It’s no secret that the bigger you are, the more calories you burn. Just sitting still while I’m writing this I probably use as many calories as some wee athletes use on a short run! So, what does this mean for Clydesdales & Athenas? You’ve got to plan your fueling accordingly. If I think I can look at Kestrel Pro Mike Lovato’s nutrition plan for the Pucon 70.3 and use that for the Timberman 70.3 I’m probably going to bonk while I’m buckling my helmet on in T1!
Here’s a basic look at the caloric needs of athletes of various sizes. This is sort of an average of various calorie use web resources. Your mileage may vary:
| Athlete weight (pounds) | Cycling @ 14-16mph – Cal per hour | Running @ 7mph/ 8:34 min/mile – Cal per hour |
| 110 | 528 | 574 |
| 130 | 624 | 678 |
| 150 | 720 | 782 |
| 170 | 816 | 887 |
| 200 | 960 | 1044 |
| 210 | 1008 | 1096 |
| 230 | 1104 | 1200 |
As you can see from the chart, the bigger you are the more calories you’re going to need to take in to get to the finish line of all but the shortest races. Let’s assume that you can store about 2500 calories between your liver and muscles (I’ve seen numbers from around 2000-2500. Since we’re talking about a bigger athlete with a larger muscle mass, let’s use 2500.) Given that you have 2500 calories in storage you can probably get through a sprint triathlon of 1.5-2 hours with only the energy stores you woke up with on race morning. Once you get to a longer race you’re going to have to start planning your caloric intake. I’m going to go with a caloric need of 1100 calories for this example. I’ll also assume that 2000 calories are stored in the body. Given the time and money we invest in getting to triathlons and running races I’d rather have an extra 500 calories “laying around” than run out of fuel.
Let’s say our example Clydesdale is going to take 6 hours to finish a Half Ironman, same for a 170 pound athlete. Our Clydesdale is going to need about 5700 calories during the course of the race through his chosen nutrition products. The 170 pound athlete racing alongside of him needs 4800 calories. Granted, 4800 calories is still a lot to plan for but our Clydesdale is going to need another 9 gels or 4 powerbars or 9 bananas. That’s going to result in some bulging pockets! (I realize that I’m fully ignoring the fact that both athletes, if performing at or below lactate threshold, are also going to be burning body fat for fuel. That’s another topic for another post.)
All athletes should have a fueling plan for activities longer than 2 hours. You can experiment while training but as you get closer to a big event try to nail your fueling plan down. You don’t want to be in the middle of a big event that you’ve trained the entire season for and find out that you don’t have your fueling right. If you’re like me you’re going to make sure your goggle strap is ready, your tires are pumped and your bike checked over, and your transition area is layed out correctly. If you put the same amount of preparation into your fueling plan you should have no problem on race day.
*As a note, I’ve used some pretty basic math in this post for simplicity. I understand that some of these calculations may be off. The purpose of this post is to show some examples of why a larger athlete needs to fuel differently than a smaller competitor. For a great article outlining a ton of calorie math, including how to calculate your daily needs and what you’re burning at various levels and activities, check out this article by Gale Bernhardt.