Test of stamina
Triathlon is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and the British team will be enthusiastically supported at the London 2012 Olympic venue at Hyde Park. This year’s Olympic triathlon events will be a 1500m swim, a 43km bike ride and a 10km run. The best competitors are expected to take less than one hour and 50 minutes in a grueling test of stamina and tactical ability.

Dr Kerry McGawley, Dr James Betts and graduate, Oliver Shannon, from the Human Physiology Research Group, at the University of Bath, have been studying how nutrition can improve the triathlete’s performance. The sport places a heavy demand on the body’s limited energy supplies. They showed that drinking a relatively high concentration of carbohydrates, as opposed to taste-matched water during the cycle section, resulted in a marked improvement in the subsequent run performance.

Nutrition and metabolism
Betts has specialised in metabolism and nutrition. He says, ‘when you look at fatigue in the human body none of us are surprised that we can’t exercise at the maximum intensity for an indefinite period, so fatigue is an illustrative example of how the body has limitations. I find it intriguing that by adjusting someone’s diet you can have profound effects on their ability to perform.’

Betts advised on what the drinks would be, the amount of carbohydrates to feed the athletes and how to interpret that in the study. In this study they fed athletes two grammes per minute of carbohydrate in the form of a glucose and fructose mixture. No study had done that in triathlon before.