He coached Taren, he sells snake oil. Not much else.


We should stop comparing him to amateurs, he should have taken a pro card many times. He is just sandbagging to be quite honest in this regard. Where's EricMPro with the "I'd rather compete as a professional and be dead last than win every race as an amateur with a pro time".

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

well if by coaching you mean retiring tazza. prescribe low carb training and life style. 20 hour plus volume. 321 out of the sport

AG record is the most meaningless stat in this thread. As someone else said, his methods prove to work to a point but the fastest athletes carb up.

"1 gel" without mentioning the liquid calories also sounds intentionally misleading, if true

He doesn't need carbs as I heard his feet grew a size between 18y.o and 19y.o...

And with that, I think everything that needs to be said in this thread has been said.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

I don't understand people that makes one tool a philosophy, and people who try to give one sentence as a real think

fact: the most HC you are able to eat and tolerate in a race the better
some mix facts: the quantity of HC you can tolerate is highly trainable, but it also depends of the intensity, the duration, the fatige, the dehydration status, the humidity, the temperature..and of course, the quantity of water and the drink rate

most triathletes will take benefit of: some fast low intensity long training, but also of gut training to be able to tolerate the highest HC as possible.
most triathletes will take benefit of take enough HC during both long low intensity and high intensity training, which allow to train more, harder and recover faster.

i think that it is an error not to use both tools, but if I Have to choose: low carb diet, high carb during training

He did drink a fair amount of coke. The "headline" statement in his IG post is a little misleading as it suggests he only had 25g carbs on the run. But just 600ml of coke and he would be at triple that. Which is still not a lot.

The thing with Dan's approach is that is gives him very consistent results. If he had more carbs on race day I suspect he may be able to go even faster, but probably not by a huge amount. I would say the opportunity would be on the bike, he could ride maybe 4:20 on that course with higher power (which would require higher carb intake), and then he could still run the same 2:48 without taking much more than he did.

But having said all of that he's both faster and more consistent that I am.

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

That's a bit of a stretch to say he could have ridden higher watts and not affected his run just with more fuel. Based on what evidence?

Congrats to Dan Plews for an outstanding result.

Of course on top of having great results he has a way of presenting things that makes people talk about him (good for him).
- in his posts he's detailed that he's actually had liquid carbs (Gatorade and coke) at every aid station. There were aid stations every mile. That has to be at least 20 aid stations. To say that he "only had 1 gel" is effectively misleading and clickbait.
- did social media posts about having done a new sub 8h "AG record" when it was a water aided swim with at least 20 minutes of aid from the current
- he says he doesn't train that much and has shown with screenshots he averages 21hours of training for 28+ weeks (but he probably does that for most of the season if not year round and has been doing it for a long time). He means net training time that goes into Training Peaks. Just finding the time and doing that is a feat on its own. Look at your TP dashboard and see your average for the past 6,12,28 weeks and see how close to that you are. I'd imagine that very few AGs go over 20h weeks for such extended periods of time.

I feel like he's doing himself a disservice by racing as an AG and communicating this way. His message would be more powerful if he raced as a Pro while having a busy full time job like he has. You know, more like Jesse Thomas with Picky bars or Matthew Marquardt being a med student. And a number of other examples.

I guess he's got the right to stay an AG if that's what he wants but if you know you can win any AG race with 25 minutes to spare and been doing that for a few years, maybe it's time to move up?

Okay

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http://www.sfuelsgolonger.com

Or maybe the opposite. Nobody would care if you end up 15th PRO whether you had 1 gel, 45 gels or a BigMac.
But being AG world record sounds different

Could HE go faster if fueled differently? for sure he knows, at the moment it is better for him to get sponsored by SFUels
Could WE AGers go faster if fueled differently? Maybe; someone. At my level, I don't have dedication/talent/time/money to try it
Could TOP LEVEL PROs go faster if fueled like him? Jan Van Berkel proved he can. But he is the only one I know so far

Good point. But it's difficult to fully consider him an AG since he trains 21h weeks year round and his job revolves entirely around triathlon training. If he's training with one of his pros, is that training or work?
It would sound very different it he was training 10-15h and achieving similar results with the same nutrition.
Besides, I've done 2 gels and the rest drinks on an IM run, so 1 gel and all drinks doesn't sound particularly crazy to me. It's perfectly doable if the race has enough aid stations. 8 aid stations per hour at even just 5 g of carbs per aid station is already 40 g per hour. 100ml of coke is already 10g and I doubt you get less than 50ml from a paper cup.
As I say this I know he practices what he preaches so I don't mean to imply that he doesn't do what he's saying or anything like that. It's quite evident that he follows a very different approach and consumes vastly less carbs than anyone else.

By the way, I don't wish to diminish his results at all, they are outstanding. I'm just expressing the disconnect I see while I'm going through one of his courses (very good stuff so far) and seeing his recent performance. It surely works to get the attention but it makes me less likely to believe some of the things he preaches (are they embellished?).

Anyhow, he loses me the moment I have to give up pizza and pasta so there's that..I guess I'll never do sub 8? :D

Well because most of us would do all of that plus 5-10 more gels... Those cokes are 2 tablespoons of coke.

The reality is, the guy practices what he preaches and does it faster than nearly everyone here does with a diet that people say isn't really possible.

I do think a big difference here is not just that he is fat adapted, but that he is going at a pace that allows him to use fat. For me, I'm usually pushing the pace above what I could comfortably do in slower fat burning mode, so I'm relying on carbs to fuel it. I'm certain I could also do a 70.3 in fat burning mode with no carbs on the run, but I'd be running a 1:55 half marathon to do it. Dan is just that much faster overall than me that he can do the marathon so fast.

Also that. Typical AG Ironman peak week is 5-6h bike ride Saturday and long run Sunday.
Should I do the run depleted? Means no carbs after the ride until end of the run Sunday morning
I can do that!

But turn into a Keto lifestyle, not for me
Wouldn't trade a year of carbs for moving 150th to 100th AG in Kona

I also don't want to diminish his performance, but still....he is racing as an amateur, why should I care?
I think triathlon (Ironman and 70.3 distances especially) is the only sport where some amateur gets more attention than some B level PRO.
ANd B level I mean, who is more famous Dan Plews or last year 20th place PRO in Kona?
Don't Google it, I just wrote it and no idea who ended up 20th ;)

I think you mean top-end pros with this statement. Because in my experience with BOP to MOP pros, I'd say most work as much as him, if not more.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

:-)

I smile and laugh at a lot of the conversation here surrounding Dan as well. So many incorrect comments spoken as truth it’s easier to let things roll on than say otherwise. Thanks for your review of EndureIQ squad ~18 months ago, I’ve been pleased.

I agree. Only in this forum we constantly get "he only trains 20 hours per week". The fact is that I know of many very accomplished pros that do less volume than that. Doing one week of 20 hours of training is one thing and many of us could peak at that despite having a demanding job, family etc. But hitting 20 hours as base volume, week in, week out, that is very difficult for most AG with a 8-6 pm type of job.

This is not a dig at Plews. The guy is an absolute beast of an athlete. If we normalize the downriver swim, we are still talking about a solo ~8:15 performance which is a solid result even among pros. However, most coach/atletes perhaps don't realize that the there is limited value to sell the "what worked for me" as opposed to "what has worked for twelve of my athletes like yourself" e.g. not too interested in listening how a coach got himself to break a 9:30 IM, but I am listening if he tells me has coached ten or twenty athletes with a demanding career to do so.

I think long term many of us could go low carb, but many of us simply don't have the time or motivation to spend years getting or bodies to function on ketones. The normal carb philosophy likely works better for most of us. Just a guess here, I don't have any training in nutrition. Would love to get Dr. Alex Harrison's input again.

I think his nutrition advice is super dangerous, especially for women athletes where there is a LOT of data that shows how low carb nutrition is just plain bad for us.

I subscribed to his newsletter a while back and unsubscribed because it was a lot of preaching of this low-carb lifestyle without really providing data or information on how or why. Just a lot of "it works for me and that's why it's better"

general POST:

Everyone should be doing ironman distance racing or longer in there FAT BURNING PACE.

IF you are not doing that pace you are on borrowed time and your body is allocating recourses away from digestion, absorption and transportation and moving those resources towards movement fuels.

The reason some will improve on this type of philosophy is they lose wt in training and the smaller you are the less calories you need per hours to move your body.

so if you were 90 KG and rode at 180 watts and were not burning in your fat zone but are Ironman pace at 160 watts to burn fat.
then lose wt are 80 kg at 160 watts and are in your fat zone now for Ironman at 2 watts per kg. You may loose some top end power.

But you also bike the same with less issues and run faster at a lighter wt, HENCE why 90% of Ironman results are BODY WT dictated. so get skinny no matter what diet and the will reach your maximum potential.

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Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Share the data.


Anyways...

1) #2 finisher in Kona had to lower carbs big time. There could be something to it in long distance

2l) Dan not racing pro shows why triathlon needs CAT bike system. Here he would be auto upgraded to race CAT 1/pro

How is what he is doing in any way different from what we see in cycling? At least in the US, there are *far* more people racing masters as a Cat 1 or 2 then there are racing the category races, there is no functional difference between Cat 1 and 2, and there is absolutely no mechanism to push a Cat 1 into the pro ranks. The "Profamateur" thing has been a thing in cycling for decades, and it's ubiquitous on the national level master's scene.

- sincerely, guy in his late 50's who has been a Cat 1 for most of the time he's been riding bikes, and pretty much never races category anymore. But hey, I won the last one I entered ;)

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

This.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Exactly.... if this is accurate, his nutrition wasn't just 'a gel'.

no masters catergory. Just straight out 1-5 based on pure ability.

Maybe there is some correlation?

https://www.slowtwitch.com/...an_Ironman_6242.html



https://www.samiinkinen.com/...waii-ironman-secrets



Just saying.