Hydration Is Performance: Triathlon, Science & Strategy with Natasha Cooper Smith

What does it really take to stay hydrated as a triathlete?
In this episode, we sit down with Natasha Cooper Smith—elite triathlete, sports scientist, and hydration expert at Precision Hydration—to unpack the science and real-world strategy behind effective hydration.

Natasha shares her journey into the world of performance hydration, her daily routines, and how she adapts her approach in different situations.

From sweat testing and electrolyte strategies to gender-specific challenges and heat chamber training, Natasha dives deep into what it takes to stay ahead of the hydration curve—and busts some common hydration myths.

We explore:
💧 Race-day hydration plans for swim, bike, and run
💧 Electrolyte balance and favourite fuelling products
💧 The role of female hormones in hydration
💧 How to hydrate smart—especially for beginner women triathletes
💧 Pre-Loading, and why it's important
💧 Tech, tracking, and Natasha’s personal strategies

Whether you're racing your first sprint or chasing an Ironman podium, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you hydrate like a pro.

Check out the Precision Hydration planner here https://www.precisionhydration.com/planner/

And Follow Tash on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/tash.cs/

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Transcript

[Music] hi I'm Celia Booman founder of LTR Coaching and I'd like to welcome you to the Inspired Triathletes podcast where I'll be bringing you stories from female triathletes and taking on topics that are important to women in the

sport hello and welcome to today's episode i'm here with Natasha Cooper Smith a triathlete and sports scientist with Precision Hydration so thanks for joining me today Natasha how did you get Sorry my Zoom thing's bleeping telling me I've got a meeting which I'm in now um how did you get into working with Precision Hydration to start off with then um I actually just reached out to them after finishing my master's degree which I did at Birmingham University um I reached out sort of halfway through the degree and told them I was interested in working for them and then when I finished I shared what I learned in my degree and basically just thought is there any chance you want to sport scientist and at the time they needed one so that was really helpful for me wow that's amazing very lucky you were in the right place at the right time then and were you doing triathlons at that point as well um yeah I I started doing triathlon at university but I not at the same level as I do now and I don't mean in the way that like I'm really really good i just mean it was far more of like a in my free time as opposed to like a structure um so as I joined Precision it got a lot more intense when you're in an environment where everyone does it yeah and then you've got that sort of knowhow around you and everybody's kind of thinking in the same way and wanting to perform at their best I guess exactly yeah and we have the tools here to sort of help further your performance so it it really benefits being here yeah so what kind of tools do you have then to help with performance um well as sports scientists we work with athletes directly um both professionals and amateurs so I get to chat to people and understand what they're doing in in their sports whether it's triathlon or not um and that's really helpful just as a a learning thing for myself you know you you hear what other people do and you can pick that up take it on and that kind of thing um we also have a lab which I think it we opened that lab in maybe end of last year November time and we now have been running for a while and can do different sort of performance testing and heat acclamation so having access to that kind of testing is really helpful as well because you know I can go in there on my lunchtime and get some sort of heat accommodation benefits or even just ride my bike in there and yeah that's a luxury that I've got it sounds like not a nice luxury though is it i don't know i've done heat acclimation in our in my bathroom before and it was horrendous so yeah what's it look like in there then what's the setup we have um one treadmill and then two turbo trainers where we can bring our bikes and then one uh static bike um in in the lab bit itself and then we have sort of like an anti-chamber where we do our sweat testing and any sort of customer interaction um so it's got a good setup we've got two uh sort of radiation heaters in there so it gets it gets pretty hot when you want it to um but it does its job and it's pretty well built for it so yeah it's nice yeah no I I just remember doing it like I had to get the bath I had to fill up my bath with water to get the humidity up and had like oil filled radiator just shut the door on the top oh it was not pleasant i didn't enjoy that at all too many of them so how often do you do that then or is it just in leadup to races where you're going to need it yeah um I did it I did a block of it about 10 to 14 days last year ahead of um world champs in Talpo um it was more because we were actually just refining our protocols and it was good to get some of us to go through that and see you know how can we make our protocols for customers better but obviously I got some benefits off the back of that and then since then I sort of had some time away from that and I have a race coming up in five or six weeks and I've yeah I've been in maybe three or four times for the last couple of weeks i'll do the same this week um far less structured more just doses of of heat where I can get them to feel some benefits um I find the heat pretty unbearable in races so I'm just trying to improve my tolerance a little bit for that yeah definitely it's hard when you live in a country that it doesn't get that hot i think we get used you just to climatize to your temperature in that country i find it hard as well it was uh yeah very tough training and how long do you do you stay in there is it about an hour or less or yeah we our protocol is is about 60 minutes it's a quick warm up where we just ramp it you then do steady state for about 50 minutes and then cool down for the last five um it's fairly tolerable in that it's not enjoyable but it's short enough that you can sort of grit your teeth and get through it um you can do like hour and a half protocols and we would would run them if you know we needed to but we just have to lower the intensity or the heat um 40° is hot for an hour so anything more is like yeah we wouldn't want to push people too far yeah it's getting that balance right isn't it to get the adaptions and but not push people into exhaustion and especially before your race as well when you're kind of in the leadup it's quite a balance isn't it definitely awesome oh that's really good that you've got that there it's quite interesting just the other thing that I did um in the leadup was like hot baths because there's research for that as well and I I don't know which was actually it was pretty bad you think oh yeah lying in a bath okay but it's just so hot especially when you've done it after exercise cuz normally I think you do a run or whatever and then you get in the in the bath for a while and yeah it's it's not fun at all um people do it in the sauna as well so there are loads of ways you can get the same benefits but exercising in the heat is the most direct so yeah it's like most like what you're actually going to do I guess and then hydration wise you have to be really on top of that when you when you're in there and when you're out of there I'm assuming yeah we for every time anyone whether it's staff or a customer goes in our lab we tell them to weigh themsel pre and post so we'll we have the facilities to just say go and have no clothes on wear yourself put your clothes back on come out go and exercise we'll weigh their bottles so we know how much they're drinking if they eat anything we'll weigh that um we'll understand exactly the amount of fluid they've lost and then as a standard everyone is I'd say encouraged is a nicer term but pretty much like forced to drink about 500 mil of fluid during that time um mainly mainly for safety and you know your perception of thirst is probably a bit blunted when you're hot cuz it's like some people think I'm really really thirsty and then other people think I actually just feel a bit sick i don't want anything so we try and encourage people to drink about that much but usually they have a lot more than that um from my experience I I lose like 1.6 1.7 liters in that hour which is I'm not a tall person so it's quite a lot for someone my size um and I drink about a liter within that session and then afterwards I'll just sip electrolytes and and fluids throughout the rest of the day and in you know if you lose less fluid it's it's more manageable but some of the other athletes we have come in they lose about 3 L in the hour and it's like okay how are we going to get them to rehydrate enough um cuz as I said you don't really want to drink that much you come out and you're like I'm thirsty but the last thing I want to do is chug loads of water so yeah it's more sort of encouraging and managing them and you know trying to tell people well look if you see what you've lost this is definitely what you need to drink um but you know everyone's an athlete usually that goes in there so they're pretty good at to like doing that I guess like so I think it's um it's hard for people that are just starting out I think to to figure that out and they don't realize how much they've got to drink because I know I've just my husband's training for Iron Man at the moment and he was like "Oh I'm going out i'm doing this that and the other." And I I sort of told him what he should be eating and I was like "Okay." cuz he wasn't eating the right stuff and then he went off and I was like "God he only took two bottles with him." Came back I was like "You should have taken he was really like tired and just not didn't recover properly." And it was like "You need to take more with you." And but yeah you just I suppose if you're not used to that and you're not in that environment you don't know so let let's bring it back a little bit to people that are kind of like starting out and because I got all excited about the heat chamber and thought that was but for for most people they're looking at like daily hydration and just kind of like getting the basics right really um so what does your daily hydration look like when you're like when you're training and then on rest days so what would you be expecting to drink yeah I I I can't say that I track total volume of fluid very much um I train most days of the week even if you know it's just going to the gym that's still in my eyes some form of movement um and everything we do whether it's a walk going to gym exercising the bike i mean we're all sweating i mean you're probably sweating just sitting you know in your office for a day like naturally people lose body water um so for me I just focus on trying to always have something on my desk that is fluid whether that's like water electrolytes you know tea you name it um I if I'm doing a session if it's a hard session I use electrolytes beforehand i preload is the sort of the protocol that we use here um basically just a strong electrolyte drink about an hour before I go and do that exercise so you know if that's a a turbo session on the bike without a doubt I do it cuz I know that you know starting hydrated is very important um I'll always have a bottle with me of usually plain water when I'm doing indoor training um and I try my best just listen to if I'm thirsty or not because everyone is very intuitive whether you think it or not we're pretty smart as individuals and our bodies tell us you know if you're craving plain water it's it's likely that you do just need to have a drink and if you're craving salt it's like maybe get some sodium or some electrolytes in that um but I don't place a massive focus on you know sort of tracking how much fluid i just think have I done a lot of exercise and I I do weigh myself pre and post any big sessions I do just because I mean it's habit now as as a sport scientist that I do it for everyone else so I'm like why not just do it for myself um so anything you know if I'm doing a long ride at the weekend I'll usually calculate my intake so if I know I'm going out for let's say 4 hours and I know what a minimum intake for any athlete should be really is about 4 to 500 mil of fluid i then say okay as long as I've got I don't know two two and a bit liters on my bike drink that and if I come home and I'm still lighter I just try and sip on whatever I've sort of lost and not replaced but I think hydration is sort of a thing where you you can sort of plan it really specifically if you wanted to but assuming your body is fairly used to training and you're in tune with it and and and how you respond just drinking enough is probably the the biggest thing to focus on yeah so so you would count you you kind of make a plan if you're going to do training but in daily life you don't is that what you're saying yeah yeah usually yeah especially I mean shorter sessions I Yeah that's unless it's unless it's gut training or something like that it's not yeah I I do for for running i've I've really tried now even for shorter runs to bring some fluid even if it's like a very small soft flask because for gut training purposes for being in a race situation like training your body to actually like tolerate fluid is is not as easy as I once thought it was um so yeah and especially now that we're getting some sunshine in the UK which makes it a lot hotter just sipping more frequently means that I have less work to do when I get home and by work I just mean drinking yeah sure yeah yeah i think that's like the strategy that that I would use as well is that kind of like I just drink in the day as I'm thirsty and I'm at home you know I think it's also difficult when people don't have access to fluids and they're out and about and they're really busy in the day they sometimes forget so in that case they do need to make that conscious effort but cuz I'm like working from home I just go and get a drink of water or I make a cup of tea or I have a cup of coffee and the hydration is fine and then if I was doing exercise I will take water with me i'm not training for triathlon anymore so I don't kind of need the same I don't have the same hydration you know I was much more on it when I was doing that but you know I noticed things like um I went out with a friend climbing last week and I probably I just took like my normal bottle of water but when you're out all day and you've got one bottle of water and then you come home and you're like "Oh my god I'm thirsty." And the next day I went for a run and I felt really sort of terrible because I hadn't drank enough the day before so it has this knock-on effect if you're not like constantly thinking about it when you're in that training mode you really do because you're just always sweating and losing fluid like you say and if you're not aware of that difference in your weight I think that's a good way for people to get the awareness if they don't have it already for sure i agree and I think also the there's a big I see it a lot with some of the the athletes I work with and more so the amateurs where you you say to them like on a scale of 1 to 10 how sweaty do you think you are and you you try and understand where they fall on that sort of one being you don't sweat 10 being you can ring your own clothes out um and I think sometimes people are afraid to admit that they sweat um and it's it's always a tricky one cuz it's like it's actually a good thing like it just means you're you're effective at cooling yourself down but sometimes people are like "Oh yeah no I'm definitely I don't sweat that much." You know I don't notice it and I'm always like "Oh okay." But you you probably do and and understanding and collecting some data is just the easiest and like a free tool essentially all you need is some body weight scars and most people have them and it really really helps people sort of a understand they actually do lose fluid um and B it gives them a really good sort of structure of okay if I'm losing this much then this much is how you know how I should drink and rehydrate and as you said it's only a sort of a vicious cycle where if you don't drink enough your next run's crap and then you know it just goes round and round like that so yeah and then there's like injury risk as well with that because you just muscles don't recover properly and they get all it feels like they just tense up a little bit more i don't know if that was very scientific but that's what it feels like it is it's just cramping um yeah without fluid and electrolytes you literally cannot contract your muscles so that's where the cramping comes from um oh interesting okay um so yeah obviously your hydration has changed over the years have you ever faced any sort of setbacks during race or training where things went a bit pear-shaped or you just Yeah definitely um before I started working here and actually when I was doing my undergrad degree so a few years ago now um I did my first first or second middle distance trance triathon um and I had never really raced in the heat before i'd never raced abroad and then I went to Belgium and it was sort of August time so it was summer um and I I had a plan it it may not have been as good as I'd have a plan now but I definitely had a plan of you know you've got three bottles you're going to pick one up blah blah blah and unfortunately I lost a bottle uh about 5k into the race and on the bike and then the aid stations were positioned really badly in that it was an aid station as soon as you got onto the bike and then halfway around so it was like okay so I've missed the first one and I picked one up halfway and I essentially let myself dehydrate quite badly um and yeah I got 10k into the run and unfortunately woke up in an ambulance um oh my god yeah I had just collapsed from low blood pressure because of my you know the amount of fluid in my body was so so low um that being said it is something I have always had i I naturally have super low blood pressure so for me staying on top of hydration is is important but at the time I didn't really know enough about it and and I knew something wasn't quite right you know when you're exercising it's like I don't feel I don't feel like I'm low on energy but I don't feel good and um yeah you know by the time you feel that bad drinking as much plain water as you can is not going to do anything um so yeah unfortunately that one didn't go as plan um I've had other races where I have finished them and then ended up in a very similar position um where yeah if if I don't have the kind of structure that I do now I wouldn't stay on top of it and I I used to find it quite hard to you know before you you learn about these things you don't realize the sort of intensity that you're racing at and four or five hours of exercise is a huge amount to not be drinking and eating and um yeah I until I learned I didn't see the important I mean you know it's important to drink but you think oh yeah at least

so yeah I've had some bad experiences um and yeah here it's a it's almost a written warning that if you DNF a race because of dehydration it's not a good thing to do when you work for a hydration company but um yeah since being here and actually just learning more and paying attention to my body a lot more I've been a lot more in tune of you know you actually have to drink whether you stop your bike and get off to refill it it doesn't matter like that's probably not just minutes in a race it's finishing or not so yeah it's it's been a learning sort of process for me yeah that's it's a similar sort of thing happened to me in my first Iron Man but I was drinking but my I don't think my electrolyte tablet that I'd used was strong enough for the for the event so I was drinking but it was just going through me like I was peeing the whole time through the race and then I got to the end and I was like I don't feel so good so yeah I just got really low blood pressure and had to have drips in the medical tent um but it was more due to you know it's that balance of and I don't think not everybody understands that that you need the electrolytes you can't just you know drink plain water on a race and think that's going to be fine i'm going to be hydrated you need more than that and and would that will vary from person to person I guess won't it yeah sweat sodium loss which is essentially what you're talking about um is very different between people i mean we we can say there is an average from the people that we test we do an at rest sweat test which basically assesses how much sodium you lose in a liter of sweat um and it means that you could dial in your hydration strategy quite closely by knowing well if I lose this much in a liter every liter I drink should have roughly that much in it um and from I don't know we've done several thousand it's probably close to like 18,000 sweat tests um the average falls just below a,000 milligs of sodium per liter of fluid so it's why PH1000 is on course at iron man events for example because as their partner we've given them the electrolyte concentration that's closest to most people um and it's somewhat genetically determined so one of your parents probably has a sweat sodium very close to yours um there's not that much of a likelihood that it will change with time um and if it does it's not enough to sort of change someone's strategy you know it would be a matter of like 50 milligrams or something not not a lot basically um so you you can definitely assess it and understand a bit more um you can also try and look at sort of some classic indicators of if you're a salty sweater let's say or not so like white salt stains on your kit after exercise or if you taste salt or if it stings your eyes um they're pretty good indication indicators that you lose a lot of a loss of sodium a lot of electrolytes in your sweat um on the other side like some people finish exercise and I didn't even know there was salt in my sweat like I'm fine um so yeah and I think what you said about drinking plain water and and probably what you suffered from was hyponetriia where essentially the amount of sodium in your body is is so low and drinking tons of plain water all it does is flush more sodium out because the electrolytes you put in your bottles should help you retain fluid by having a strong concentration of electrolytes it means your body can draw those into your cells but if you're just drinking plain water it actually just does the other thing it it draws sodium out of your cells and then you essentially just pee that out so plain water doesn't hydrate you not in the endurance sense it might daily but when you're losing sodium it's important to to be replacing it um and if people don't want to sort of go through and have a sweat test we would normally just say do some trial and error you know have some different strength electrolytes see how you feel see what makes you feel better do you feel like overly thirsty cuz they're too strong or actually do you feel way better for it and yeah it's it's normally a good way of you know playing around and seeing what works best yeah and that's what I did in the end cuz I think I was using like I think it was might have been like 500 per liter or something so it was not not like enough um and then I I read like about oh I need to have more electrolytes in and then I started using the salt tablets as well like a few times so is that some I know you do use salt tablets don't you with precision hydration you make them what when would you kind of recommend that people use salt tablets if it's honestly it's completely up to up to the individual um whether you have salt tablets or electrolyte uh tablets in fluid it doesn't really matter uh as long as you're taking on sodium throughout and and we normally talk about it as as per liter of fluid so if you were to buy our electrolyte tablets that are I think they're about 250 mg um in sodium we'd say you need two per 500 mil to get that the right concentration that we say is about 1,000 milligs per liter um if that was in a triathlon let's say and trying to logistically fit in most people have them on the run just because it's easier to carry you know five or six electrolyte capsules than it is to how many bottles of water you need and you know trying to add it up as you're going through a station so we normally say try and have two capsules for every 500 mil and if you're taking cups of water it's like okay let's say a cup is 40 mil and just trying to keep track that way um some people take them when they start to feel like "Oh no I've forgotten to have electrolytes or I'm quite crampy." And I wouldn't I wouldn't suggest it but it it does work to just get them on board at some way um but whatever product someone tries to use as long as they're having sodium and not diluting it too much that's sort of the main thing yeah so you can put it The other thing I did do was had it in had salt in in food as well so I used some salty food in in my nutrition and that kind of helped too but I could tell like when it cuz it happened again like on another race even though I was using what I thought were the right electrolytes and uh I just got I started feeling like my hands were starting to swell a little bit and I was like uh I can feel like something's not right here and it's and so I was like I need some salt i was like get get my mom was supporting me it was like a a big endurance race through Wales and she managed to get me some salt tablets and I was like okay took a few and I was like it worked like as soon as I'd noticed it but luckily I kind of like spotted the signs because once it's happened to you before you kind of know okay that's what's happening exactly and you can nip it in the bud bit cuz it's bad when it goes too far you can't I guess you can't come back from it and you're just oh no not easily you can I mean the best way to come back from any negative response whether it's like not enough fuel not enough hydration you know too hot is just stop like slow down let the intensity drop so that you can gather yourself try and take on what you've clearly not got enough of and then start again but in a race no one really wants to do that so yeah it's it's easier just to get it right in the first place but unfortunately no one ever gets it right that easily no it's it's tricky and it does sometimes you know even when you think you've got it like I thought I'd got everything right that time and it was like oh this isn't this isn't good need to sort that out um okay so you know we talked a little bit about people trying to drink on long rides i know sometime and and that sort of feeling of nausea and things like that how do you encourage you know do you have any strategies for people to remember to drink or to help them to do that because lots of the time people are like "Oh I just forget to drink." Okay what do you do then uh there's a few different things that we've had people tell us that they do and it's easier that way to Yeah it's good because everyone seems to do weird and wacky things um I personally write stuff down on my hand um it works for me i can't cross it off during a race but I sort of keep note of it at least so I write sort of times as to this is when you need to replace your bottle this is when you need to do whatever and for me that works um you can also set reminders on a Garmin that say like eat drink or cycling computer type thing or a watch um and you can set them to go off every 20 to 30 minutes or whatever's sort of suitable um I try and encourage people to have little and often so if it's fluid I just say if you've got a bottle that's easy to reach make sure it's got some electrolytes in it sip it as frequently as you can if you think like oh I haven't had a drink for a while drink um and I try and say to people like it it is that simple in that you need to just take your focus away from the race for a couple of seconds pick up the bottle and and have a drink um the same with running if you're going past an aid station whether you're thirsty or not pick up a cup if it goes in your mouth fine if it goes on your head also fine um it's tiny tiny steps that I try and say to athletes that it's very proactive and that they're going to have to do it they're not going to be told to do it um they just need to learn to train themselves to do it and you know if you're just doing training rides it's a really good way to practice like keep sipping keep drinking um taking note of how they feel it's it's a really helpful thing to do when you're training to be way more mindful of do I feel overly full do I feel like water slushing in my body do I actually crave salt like those kind of things can help you refine what you're actually doing um because normally as I said we're very smart and if you are craving salt there's probably not enough sodium in your bottles um the other thing we've got that people have bought or sort of made themselves is like a strategy sticker so essentially something you can stick on your top tube of your bike that you can write or stick on like in the first hour you need to have x number of calves and x number of fluid or whatever it is and you can sort of see that visually or you know per distance and for some people that's really helpful because you know every time they look down at their bike it's like oh hang on I've not had that water let's let's have it so um it's working out what works for someone cuz we all like different things yeah definitely yeah i used to use like an alarm that went off every 20 minutes and just eat every 20 minutes and then make sure I was drinking and you can see with a bottle as well like especially if it's at the front like Yeah i find that's really helpful for people who forget to drink and and a lot of people also struggle with getting bottles out of bottle cages and things like that and it is awkward you know I had I used to have a rear one and it was really awkward to kind of reach around and get your bottle and it was quite a tight sort of bottle cage like wrangling it out and trying to get it in but then I'd have it in the front one so that you could sip like as you're going along and I think that's super useful for people if you haven't got a front hydration system and you can afford to get one then definitely recommend it for long races much easier exactly yeah um Okay so yeah also I just want to talk about on the run like that is also a place where people really struggle with hydration and it is a bit more difficult and I always used to think if it's you on the bike it's easier so make sure you're like getting everything on the bike and then you've got that the run later where it is difficult to take on fluids the soft flasks like you say are really helpful is there anything else you said make sure you stop at every feed station is there anything else along those lines or that you can that people find when they're running that is useful um I think in in triathletes the the one thing I always say whether they want to or not is just come out of T2 with a soft flask of ideally a strong electrolyte drink so I I personally put in PH1500s cuz I know that I will drink that and that should last me probably an hour if it's taken any longer i've not drunk enough um but it is a bit annoying running with something but go and practice it you know if you're if you're training enough you've got time to practice this kind of thing and I do think with you know triathlon as harsh as it is if if you're going to do a full iron man or you're going to do a middle distance triathlon you're clearly focused and driven it's just this is the fourth discipline you know fuel hydration if you're not practicing that so I yeah I would normally say run out with a soft flask and just sip it um and then it really is like stop at aid stations if if you're not confident at running and grabbing a cup or whatever it is just physically stop uh take sips take gulps pour some over yourself because the effect of cooling will be really really helpful in sweating and and general perception of heat which sort of is encompassed in this sort of hydration area um other than that it's tricky i think some full distance races give you the option to have like a I don't know what they call it but it's like that special bag that you can put halfway through where you can pick it up again like put a bottle in there put a soft flask in there even if you're not planning to stop there you might get to the race and think "Oh I'm so glad I've got that that flask I can go and pick up that I know what's in it and I've practiced with this." And I think it's it's doing everything in your power to give yourself the option to hydrate and on the day if you don't do it then that's unfortunately how it goes but yeah it's just being aware yeah making it easy for yourself I guess isn't it it's like Yeah make having that option like you say and the special needs bags are really good i I often recommend using them because like you know like you say it's like backup isn't it you know it's there if everything goes wrong it's you're going to have that that fluid yeah yeah yeah and if you're doing an Iron Man like it's taking you long enough as it is that you can afford 2 minutes to grab that so Exactly um yeah it's it's where priorities fall for most people hopefully yeah definitely i think that's you know what you say is definitely true it's like I find that really strange sometimes when people are like I'm doing an Iron Man but then they're like reluctant to do those things oh it's uncomfortable like carrying a bottle and I used to say that as well i hate running with a bottle i hate running with something in my hand and it's like yeah but you're doing something too and so just get used to it you know get over it it's not that bad honestly it's a bit annoying but you don't think about you know when you're in a race like that you're not thinking oh it's really annoying with a bottle and if you are then you need to talk yourself out of it and think about something else to think of it's all just practice I think and if as you say if you're doing an iron man you need to you'll have put in huge long rides and you'll have learned to drink on the bike and hopefully you'll have got that sorted so it's the same for a run a marathon is like a huge huge thing to do so to be going doing your long runs without carrying fluid anyways is somewhat you know I don't know how you'd be be doing that um and just practicing it and even if you wear like a pack for your training runs and get used to drinking and then even in the Iron Man you're not you may wear a pack but you may not and then you you still know how to pick up fluid and drink fluid and do the things that are you know I always say to people if you if you can put in X number of hours a week to put the training in then you can definitely learn to bring a bottle with you and and it is harsh but we do such a a tough sport that it's it's like easy wins you know learning to eat and drink is just the the icing on the cake of a race essentially and also it's like the essential way that you get around as well you know if you think about it it's like you can train all you like but if you don't fuel and hydrate properly you'll be on the floor at some point in the race so it is essential isn't it to to learn to do those things and we can like you can get away with stuff but is it worth it at the end of the day it's it's not really and you want to give yourself the best chance that you can especially if you're worried about finishing or anything like that then you need to be really on it and give yourself that best opportunity awesome okay so have you noticed any kind of specific differences between men and women with their hydration either in terms of like how they perceive hydration and nutrition or how they respond as well within um we've we look at this when we speak to athletes and that kind of thing um and there's no there's no trends that like stick out to me where it's like women all do this men all do that i think But there isn't you can't do that anyway cuz we're all different exactly exactly i think generally women seem to think they need less than men i think that perception is just the fact that usually they're smaller or they're not working and by working as hard I mean the absolute sort of power they're pushing or the speed they're running at in most cases generally women are pushing less power and slower because of how we are physically um not for everyone but yeah I think that is the the biggest thing I hear it's just like oh well I don't need as much as my partner and I'm like uh you might you might actually lose a lot more and we sit here you know when we go into the lab and myself and one of my colleagues will both be exercising doing roughly the same session whether the power is different or not and I still lose more fluid than him so my hydration needs in that session are bigger than his and he's heavier than me taller than me stronger than me all of those things it doesn't correlate to how much our bodies need you know separately um so the first thing I try and identify with someone when I talk to them is just you're not any less you don't need any less you need to go and work this out you know understand what you're losing to then replace it um I'd say if you did look at averages women do lose less um but it's just not a cleancut thing it's just usually there's less body surface area because they are smaller so there's less area to sweat from so it makes logical sense that you can't lose as much fluid um I think if you were to look more specifically about females and the menstrual cycle then you could possibly draw some conclusions as to at what phase their body temperature might be slightly warmer um and usually that is in sort of like the the lutal phase so the the last 14 days of their cycle before they then start bleeding again um generally their core body temperature is a bit warmer it's it's not a huge amount i think it's like 0.3 to 0.5° hotter um some women I've spoken to really really notice that and they say "I feel so much thirstier i feel like I'm sweating more." All of those things um there's not much research to actually quantify it and say like this is what happens so it's easier to as a female like go away and try and track your cycle track your training track how you're feeling you know do you feel hot do you feel thirsty do you think you're sweating more go and weigh yourself during these sessions and make some comparisons because for females the biggest thing could be actually during those couple of weeks maybe being a bit more focused on your electrolyte your fluid requirements is actually really important and again some people tend to eat more in that phase and within that you'll need more fluid to be able to digest it so it's it's a bit of a balance um men obviously don't go through the same hormonal changes every month as as as we do so it's there's definitely no comparison in that um but I think yeah I think women are unaware that those changes do happen and the first sort of helpful thing is to just go away and work it out um paying attention to those kind of patterns does help especially if you know you're going to race during that second phase where you might be a bit hotter it's good to have have that in mind at least to think like why am I so hot why am I so thirsty oh okay that makes more sense now and and just that sort of connection in your head makes it easy to be like "Okay I actually should drink more water." You know like that's that's a good thing for me to do um but yeah there's not tons and tons of research out there unfortunately women avoided yeah cuz I was when I was doing the heat prep I was thinking I wonder if it makes any difference with the heat prep as to what time in your cycle that you do it like would it make a difference in your adaptations to it and things i was kind of interested to know that and I was like but I bet no one's researched that or found out about it but it'd be quite interesting to know wouldn't it cuz there must be some kind of difference i'd have thought yeah I think because your your core body temperature in those couple of weeks is maybe half a degree warmer um it means that if you were to do heat acclimation you'd already start off a bit hotter in that you you'd have less tolerance to push yourself as much let's say because we we normally say in the lab especially there's there's a cut off where we would take you out and start cooling you down if you got that hot and it's usually around 395 um degrees which is is hot you know if your core temperature is that hot it's like you don't want to push it much further cuz it's getting dangerous so if you're doing heat acclamation and you are in those sort of weeks where you you're generally a bit hotter it's just being aware you know you you might not be able to do the full hour because you might think "Oh I am actually getting far too hot now like this doesn't feel comfortable." Um as for acclamation benefits there's definitely no sort of like you're not you're not you're not going to benefit more from that time of the month but you might just be more susceptible to dehydration or sort of heat stress um so doing those kind of so you wouldn't want to push through because that I think that was something in the hot bath sessions that I did i think I was doing it one of them in the late lutial phase and I was like "God I'm finding this really hard." And I had in the end I had to get out cuz I almost passed out like this is not good i need to get out of the bath and uh it was less time than I'd been doing so it was like oh well it must have been because of that but I wouldn't have known you know if I hadn't been tracking my cycle that that was or could be linked anyway and then you could have been like well I should stay in I need to car you know do the full session which would have been dangerous you know and you know so it is it is and it's as you said there like tracking is such a helpful technique to understand differences in also your performance like we respond differently to exercise stimulus at different stages in our cycle anyways because of the concentration of hormones so you know if females aren't tracking their cycle and if they have the ability to and you know have a cycle they can track that's regular enough then it is a no-brainer um it just takes some time and some learning to actually work out what you're tracking you know it's not as straightforward but it's helpful definitely yeah cuz there's a lot of other stuff mixed up with it as well like trying to track that and then there's also life stress and you know all that it's just it can get very muddy the the waters with when you're trying to track but it's another thing to be aware of for sure and then when women get older as well and we start having things like hot flashes how would how do you think that affects um like I would like preloading you mentioned earlier would that be a helpful thing to start integrating i mean you you say you do it anyway like for all sessions for like all long sessions or is it just anything hard or anything I know that I'm going to sweat a lot i just like to start as hydrated as possible and that's all pre-loading is doing it's helping you retain more fluid in your cells so that when you start sweating there's like a bigger pool of water to lose fluid from essentially it gives you a bit of a buffer is the way I think of it um for older women who are possibly yeah having those hot hot flash flushes or sweating a bit more um the way in which they sweat and their body loses heat probably changes a little bit um it might change your hydration needs it might possibly elevate them a you know it it's very individual so it's like I don't want to say it's as you need more fluid but generally if you're finding that you are sweating more in the evenings or you're actually just losing more body water as you're doing your daily activities because it may not even be exercise induced it could just be you know hot flushes just come on and then they go um having some more electrolytes generally throughout the day and definitely when you're exercising will help you hold on to some fluid and not dehydrate as quickly and then it's just as I do at my desk always having some water or something to drink having that option and giving yourself that option especially as someone who's exercising is super important to you know to consider for um but it's just another thing where it's learning how your body responds to things okay i just want to talk about the preload um protocol as well a little bit because there might be different I don't know like I've used different strategies in the past like leading up to a race I'll start preloading like the night you know sort of in the few days before and then the night before and quite a high concentration of electrolytes and I can't remember why I made it it was some horrible concoction with sodium citrus

yeah so I used to use that but so that would be like for race day would be a different preload strategy to your general training or do you just kind of Yeah um any session that in my head I can justify as race prep and by that I mean if I've got a four or five hour ride on my TT bike with a runoff that is a race prep session you know that is something that mimics what you're going to do on race day so for those I I try to mimic everything I do around the race so the night before I'd have a similar dinner i'd have a strong electrolyte drink so for me that's one PH1500 tablet in about 500 mil of fluid that is essentially preloading um I'll have that with my dinner i'll try not drink any more plain water after that because it would just dilute what I've just done um when I wake up I do the same again i have my race day breakfast i have that same electrolyte drink the the one tablet in 5 mil of fluid because again you probably lose some water as you're sleeping in the night you you sweat a little bit so I'm just trying to start as hydrated and then I I go by my session as I as I would in the race i try and eat the same drink the same be as strict um so any race prep thing I'll do that pre-loading protocol um if I think oh I've actually forgotten to drink all day and I've got a bike session tonight I'll do the same thing i'll have that tablet in 500 mil fluid um if I'm going for an easy ride I don't care if I'm doing an easy run i also don't really care as I said though if I if I feel a bit really really dehydrated or even a a good indicator is if your your urine if your pee is a bit like if it looks dehydrated then I'd probably be more encouraged to do that just because I think oh I haven't done a very good job of you know hydration today or um however you want to say it and I try and be proactive and it is just thinking like these are tools that we can use to be better that yeah it might come with a cost to buy the products in the first place but you're paying for a triathlon bike and you're paying for a race entry so it's easy things and as you said actually earlier on having salt on your food is a really really good hack as well um I don't like drinking electrolytes all day long i really don't enjoy it they they are fine and they have a purpose but I do actually just add some more salt to my food um if I've sweated a lot or if I know I've got a big session the next day I'm I'm not really afraid to use it um table salt is not the same as the sodium in your in your drinks it's a different concentration but it has some of what you need in there so it it can be really really useful um so I never tell athletes to steer clear of that yeah I know it's like some people don't like to eat too much salt and things and I don't know i think there's probably quite a lot of myths around that as well anyway because as we talked about earlier we are all different and our salt needs are all different as well exactly it's not like salt is bad for everyone you know some people actually need more salt so it's Yeah these I think that's something that I find you know women can get hung up on is these health messages that we have i don't know it's like or health and diet messages and separating that from fueling it's like and and hydration it's like okay but that is not relevant to you when you are training for this big event it's not the right advice for you you don't want to follow that anymore so no no it's like changing your mindset a little bit so are there any like hydration myths that you that are out there that you want to kind of debunk or I think the biggest one is is plain water hydrates you and it I think is the one that I used to think as well um you know your mom tells you it when you're a young age she says "Drink water it will it will help you know you got a headache drink water." All of this and they're not wrong but for endurance athletes and people that are losing a lot of sodium daily or through exercise plain water in itself won't do the job for you you need some sodium in there to be able to retain that that water um and I think we we just said it you know previously that salt is bad for you is is another one and yeah in excess if you're not losing any and if you're having it on everything you eat and everything you drink then yeah it's probably not great for your blood pressure but in the setting that we're talking about and in athletes and people that are losing sodium in pretty large quantities um salt isn't an enemy not something to be avoided either um I think they're the two biggest ones and I think they're the ones that people you know you can tell them a million times and they still unfortunately think that um well they've grown up i suppose it's like ingrained in there because it's like you've grown up listening to it so much and it's very hard to break out of that because there's still a little voice in there going but it's it's bad for you i know you know we I see a lot of pro athletes that we work with do it they they have so much fluid the day before i don't know how many liters of plain water but it's an obscene amount and I'm like And he had no electrolytes yeah and then Yeah woke up and I felt like I was just peeing all day and I was like "Yeah it's it's and it's hard cuz you tell people it's like "Oh but what difference is this strength electrolyte to that strength?" And I'm like "Well they are stronger um you'll retain more fluid." And it's it's really trying to like break it down to people as to if you have this stronger strength electrolyte this is what it will do to your body versus a really weak one or plain water it doesn't have the same response um and sometimes breaking it down really clearly to someone is the only way to do it or to see a positive response so in some people where they've where they've actually done the the right protocol and had a good race it's like "Oh okay maybe I should do that again." Yeah it works surprise yeah so um yeah it's interesting getting into athletes brains um and even the the whole sweat rate testing thing you you try and explain to someone that weighing themselves pre and post exercise will help them understand their body needs and it's like "Oh but I've lost how many kilos you know I've lost weight." I'm like "No you've lost fluid you can't lose weight in an hour." Um it is on a scale it is weight sure but it's it's just body water um and yeah it's it's like you don't want to be doing that to lose weight that's not a good strategy at all no so yeah it's really interesting though isn't it the weighing because like I I don't like weighing myself because I just you know but when I was doing that I was like "Okay it's because I want to know my hydration needs." So I could kind of like put it in a box and say it was because of that and it's really interesting to see the amount you lose and also like if you weigh yourself at different times during the day you know you can see that kind of fluctuate throughout the day so much according to you know what you've been doing like you just come in from a run it's different from when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night there's just Yeah I think that's that's one of the reasons I don't like weighing because I know how it fluctuates but as a tool it's really useful for for learning about the hydration definitely and I would never I I personally would never encourage people to weigh themselves every day as a as a standalone in the morning thing um if it's for training sessions to understand and collect data on what you're losing then it's fine but you know I could weigh myself this morning and then weigh myself tomorrow morning and be 2 kilos up purely because I've had another 2 L of fluid the day before like essentially changes on a daily basis are going to be due to hydration and fluid levels in your body and also just how much volume of food you've eaten is it's not absolute weight change it's not you know I've gained weight or I've lost it it's just literally just fluctuations in in what you've put inside your body um so yeah it's a it's a good tool as long as it's healthy for the individual to do um if weight is something people struggle with and it's just like if steering clear is easier there are sort of guidelines we can give to help them rehydrate better yeah okay so obviously you work for Precision Hydration can you just tell us a little bit about the products that you use and how it all works for people if they want to learn a little bit more yeah I think the easiest thing for anyone listening to this that that wants to give precision a try is to have a look at our free fuel and hydration planner uh it's on the website it's in a little box at the top um you can put I'll put all the links in as well so so people can you can put in what race you're doing what distance when it is is it gonna be hot is it gonna be cold uh do you want to work hard do you want to have fun sort of things that help us understand the level that you're going to be racing the intensity that kind of thing um and it's based on essentially an algorithm that we've devised as accordingly uh and it will come up with a set of results that will tell you how much fluid how much electrolytes how much carbs roughly we think you should be aiming for for your race and it will come up with a plan and it will say amazing before the swim do this after the swim do that if you're doing anything in the swim you're probably doing it wrong um whatever you want to do on the bike it will try to break it down as like you could use these gels you could use this drink mix you know whatever it tries to do it in in all of our products and for any new customer it gives you a personalized bundle so according to what you filled out for this test it will say here's a set amount of product um buy it play around with it see if you like any of it and I think that is honestly the easiest thing for most people who are new to the product to do cuz it means that a you get a free plan and b you get a bit of everything um you get some shoes some gels without buying a massive box and we do sell uh gels chews drink mix electrolytic tablets capsules um a load of random different products that all can fit into your plan very nicely um if that doesn't work then we also offer free video consultations um myself and the internal team we do them we also have a bunch of other callers that help do them um it's just 20 minutes where you can grill us about your fuel and hydration plan for whatever Iron Man or triathlon you're doing or any other sport um and we can just chat through okay this product sounds like it might be good for you it also sounds like you could increase your fluid here or or that kind of thing and sometimes having someone else to talk to that knows a bit about it is really really helpful for that that back and forth and just to help you understand um I personally use gels pretty much religiously in my races because they're so much easier i don't want to have to Yeah i just don't want to have to think about it it's just like okay have that right okay on to the next fine and I drink um I don't use the electrolyte tablets as much in racing i have the we have the same style products but in packets so they've got a bit of sugar as opposed to artificial sweeteners which are in the the tablets that make them zero calorie um I have the ones with with sugar just cuz they're not fizzy um the effevescence kind of makes me I don't know it just doesn't really agree with me in racing i prefer to just not have anything fizzy i don't want to upset my stomach any more than an iron man tends to um so yeah those are my go-to just gels and electrolyte packets and they tend to get me through the race in a middle in a full I'd probably have some whether it's real food or some chews I try and add that in a bit just so I don't get so bored um if I know that at 100k I've got a bar of whatever to look forward to that's sometimes quite exciting um so yeah but as I said if if athletes want to chat through a strategy we're all sort of more than welcome to do that and go through with it and yeah they can then purchase products off the back of that or get that that bundle which is is normal normally quite helpful yeah that sounds really good it's quite helpful because like like you say it's trial and error sometimes and you can mix different things together as well to make it suit you because like like you say you know I used to want more real food really in an Iron Man event leg but I have raced Iron Man on all gels um just when I was trying to like perform really well and it did make it a lot easier but it's not something that I really like doing if I'm honest it's something to practice as well isn't it you know you want to know that your stomach is not going to kick up a fuss when you have 20 gels so exactly yeah you do need to practice that definitely and uh yeah I mean the thing with any kind when you're doing that kind of event you're going to feel a bit at some you know it's not like it's not supposed to be easy is it you're going to you're going to not feel great at some points and you just have to fuel and hydrate properly whether it doesn't you know whether you feel like it or not really I think and definitely sort of getting over that kind of I don't want to yeah there's no choice if you're doing an iron man you have to to learn to tolerate it and that's the thing you're not going to enjoy it so just tolerating it is it's not like you're going out for a picnic or something like that I mean although looking at some people yeah I do think they do you know they've got flapjs and sweets and that's quite fun but no sex i think I mean it's like you know we've said it's different isn't it it's like if you're going there and you just want to finish and you're not pushing that hard because you're not trying to make a cut off or something like that then you can probably you know it could be just like a day out with snack stops but for a lot of people they can't and and sometimes I see what people take and I'm like that's not going to sit well you don't want eating that so yeah it's a it's interesting awesome so what's your next race i think you did mention it at the beginning but I forgot um I'm doing Iron Man Lasals uh it's the first time it's been a full uh it's been a 7.3 in France for I don't know how many years but yeah they've they've made it into a full so I thought why not uh I've never actually done the full yet so it's the the first time I give that a go um but I thought you know doing the halves is fine let's see if I can push it a bit more so that's that's my next race that's about five weeks away um oh exciting yeah something like that yeah no it'll be great it's Yeah it's amazing and if you've done halves it's like you've got some experience with with that but yeah full's different completely different i felt Yeah i I'm trying to think of it as a a zone two day in that it's you're not racing a threshold this time you're racing to get through as opposed to you know you you could do a a half at your max nearly for however many hours but I could not do 10 11 12 hours of that intensity so it's nicer knowing it's a bit more chilled um but it is a race so Yeah I know but you have got that kind of like I can sort out my food and you know time mess about with bottles and actually it's worth doing that because you know the time that you take doing that you don't you know if you mess it up then you lose way more time if you don't get it right definitely i always used to be like okay I'll go get special needs i'd have I would sort of stop and sort stuff out if I needed to but obviously try and be as efficient as possible with it um but yeah really cool so it's going to be hot then I'm assuming or yeah I'm I'm hoping for some reason it's not hot but I'm planning I'm preparing that it's going to be mid20s um which to me is hot i struggle at like 18 19 degrees in the UK so yeah but at least you've had a bit of practice with the hot weather this year in the UK because yeah in past years it probably wouldn't have been quite so warm in the spring so no and there are things we can do you know you can buy a white triuit or a hat that's reflective and those kind of things so I'll be using everything I can to stay cool yeah definitely oh awesome well it's really nice to talk to you Tash thank you so much for all your information and help there's loads that people can take away here and if they head over to the precision hydration website they can check out that offer and also um you're on Instagram as well aren't you and I know you share like some of your prep which is really helpful for people you sort of share your setup and show how you're doing things so if people want to head over I'll put the link in there and they can follow you as well yeah no it's been lovely chatting so thank you for having me you take care thanks for listening today have a great day take care bye for now [Music]