The Nick Bare Podcast - 136: Ironman Arizona Prep Update

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

In this episode, I share an update on my Ironman Arizona prep as we enter week 7, which is 90 days out from race day. I'll walk through my detailed training schedule, including long runs, bike rides, and swim sessions, and discuss the progressive overload strategy I'm using. I also dive into nutrition, sharing how I fuel my training sessions and manage my weight. Covering active recovery techniques and the challenge of time management while balancing professional and personal commitments. CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction and Ironman Prep Overview01:52 Week Seven Training Breakdown06:36 Team Effort and Creative Process13:26 Balancing Commitments and Time Management20:17 Challenges of Training in Texas Heat33:51 Key Workouts and Progress Tracking35:41 Progressive Overload in Training37:16 Long Runs and Bike Rides43:55 The Importance of Recovery48:11 Nutrition and Fueling Strategies53:43 Daily Nutrition and Caloric Intake01:00:46 Concluding Thoughts and Future PlansORDER MY BOOK HERE:https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFEhttps://bpn.team/memberIG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Hello, what is going on, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, we are doing an Iron Man Prep update. We are officially in the week seven of Iron Man Prep, about 90 days out from Iron Man, Arizona, November 16th, 2020, and to be honest, I don't know how we are already on week seven. We're almost, we are, actually, a third of the way into this prep, into this series.

It has gone so fast. I feel like we literally just started this prep a week ago. These weeks are flying by. And I think a big part of that is because there is so much training involved. Also, simultaneously, we're documenting the entire process, and I'll get into that. but it's more than just physically preparing for an Ironman triathlon. We are creating an entire series out of it. We were uploading a full 45-minute-to-one-hour YouTube video every Monday

at 9 a.m. Central Standard Time, there's a lot of filming going on through the week. The guys are working just about seven days a week on filming, editing, producing, publishing. It's a big endeavor, not just on my behalf, but the entire team's behalf. 90 days out. That's crazy. It's flying by.

What I want to do before we dive into anything is review my training program for this week. Because in the beginning of the prep, I went over, what my first two weeks of training was going to look like. And I may not have been clear enough in the way that I described that. The first two weeks of my prep, week one, week two, I considered that and looked at it as a reintroduction into triathlon training. Volume wasn't crazy high. I started training about 16 hours a week.

I wasn't doing super long runs, super long bike rides. I wasn't spending a lot of time on the saddle, no brick workouts. It was just reintroduction back to triathlon in those first two weeks. And some of the response was this volume is too low, it's not enough. I heard you, we heard you, but there was an intent behind that. So to give you kind of an updated, realistic overview of what my training looks like now into week seven of this prep might make a little bit more sense. Okay, so week seven, Monday, one hour easy run in the morning.

It's about eight miles. And then right after that easy run, I do 20 minutes of core work in the garage at my house. Then in the afternoon, I have a 90-minute endurance bike and a one-hour swim. That's a pretty easy day for me. Tuesday, this is a brick workout. So it's a four-hour bike into a one-hour run. So this will be done in the BPNHQ gym. It'll be on the trainer.

It'll be a structured workout that I customly build into Zwift. And then it sinks to my smart trainer. And for that four hours, it'll walk me through different percentages of my FTP to stimulate a certain threshold and power and overall stimulus on my body. So a four-hour bike into a one-hour run. That one-hour run will be done on the treadmill. Wednesday, I have easy run in the morning, nine miles, and then 20 minutes of core strength work in the garage.

after that, one hour swim in the afternoon. This is an easier day coming off of a big day, the prior day, because the prior day is a five-hour training day. To put it in context, I'll probably hop on the bike at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. So that is 9, 10, 11, 12. 10, 11, 12, 1. So 9 to 1, I'll be on the bike. one to two, I'll be running.

So I'll be training from 9 to 2 p.m. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, this is my speed workout day. So I have one mile repeats, 10 miles of total volume. So I'll be doing this probably on the track. And then in the afternoon, I have 20 minutes of strength and core work and a two-hour endurance bike. Friday, nine-mile easy run in the morning, a one-hour endurance recovery bike,

one-hour swim. Saturday, 18-mile run. This is a structured run. So there are some tempo intervals built into this run. It's not just go run 18 miles. It's a very structured run with paces and rest and recovery built in. And then Sunday,

This is my recovery day. It's 20 minutes of strength and core work and a one hour recovery bike. So that is week seven of Iron Man Prep overview. And I wanted to share that to show the contrast between week one and week two and week seven. Like I said, week one and two started around 16 hours of training a week. and now I'm at about 20 to 21 hours of training a week. This prep feels different. I'll be honest.

This prep feels very different than any of my previous fitness preps the last couple years. And honestly, it's because we're having a lot of fun with it. And I say we, because I view this, I truly view this as a team effort. You know, it's more than just training for a race, training for an Ironman. We document this entire thing.

And we share the journey on YouTube, on social. So much of my week, even though I'm the one training solo by myself, I'm with Trevor, I'm with Yoli, and I'm with Landry. The four of us are bouncing around, going to the lake, going to the pool. They're hanging out of the back of the truck, filming a bike or a run

in the hill country of central Texas. They're in the gym with me as I'm on the trainer or the treadmill. I spend a lot of time with these guys. We have a lot of deep conversations. A lot of great, great conversations. And

you know, I was listening to to this podcast months ago. And it was talking about creators, online creators, who burn out. Because to be very honest and frank, I've been documenting my life, been sharing the journey. I've been creating content since, at least consistently,

since 2014. So that is 11 years. 11 years of picking up a camera, being on camera, filming, sharing everything. And over those 11 years, there's times and moments where you're really creatively inspired, and there's times and moments where you're not creatively inspired at all.

And picking up a camera and filming a YouTube video is challenging. It's hard. It's just part of the process. When you're doing something that long, it's expected to come with the journey. And I was listening this podcast a few months ago, and I was talking all about creator burnout.

And the host of this podcast was explaining, if you are burning out as a creator, you have two options. You can either change your systems, your operations, your approach to creating that content, or you can change the environment and that can be where you're creating and who you're creating with.

Right now, filming and creating with three other, I would consider good friends, it's a lot of fun. Creatively, I'm so inspired right now. And it should be fun. going into a prep like this and and putting in a massive effort and a lot of work

and watching fitness build and dedicating 20 plus hours a week to this process and getting to the race days so you can throw down with your best performance possible should be fun. You know in the past I've put a lot of pressure on myself when I go into these fitness preps. And I know people here in the business

have felt that pressure before. I know my family, Steph has felt that pressure before. Not directly, but can feel the pressure that I'm giving off, the stress that I'm giving off. I think as a leader, whether you're leading a business, team, organization,

your family, one thing that I've learned over time is, as a leader, you have a responsibility to manage your, stress. Because if you allow your stress and pressure to bleed out on to your family or your team or your organization, that is unhealthy emotional leadership. I've done that before. I've been there before. And I witness daily, frequently, unhealthy emotional leadership. Not necessarily here.

here at BPN, but in different businesses and organizations, I think one of the worst things you can do as a leader is to create an unhealthy, emotional environment. And we're having so much fun with this prep right now. There's different mindset going into it. There's less pressure. I went into this prep with the intentions of, we are going to enjoy this.

It's going to be fun. and part of that is, you know, BPN is larger now. The team is bigger. I have the ability to delegate more responsibility now than I ever had before. So one of the things that makes this Ironman prep different from the one that I did in 2020, 2021, back in 2020, 2021, the business was smaller. the team was smaller. We didn't have as much experienced talent on the team, and I could not delegate as much,

so I was still very heavily involved in all of the day-to-day, from marketing to operations to fulfillment, to website, build, design, maintenance, everything. And now that the team is larger, like I said, I can delegate more responsibility so that I can focus on the things that, one, I want to focus on, but two, that actually move the needle in the business. This is where I can contribute a lot of value to the business.

So it makes sense that I spend my time creating content and working on the series with the team and being heavily involved in the creative direction and brand process. This prep just, it feels different. there's a lot of joy and purpose around this prep. We're busy. We are busy. And I'll get into that. But one thing I've learned is that there's a difference between being busy and being rushed and hurried.

My goal in life is to have a busy schedule, a busy calendar full of productive moments, in time and experiences and memories. But what I don't want is to be hurried and rushed. I don't want to be playing catch-up. I don't want to put half effort into anything. And that is the result of being hurried and rushed. There's a difference. Busy versus hurried and rushed.

There's actually a good book by John Mark. Comer called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry that I highly recommend. That was a great book that opened my eyes up to the negative environment that comes with being rushed and hurried. Now on the heels of that, I will say that the hardest part of this Iron Man prep, which I expected, but did not anticipate it to be at this level. time management. Time management with everything right now in my life is challenging me the most. I'm getting it done. There's no doubt that I'm making it happen and I'm going to continue to make it

happen until November 16th. Training sessions get completed to standard. I am showing up for my team, the business, my family. One of the things that I said in the beginning of this prep, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to do an Iron Man is to show and be an example of how you can commit to honoring your commitments. You can still be ruthlessly ambitious to chase down and accomplish whatever goal is you want to accomplish. And in the process, not sacrifice your personal responsibilities and obligations. So I'm getting it done, but it's much harder than I anticipated. And as I previously mentioned, it's not just a training that is

that is tough to fit around the daily schedule of life, but it is, you know, filming these sessions and working with Landry, Trevor, and Yoli to bring the creative direction to life. and work on these videos with these guys. I mean, they take lead on all of that. I don't want to act like I am heavily involved in the creative process or anything post-production, editing, publishing,

creating all of those things. I'm involved in the creative process with them because we work so closely every single day, but they take lead on it. they own it and they crush it they're crushing it i mean these guys we knew it going into a series like this the creatives that work on a project of this size and magnitude it ends up being a seven day a week job for the 18 week prep we knew that going into it and they're showing up and they're getting it done and in the process we're having a whole lot of fun but that is the the biggest challenge

with this prep for me so far is time management. Like I've mentioned, I was not willing and am not willing to sacrifice time with my family for an Ironman prep. And I'm going to make sure I honor my commitments to the business and the team throughout. That's why every morning I wake up at 4.15 a.m. to be done with my run, no matter how long the distance before my kids wake up and to be with my family so that after I run in the morning, Steph can train in the garage and our day is started and set on a solid foundation

for the remainder of the day. And all my training sessions are done by 4.4.30 p.m. at the max so that I can be home for family time at night and help putting my kids down to bed. On the weekend, Saturday runs, they are done before the kids wake up. I was not willing to do an Iron Man prep

and sacrifice time with my family. I wanted to make sure that I was honoring my commitments to the business and also honoring God and showing up and committing to spending time in the word, reading scripture, studying the Bible, continuing to build my relationship with Jesus Christ. And every night, as I'm laying in bed with the Norma Tech compression boots, Steph and I lay in bed at night and we read, I'm reading my Bible for 45 minutes to an hour

as those compression boots just cook on my legs and bring them back to life. And that's also something that I wasn't willing to sacrifice. It's really important to me. And I'm proud of myself so far with how I'm managing all of it, but it's tough. It's hard. No one said it's going to be easy. It's not supposed to be easy. That's one of the reason they wanted to do it.

I wanted to put myself in a position of discomfort, knowing that I would grow through the process and learn a whole lot about myself. and within these first six weeks now being in week seven of prep, I can honestly say it's been transformational. This prep has been transformational. So you know what's interesting is training for an Ironman during the summer in Texas. It's tough right now. It's, you know, if you ever spent a summer in Texas,

we got heat and we have humidity. I think a lot of people who haven't, spent significant time in Texas before, I think that we have dry heat. It is not dry heat. It is hot and humid. And that plays a huge role in training. Now, me personally,

I love training in the heat. To a certain extent. When it gets out of control, I mean, it really wears on your body. Energy levels, central nervous system, specifically. But it's actually been shown that there are similar effects on the body when it comes to heat, as does altitude. Not the exact same mechanisms, but similar in terms of the way that the body has to spare and utilize oxygen delivery.

So there are similar effects on the body when it comes to training in severe heat as it does to training at altitude. And there's a saying, and it couldn't be any more true, that summer miles bring fall smiles. We as Texas athletes, Texas fitness individuals, we know that all the work we put in in the summer is going to have a massive return on investment come. October, November, December. I skip September because September is just as hot as August and even October sometimes.

But right now, like middle of August, I'm feeling the heat on the sessions that I'm training outdoors. I mean, this morning is a good example. This morning was 90% humidity. and I believe it was like a temperature of felt like 83 degrees Fahrenheit. And that was at 5 a.m. And that humidity just wraps around you. And I sweat a lot. I'm a heavy sweater.

I'm a salty sweater, which I have to consider when it comes to just pounding water throughout the day and sodium consumption. and I can easily lose 8 to 10 pounds during some of these runs. A 9, 10 plus mile run. I'll weigh myself before and I'll weigh myself after. And I can be anywhere from 8 to 10 plus pounds lighter. Now, that is not fat.

That is primarily water and glycogen. So your body stores carbohydrates in the muscle and in the liver. there's stored carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. And your body will tap in and utilize these energy stores during training sessions, especially longer training sessions. And when you go for these training sessions, these runs, especially when you're sweating a lot, you're expending a lot of energy,

your body is utilizing oxygen to cool itself down. You can easily sweat out and utilize, glycogen in a rate where you're losing significant weight. I'm experiencing that. Now, by the end of the day, I end up putting all that weight back on. I rehydrate, I get water, salt, carbs back in me, and it comes back. But that is just the effect that some of these training sessions have on the body. One of the things that you should look into considering, at least that I look into considering,

during training seasons where it's hot and humid is I'll look at the temperature, I'll look at the humidity, and I'll look at the dew point, and I'll consider all three of these things to kind of gauge what the effort level is going to be for that run. If you go run and it's hot and it's humid and there's a high dew point, that effort is going to feel and be much harder than if it was cool around.

A few weeks ago, we were in Northern California for a weekend, and I ran with Joe Greer 14 miles. It was probably 55 degrees, maybe 50 degrees when we started, and there was like no humidity. We barely sweat on that entire run, and all 14 miles felt effortless. Then we held like a 7, 11 minute per mile pace. Effortless, like very little impact to the body or central nervous system.

I wasn't taxed or fatigued at all after that run. Last week, or I guess two weeks ago, I had a 17-mile run here in central Texas. And we started around 6.30 a.m. Didn't get done until 8. 45 a.m. maybe. It was a little over two hour run, 17 miles. And the first hour of that run felt great. And then that sun started coming up and it was hot, it was humid. I got wrecked on that run. This is the first time this has happened to me in years. The last time something of this actually happened to me was probably last Iron Man prep. I remember this one day in our Iron Man Prep back in 2020

where I was running outside midday and the heat and humidity kind of just wraps around you feels like a hot blanket, hot wet blanket and you almost feel like you're suffocating you can't breathe, you can't cool down. And I remember we had the truck with us and we had this cooler in the back that was filled with ice and I just opened this cooler up and put my head in that ice trying to cool down as fast as possible

because I was heating up and I could not control my heart rate. I could not control my body temperature. It starts getting dangerous. Well, that's what happened two weeks ago in the 17 mile run. 10, 11, 12 miles in felt easy, breezy. It felt like nothing. And out of nowhere, I started noticing that my heart rate started increasing and I couldn't bring it back down. And my body temperature started increasing. I couldn't bring it back down.

I couldn't control the effort. And it went from zero to 100 real quick, where I had to actually pull off the side of the road, sit down. I thought I was going to throw up. I thought I was going to pass out. But that heat just overtakes your body. And if you're not heat acclimated, it can be pretty dangerous. So we took about 10 minutes, sat on the side of the road. Trevor put a bag of ice behind my neck and head and just trying to cool the body down a little bit so I could finish the run because there's no way I wasn't finishing that 17 mile training run. No matter how long I had to rest, I was going to finish that training run that day. I wasn't pulling out of that one.

And that's why I'm doing a lot of my training indoors right now. The training that I can do, you know, like running, other than these brick workouts, I'm always running in the morning early. And then I'm doing a lot of my training on the bike, on the trainer, in the gym. I just find that the trainer is safer. You can control a lot of the variables. You can get a really efficient and effective workout. You can hold specific powers.

You're not worried about hitting red lights and stop signs and other cars and all of those things. I believe you still have to get out in the road and we are still getting out in the road and riding the bike, but I think the indoor trainer for the bike is one of the greatest inventions ever made when it comes to the sport of triathlon or cycling. I can get such a good workout in a few hours and really maximize the efficiency of the stimulus I'm trying to get out of that workout. So, like, that's one of the reasons I'm using the indoor trainer.

but also just keeping me out of the sun later than day. It's not just that the sun makes these workouts harder and potentially dangerous, but it affects your recovery. I made the mistake last week of doing a bike workout in my home garage. And I looked at my calendar for the day, my schedule, and it was a one-hour easy endurance bike. And I did that bike workout in our home garage early in the morning. I decided intentionally not to bring the bike fan from the BPNHQ to my house to ride

because I didn't think it was going to be that hot. It was an easier ride. It was a one hour ride. I haven't sweated that much on the bike this entire prep. I can't tell you the last time I sweated that much in an hour ever. It was a faucet coming off me. I instantly regretted not having my bike fan. Having a bike fan is like,

if you have an indoor trainer, you almost have to have a bike fan or at least some sort of fan on you while you're riding. I didn't have my bike fan. The garage was probably seeing about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It was very still heat. There wasn't any airflow coming in. and that workout wrecked me.

And the reason I share that is because I was mad at myself after that because I knew that that workout, which was supposed to be more low stimulus, facilitate some recovery, that workout actually tanked me and had negative effects on my swim later in the day. But also I could feel that for the next couple days.

I dug myself a hole. So a lot of training when it comes to this much volume and varied intensities is that you're trying to build and there are times when you dig deep and you bury yourself

and you really push the limits. But if you do that when you didn't want to do that, it will affect your recovery. It'll affect the next workout. It'll affect the next couple of days of work. counts and it's actually pretty difficult to then dig out of that hole that you just dug yourself. So a lot of what this training is here, especially for an Iron Man in the middle of Texas in summer,

is that you are trying to control the variables that you can control to build fitness and facilitate this stimulus to build. in throughout the prep without making dumb decisions like I have done and burr yourself to reduce your ability to recover and then hurt your progress. There's a time in place to go harder and to push, but there's many more times in places and circumstances to facilitate the environment to get better, to get better to improve. So you know, when you go into a,

a new prep or a training program, there is a couple week acclamation period where your body is trying to adjust to the new stimulus, the new volumes, the intensities, maybe the style of training. Like I haven't consistently been on a bike for a long time. Up until,

you know, seven weeks ago, I haven't swam in a pool, like actually swam for like five years. So the beginning of a prep like this, it is reintroduction and acclamation. And you're not going to expect or I don't expect to see results

instantaneously or even within the first two, three, maybe even four weeks. But now seven weeks in, I can feel fitness building. This past week, I had a staple workout of mine, which is 10-mile workout, 2-5-mile warm-up, 10, 800-meter repeats,

with 60 seconds of rest in between, and then a 2.5 mile cool down. Now, I want to clarify, I get this question a lot, what does that rest look like? It is me just standing there. 60 seconds of standing waiting for the next rep. It's not a walk, it's not a slight jog. I rest, I stop in between each one. one of those 800 meter repeats. That's a staple workout of mine.

It's called Yasso 800s. And I was holding about between a 535 and a 545 minute per mile pace on those 800s. That workout is the first workout, track workout, where I could feel that everything was coming together.

I felt fast, I felt smooth, my gait felt strong, my leg turnover felt efficient, that was a big confidence booster. I was like, oh man, like, yeah, we're seven weeks in and now I'm building that fitness again. It's back, baby.

The legs are back. The speed is back. The efficiency is there. It takes time. You know, it takes weeks, sometimes months to feel like things are starting to click. But when you program appropriately and you control volume and intensity and you build into it and you incorporate progressive. overload, things start to come together and just like the snap your fingers.

The way Jeff Cunningham explained it, it's like plate tectonics. It just all comes together and fits in perfectly. So as I mentioned, when I started this prep, 18 weeks out, I was at 16 hours of training per week, now I'm at about 20 to 21 hours of training per week. That will still increase slightly by a few hours. over these next couple weeks as we get deeper into the prep. I like to incorporate progressive overload.

And that can be an increased volume of mileage or time or intensity or time within certain zones. But it needs to be this stair stepper where you're not going from zero to 100 overnight. Over weeks, you're slowly building up to the peak and pinnacle of that build, and then you slowly start to decrease training volume

into your taper into race week. Progressive overload, if done the right way, with the right stimulus is and you're training within the right zones, fitness builds, and it all comes together, and then it starts to click. There's no better feeling when things just click. Like when I hit that first, second, third, 800 meter repeat,

In this past workout, I was like, oh yeah, this is what it feels like for things to just fall into place as they are supposed to. That's a good feeling. I love that feeling. That's why I love the process of a build. That's why I love the reason it's called a build. You build into it. Something I've been thinking about on these long runs, too, for me at least.

Now, everyone might be different, but for me at least, I have found that these long runs and these long bike rides are critical for an Iron Man prep or even a marathon. And if you look at like a training week right now, I'm running between 60 and 65 miles per week. And what I'm being told by other triathletes is that's too much running. but I'll be honest, I like a lot of running. I love running.

And I'm programming my Iron Man prep based off the way that I love and enjoy training. And it's probably why I'm loving this prep so much is because, for one, I'm creating my own training program based off of what I know I need to work on and what I love doing. So it's like the best of both worlds. So I'm running about 60 to 65 miles a week right now. and my Saturdays are my long runs typically. And I'll kind of teeter-totter between every other week

being a base week and then a build week. So for example, a base week will be 14-mile long run. And then I'm going to go 14 miles, next week 15 miles, next week 14 miles, next week 16 miles, next week, 14 miles, next week 14 miles. Next week, 17 miles. Next week, 14 miles.

Next week, 18 miles. Next week, 14 miles. Next week, 20 miles. That's the approach I like to take for the long run. And then same thing for long bike rides, slowly increasing the duration of these long bike rides. So my first long bike ride a few weeks ago is three hours. Then I went to three and a half hours.

And now I'm going to be four hours and I'll go four and a half hours. and I'll go five hours. So as you can see, there's these trends where I'm slowly increasing all the aspects of training. And that's one to just build fitness but also mitigate risk of injury.

And I shared this in a recent YouTube video. But if you look at a training week of 65 miles, if there were two options, one, option one, you spread those 65 miles out over the course of six days evenly. Off the top of my head, I guess that's like, what, 11 miles?

Roughly, 11 miles a day. That's option one. Option two is that you reduce the running mileage to say eight or nine, five days a week. Then you have a long run on the weekend. For me personally, I have found that option two works better

and that I get better results and I build better fitness and I have stronger endurance when I have a big training session once a week. I don't think that I can replicate the same conditions by spreading that volume out over the course of a week

as I can from getting one big run or one big bike ride each week. The time on your feet the volume, the amount of time you're sitting on the bike, pedaling and spinning and just in the saddle, I don't think can be replicated or replaced by, at least for me, from what I found, spreading that training volume out over the course of six, seven days.

So I'm a big believer in the weekly long run and the weekly big bike ride for Iron Man Prep. Now, one thing I do want to throw in there when it comes to running, and running shoes specifically. So I'm not affiliated with any shoe company, but the running shoes that I personally enjoy, my daily trainers are Sockony Endorphin Speed Fives.

I love the threes. I love the twos. I loved the twos. I loved the threes. I really did not like the fours. I skipped out in the fours. I bought the threes as long as I could. And then Sockony released the fives.

and I like the fives. That's my daily trainer. This isokony, endorphin speed, fives now. And what I do is I buy two pairs at a time. And I wear one pair every other day. And they're two different colors, so I know, you know, which pair is which. I have a yellow pair and I have a white pair. So Monday I wear, for example, the yellow pair, Tuesday, the white pair.

Wednesday, yellow pair, Thursday, white pair. so on and so forth. I rotate my shoes so that they last longer and you give them some time to just like decompress, that foam gets pretty compressed daily. So just allow them to like decompress within 48 hours. And then for speed workouts, I'm wearing a carbon plated shoe. That is the softening endorphin elites. That is the shoe that I ran my last marathon, California International Marathon, I love that carbon-plated shoe. So that's like my go-to speed workout shoe right now

that I'll wear for tempo runs and then track workouts. But I wanted to share that little tip of just buying two pairs of shoes at one time in rotating every other day. I found that to be very helpful. Now, I want to talk about nutrition, fueling all the things because, man, when it comes to an Ironman prep, you're training 20 plus hours a week. Training is part of it, obviously. Time management is part of it, obviously. Recovery is part of it. Nutrition and fueling might trump all of that. Side note, to talk recovery real quick.

I have found in this prep, maybe it's because I'm getting older. I just recently turned 35. I'm having to do a lot of active recovery that I didn't have to do five years ago. Five years ago, maybe being younger, maybe getting more sleep because we didn't have kids yet. I felt like I could get away with not doing a lot of active recovery work. Now, I have to. So every Tuesday, we bring Dr. Jordan Tittle from Helix, sports performance medicine into BPNHQ, and he works on the entire team.

So I grab an hour in that day. He does cupping, dry needling, scraping, chiropractic, soft tissue massage, game changer. I do that once a week with Dr. Jordan Tittle, with Helix. He is the man and he brings me back to life. So that's one of the things that I'm doing for recovery once a week. I would love to do it twice a week, but just can't find the time

and he can't come to VPN twice a week. I'm doing sauna and cold plunge just about every day. So I'll do a 15-minute, 15 to 20-minute sauna session anywhere from 195 to 205 degrees, Fahrenheit, and then I get in the cold plunge for three minutes. Now, for the longest time, I mean years, I hated the cold plunge.

As much as I wanted to love the cold plunge, I hated the cold plunge. We have three cold tubs here at BPNHQ. I have one of my house. And I started forcing myself to, uh, to do it. Our cold plunges are from Cold Creek tubs. They make incredible cold plunges.

Cold Creek tubs. We have three here, BPN, like I said, one of my house. And when I got in this prep, I was like, I'm going to use the cold plunge. And those first couple sessions were painful. I hated every part of it. And everyone always told me, just be consistent with it, and it gets easier.

And you know what? You guys were right. I now can get in the cold tub with no problem. Three minutes, no problem. Last night, before going to bed, I did the sauna late at night, right into the cold plunge for three minutes. I was kind of afraid that it would wake me up and keep me up because when I do it in the middle of the day, it's like a jolt of energy. But no, it didn't do that. I fell asleep so fast, so hard.

but the sauna and cold plunge every single day I use the hyperice or therogun massage guns on my calves, hamstrings and quads and then every night as I'm laying in bed

or reading my Bible, I do the Norma Tech compression boots, 30 minutes to an hour session. And that's been like my recovery protocol. And like, during the day, I just live in my cane recovery shoes. Just allows my toes to kind of expand. I found that if I'm just wearing lifestyle running tennis shoes during the day

and my feet are crammed into a shoe and my toes are compacted, my feet can't spread out and it actually limits my recovery. So all of you just walk around barefoot or I'll wear my cane recovery shoes. like I'm wearing my cane recovery shoes right now and just allowing my toes to expand and feet move and grab the ground has actually made a big difference in lower body recovery.

So those are just some of the things that I'm doing for recovery right now. That was a side tangent. I want to get back to nutrition. So the first thing I want to address is that as we talk about progressive overload when it comes to training, we have to apply progressive overload in the same way when it comes of fueling.

So if you have never fueled during training, in this case, let's talk about the bike. If you've never fueled on the bike during training, going from no fueling to say 8,500 grams of carbs per hour right away, you may experience some sort of GI, gastrointestinal distress or stomach issues. You have to train your gut in the same way you train your body. Just like you wouldn't go from zero miles to 65 miles a week, week one. You want to slowly build into that. So for the first six weeks of prep while I was on the bike,

I was fueling with 65 grams of carbohydrates and 800 milligrams of sodium per hour. Now I've increased that. My body is very efficient at managing 65 grams of carbohydrates, 800 milligram sodium per hour. No issues at all. Now I've increased that on the bike to 85 grams of carbohydrates and 1,000 milligrams of sodium per hour on the bike. So what does that look like? When I was doing 65 grams of carbs per hour, I was doing two scoops of G1M Sport and one go gel

per hour, every hour on the bike. Now, I'll be doing three scoops of G1M Sport and one go gel, or I'll do two scoops of G1M Sport and two go gels per hour on the bike. And it gets me roughly to 85 grams of carbohydrates, give or take, thousand milligrams of sodium,

give or take, per hour. I am pretty much living off of G1M Sport, GOMSport Plus, GoBars, electrolytes, go gels, and weight protein, on top of all the other food that I'm consuming right now.

On like big training days, not my big, big training days, but on a big training day, I'm having anywhere from six to eight scoops of G1M Sport. Some of those scoops being G1M Sport Plus. On those same days, I'm having four go gels, two go bars, a few scoops of electrolytes,

depending on how much I sweat, and then to get some liquid calories in, weight protein and protein for recovery. But I wanted to, to share that in terms of progressive overload for nutrition in the same way that is applied to training because just like your body and your central nervous system, you have to train your gut in the same way in capacity. So that's fueling around training, you know, the products that I'm using, the supplements, the BPN supplements that I'm using. I still every morning look forward

to my go bar. If you guys haven't tried the BPN go bar yet, you're missing out. I wake up, my alarm goes off at 4.15 a.m. The first thing I do, I jump out of bed and I go to the pantry and I eat a go bar. If it's a big training day, I will spread honey on the go bar. And that takes it to a whole other level. And not just any honey. I go to the farmer's market in Austin, Texas, and we found this honey spot that makes churned honey. Churned honey, from what I've been told, is like fermented honey where it gets thick and, like, creamy. You can get just regular, but they also have cinnamon.

I will buy the churned cinnamon honey at the farmer's market. I spread that on a go bar. That at 4.15, maybe 4.17 a.m. Oh, my. Oh, my. I look forward to that every single. single morning. This morning, for example, Nico woke up at 3 a.m. and he was hungry, so I went out in the kitchen, I made him a bottle and put him back to bed. As I was making him a bottle, I could feel my

stomach rumbling a little bit. So I ate a go bar with churned honey on it at 3 a.m. this morning, because it sounded so good. That is a product plug, yes, but I'm telling you, once you try the go bar, it's life-changing. It's so good. I look forward to it before every run. Before every run, I do one go bar, sometimes with honey on it. Like I said, one scoop of G1M Sport, one scoop of G1M Sport Plus. That's my pre-run fuel.

Now, outside of supplements and fueling, let's talk overall nutrition. Weight is falling off me faster than I'd like it to right now. so I'm actually having to increase my calories. And I feel like I'm eating a lot right now. And what's really interesting about prep is because you're training multiple times throughout the day. So you have to get creative, especially when you're eating a lot of these calories from,

I say, like whole, clean food sources. You have to get creative in the way that you get calories in, you prepare your foods because you're planning for fueling upcoming workouts, but also optimizing for digestion, so a meal isn't sitting in your stomach. And then consuming those meals and foods around training and spacing out so you're not having to eat,

you know, three, four thousand calories in night before going to bed. So I always have going into a new day, I know when I'm training. And there's room for flexibility, but I typically know when and what I'm training, what I'm eating, when I'm eating it, what I'm fueling with, and how many calories I'm going to roughly consume

by the end of the day. You have to have a game plan for that because if you don't and you fall behind, that will significantly impact recovery and performance. Calories are ultimately king. So that's the way I think of it. Calories number one, we've got to get the calories in to support training.

Then it's carbohydrates. Right now I'm consuming. me anywhere from 700 to 800 grams of carbohydrates most days. And I'm not complaining about that because I love my carbs. A bowl or two of cereal at night before going to bed, that's my jam right now. But food choices, for me at least, matter. I feel better. Recovery-wise, performance-wise, when most of my foods are coming from these whole natural food sources and supplements, I'd rather foods that digest easily as opposed to just chlorically dense foods. I can go get 3,000 easy calories from a burger and fries, but that's going to sit in my

stomach. I'm not going to feel really good the next morning or the next day. I'd rather consume more volume of food as inconvenient as that can be sometimes, but from better options, because I know how that makes me feel. So when you're trying to consume most of your foods from these, I quote this, like clean sources,

it does become more challenging because typically these sources are less chlorically dense, usually, but I feel better when the food choices that I'm making are, in quotes, cleaner. Technically, there's not like clean foods, but you know what I'm saying here, right? More natural whole ingredients. But I am losing weight faster than I'd like to. So I'm having to increase my calories to make sure that I'm fueling my work. I'm recovering appropriately, but also I don't want to lose weight too fast. I don't really

want to lose weight at all. I want to stay at the weight that I'm at. But it becomes challenging to get as many calories as you need and also train and recover and do all the other things. It becomes a game of Tetris. And a lot of times I'll resort to liquid calories, orange juice or smoothies. I can get so many calories in with a smoothie. I'll do a smoothie with milk, oats, honey, dates, peanut butter, protein powder. You can load, put some frozen fruit in there. You can load a smoothie with a thousand plus calories easily. And it digest very quickly.

And you can jump into training an hour after that. So I've been doing a lot of smoothies. At night, like I mentioned, I do my, a bowl or two of cereal. And what's funny is a few months ago, we moved into our new house. We had this crew come out and they helped us to organize our pantry

in our fridge and just like all the organizational spaces in our house. And they asked, are we a cereal family? And at a time, we said, no, we're not cereal people. We don't eat cereal. I haven't eaten cereal since I was in high school.

And me and stuff, we're just joking last week because now if you walk in our pantry, we have 10 boxes of cereal at any time. I personally like the Cascadian Farms cereal. It's an organic cereal. And they're all pretty good, but the one that I like is the cinnamon oat clusters. It's so crunchy.

It's sweet. It's cinnamony. After we put the kids down to sleep at night, I'll make a big bowl of that. And I'll go sit on our front porch and I'll eat that bowl. And it's just, it's good. We're cereal people now. Being in this prep, trying to get calories in, carbs in. Oh yeah, we're cereal people. Steph even joins me.

She's on a serial train too. Not every night with me, but most nights. Like two weeks ago we went for sushi. One of our favorite sushi spots in Austin is called Neighborhood sushi. And me and Steph love it. And we took Steph's mom for the first time ever. And we always get a bunch of nagiri. Nagiri and hand rolls.

And we eat a lot. Like when we order, I go down the list and I just watch the waiter or waitresses reaction as we're just ordering all of it and we always consume it all. And we went for sushi recently and I ate so much nagiri and hand rolls. But it's so clean. It digest so fast. I mean, nagiri is just rice and fish, raw fish. And I dip it in some ponsu. And I got home after that meal and I was still starving and I had a massive bowl cereal. Those carbs, baby. those carbs will fuel you. Nutrition is the name of the game when it comes to Iron Man Prep.

So that's what I wanted to update you guys on. Some training stuff, some nutrition stuff, how this prep's going so far. We're a third of the way through, and I'm loving it, I'm enjoying it. It's been fun, so much fun. Hope you guys are enjoying the series on YouTube. Like I said, new episode drops every Monday,

9 a.m. Central Standard Time. Appreciate the love and support. And we'll see you guys in the next episode.