Nutrition for marathon

radioactiveman

Hi
I am thinking about doing the Dublin marathon this year and I want to get my nutrition right. I have done the marathon before but I found it hard to get my eating right - I think I was eating too much and also eating too much sweet stuff after long runs even though I did need to eat well. Basically I don't really know how to go about the nutrition side of things...

Is it necessary to actually count the number of calories you take in in a day? Should you cut out beer altogether? Cut out sugary things altogether? After a long run, should you just have a very ordinary meal e.g. meat & two veg and not in enormous portions?

For example if you go out and have e.g. 5 pints once a month, should you avoid this and just keep it to say, a pint, if that?
Thanks!
:pac:

Zuppy

Hiya,

If its eating right while training, there is quite a few threads with loads of info already here. If its race fuel. I generally go with whatever the race is providing and thats found on the website. Test it in your long runs.

I am sure someone who is a lot more techie than me can post links to the threads or the food gurus with pipe up.

But for the beer question. I usually stay away from it the day before training and the day after. Beer hinders recovery and pre training I find it dehydrates and I feel the cold/ don't have a productive session/ feel too lazy to train, for me anyway.

Post long run. Protein and carbs! If your away from home, some protein within 20mins gives you a 2hr window in which to have your meal/ shakes/ tuna whatever you prefer. If you don't get something in the 20min window, the body thinks its getting nothing and starts a slower recovery process.

Hope that helps till the pro's start the ball rolling

RJC

Buy a book called 'eating for endurance' - It will give you the full deal on what to eat, how much and why.

good guide.

plodder

I'm not a pro, but sometimes an amateur's perpective can help as well

I've been amused by the number of people who have said to me "you must be able to eat what you like, since you're training for a marathon". It's unfortunately not true though. There's quite a good presentation on the subject on this page of the Dublin marathon website.

Also, a useful formula for working out the number of calories you burn while running is "weight in kg" x "number of miles run" x 1.45. It's useful to know this because it gives you some idea of what you have to play with intake wise and if for any reason you can't run (as I couldn't last week, due to flu), it tells you how much less you should be eating. In my case, "should" is the operative word unfortunately.

I wouldn't obsess too much about it, but if you are heavier than you want to be, then you can set a target weight, and at least when running regularly, it's a lot easier to reach it. On beer, it depends how much you drink, because it does contain a lot of calories. And at the very least, you should cut it out, several days before a marathon.