurance drinks are within the ranges recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine.
The article also confirms what both Collin and Robin recommend: practice makes perfect!!
I do hope you find this information useful and informative: - it’s what we at PowerBar have been preaching, and it’s regretful you heard differently! Thanks again Nikola. Wishing you continued happy training and racing…and as we say at PowerBar: Be great!