Hi Hope and IMP Team!
I’m so sorry to hear you caught the nasty bug floating around. It leveled me as well last weekend and am only beginning to feel human again today. Hope you are on the mend!
To answer your logistical questions about the salted potatoes, I normally boil the baby potatoes (with the skin still on them – otherwise you will get mush) the night before my long ride. I throw them inside snack-sized zip locked bags and in my cooler so that I don’t leave them home. I placed them inside a bento box on my bike and in my jersey pockets. I am a back of the pack biker so you can imagine the amount of potatoes I carried with me! I used to spit out the potato skin while biking.
I’ve also tried boiling potatoes without the skin, blending, and then placing them in those squeezable pouches that toddlers use. This ended up not working for me for a few reasons: 1. I found out the consistency of this while biking made me want to barf!
2. It’s not that easy to be screwing caps on and off while biking.
3. You’ll realize you won’t have time to be doing all of this when training miles ramps up 🙂 But if this works for you, then go with it!
I’ve had teammates make rice cakes (recipe from the Portables book referenced by Coach AJ) and wrapped them in foil. Others have eaten Encrustables and even straight up baby food!
The biggest takeaway here is that nutrition is the fourth discipline of the ironman distance – which was why Coach was bummed to see so few of you at the nutrition clinic. One needs time to log the miles but also the time to train your gut to take in nutrition while exercising.
Happy to answer questions if anything above was unclear. Happy training, team!
