70.3 Worlds Nice Race Nutrition: 5 Real Athlete Plans

70.3 Worlds Nice race nutrition came down to five completely different plans on one identical course. Five Triathlon Nutrition Academy athletes raced the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Nice on 12 and 13 September 2026, on a bike leg with roughly 1,200 metres of climbing and a flat, fully exposed half marathon in the French sun. Between them they ran different carbohydrate targets, different sodium loads, different bottle setups and different bike choices. Every one of those plans was right, because each was built from that athlete's own numbers and tested for years before race day.

I have spent two decades helping age-group triathletes fuel properly, and Nice was the clearest demonstration I have ever seen of why a cookie-cutter plan falls apart on a hard course.

Here is what usually happens. You find a plan online, written by someone who is not you, for a course that is not the one you are racing. It works fine on your flat Sunday long ride. Then you get to a course where the climb starts early, runs long and takes both hands off the bars, and suddenly the plan you copied has nowhere to live.

That is what makes this group so useful. Same course, same heat, same weekend, five plans. Their differences are the lesson.

What Makes 70.3 Worlds Nice Race Nutrition So Different?

The course dictates the plan. Nice gives you a 1.9km ocean swim, then around 90km on the bike with the bulk of the climbing stacked into one long grind up the Col de Vence, a technical descent back to sea level, then 21.1km along the Promenade des Anglais with almost no shade.

Three things fall out of that shape:

• You cannot drink when you want to. On a technical climb and descent, every sip is a decision about taking a hand off the bars. Your intake plan has to survive that, not just look good on a spreadsheet.
• Weight matters more than usual. Carrying three full bottles up a sustained climb is a real cost. Athletes who ride light have to make up the fuel somewhere else.
• The bike takes longer than you think. If your bike split blows out by 30 minutes, your hourly carbohydrate target quietly drops unless you have planned for it.

If your race has a long sustained climb, then plan your intake by what you can physically consume on the climb, not by what your total race target says on paper.

How Much Carbohydrate Did They Actually Take?

The evidence here is settled and it is worth knowing before you build your own plan. Currell and Jeukendrup (2008, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise) had athletes complete a one hour time trial after two hours of cycling. Those using a glucose and fructose mix finished 8% faster than those on glucose alone. That is where the 90g per hour advice comes from, because using two transport pathways lets your gut absorb more than glucose on its own can manage.

Here is how that played out in Nice.

One athlete deliberately front-loaded, putting 150g of carbohydrate into his first bottle so he could take on a big chunk early and then ditch the weight before the climb. Smart in theory. His bike leg then ran 30 minutes longer than forecast, which dropped his average intake below the 100g per hour he had trained for. He still finished well, and he now knows exactly which assumption to fix.

Another treated the bike as the place to bank fuel, then took on very little during a hot run, because that is what his gut has proven it can handle.

If your bike split is uncertain on a hilly course, then plan your carbohydrate in grams per hour and carry a buffer, rather than dividing a fixed total by an optimistic finish time.

How Do You Carry Enough Fuel On A Climbing Course?

This is where the plan meets the hardware, and it is the part most athletes never think through.

One athlete rode a time trial bike and dropped from a 58 tooth front chainring to a 52 to get the gear range he needed. He tested it properly, riding Mount Hotham and Falls Creek back to back over Christmas, before he had even qualified. Another rode a road bike with the aero bars removed, so she could descend safely with no extra weight on the front. That decision changes how many bottles you can mount and where.

Neither choice is right or wrong. They are just different bodies solving different problems, and each one had knock-on effects for fuelling that had to be worked out months in advance, not in the hotel room the night before.

If you are changing your bike setup for a specific course, then rebuild your nutrition plan around the new setup and test it on terrain that mimics the race.

How Much Sodium Do You Need In The Heat?

This is where a copied plan does the most damage, because sodium (the electrolyte you lose most of in sweat) varies enormously between people.

Baker and colleagues (2016, Journal of Sports Sciences) measured 506 athletes and found sweat sodium concentrations ranging from 12.6 all the way up to 104.8 mmol per litre. That is an eightfold spread. Sweat rates ranged from 0.26 to 5.73 litres per hour. Two athletes riding side by side in the same conditions can have wildly different losses, which is exactly why "take two salt tablets an hour" is useless advice.

One of the men in this group did acute sodium loading in the days before, took a concentrated sodium hit before the swim start, then raced a hot half marathon with zero cramping. Four years earlier, cramping was ending his races. Same athlete, same tendency to cramp, completely different outcome, because the number he uses is his own.

If you cramp in the heat, then get your individual sweat sodium tested rather than guessing from a generic recommendation.

What Cost One Well-Prepared Athlete 20 Minutes?

Not her fuelling. She carb loaded properly, executed the plan on the bike and came off it in good shape. Then she ran roughly a minute and a half per mile slower than usual.

The cause was the day before. She walked 26,000 steps around the venue in the heat, spectating and doing transition logistics, and went into race morning already dehydrated. For most people 26,000 steps is a deliberate effort. She did it by accident, on the one day it mattered most.

That is a race week problem, not a nutrition plan problem, and it is the sort of thing that never appears in a training plan (annoyingly). Two per cent dehydration is enough to hurt performance, and for a 60kg athlete that is just 1.2kg of body mass.

If your race venue involves a lot of walking or a split race day, then treat rest and hydration in the 48 hours beforehand as part of your race plan, with the same seriousness you give your bike fuel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much carbohydrate should you eat per hour in a 70.3?
A: For most age-group athletes racing longer than 2.5 hours, 60 to 90g per hour of mixed glucose and fructose is the working range. The exact number depends on your body size, your gut training and how long you will actually be out there. Start at the lower end, train your gut and build up over months, never in race week.

Q: Is the Nice 70.3 bike course harder than a standard 70.3?
A: Considerably. Around 1,200 metres of climbing is concentrated into one long ascent of the Col de Vence, followed by a technical descent. The climbing changes both how long you are on the bike and how much you can physically eat and drink while you are on it.

Q: How do you carry enough fuel on a hilly bike course?
A: Use concentrated bottles so you carry fewer of them, and plan where you will refill or ditch. Some athletes front-load carbohydrate early and drop the weight before the main climb. Whatever you choose, ride the setup in training on similar terrain first.

Q: How much sodium do I need racing in the heat?
A: There is no universal number. Measured sweat sodium ranges from roughly 12 to over 100 mmol per litre between individuals, so the only reliable way to know yours is a sweat test. Guessing is how athletes end up cramping or over-consuming.

Q: How long does it take to get your race nutrition right?
A: Longer than most people expect. The athletes in this group had been working on it for between 18 months and four years. Race day is not where you work it out. It is where you cash in the cheques you have been banking all year.

The Final Word

Six athletes lined up in Nice. Not one of them raced on the same nutrition plan, and the reason is simple: they are not the same. Different sweat rates, different gut tolerance, different bike setups, different goals.

The plan that works is the one built from your own numbers and tested until it is boring. Never try anything new on race day. If reading this made you realise your plan is really someone else's plan, do not stress. That is a fixable problem with the right advice, and fixing it is the highest-return work most age-group triathletes have available to them.

You can hear all five of them talk it through, one day after the race, in Episode 259 of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I also go deeper on the pre-race side in [LINK: episode on carb loading].

If you want to be the athlete who gets off a plane in a foreign country and knows exactly what they are doing, come and join us inside the Triathlon Nutrition Academy.