​Long Distance Running: Formulating Your Personal Race Nutrition Plan

To run at a steady sustained effort, you’ll have about two hours of stored energy, before your legs turn to jelly and you hit the wall. If you haven’t replaced any carbohydrates during this time, this is the point at which your body turns to its fat stores and you have to begin the slow and painful hike to finish. Finish you will, albeit slower than you wanted, and probably with some emotional turmoil over your efforts. You can mitigate this physical and emotional distress by planning out a hydration and nutrition schedule for yourself. Like always, it’s all about practicing good habits and setting yourself up to succeed.
 
By the time you hit the half way mark in a long distance race (anything over 3 hours), you will have gone past what your body has stored as readily available fuel. Nutrition planning is a lot about taking care of the last half of the race, when you are fatigued and any major calorie deficit is going to make the day really hard. When you start going into calorie deficit, you are more prone to being emotional, irrational and not coping well with your fatigue. Keep on top of calories, and the late stages of the race will be much more comfortable, your brain will be sharp (better for negotiating tough terrain), and you’ll finish tired, but in one piece.
 
The energy sources your body will use for racing long distance will come from the glycogen stored in your muscles, and fat. This glycogen is formed when the body breaks down carbohydrates into sugars for energy. Even with the best carbohydrate preparation, your body only has about enough stored glycogen for ninety minutes to two hours. You will then be using your fat stores as energy, a process that is much slower and which requires you to reduce pace considerably.  You must constantly ingest carbohydrates and fluids during an event in order to maintain a steady stream of sugar to your muscles and to handle the optimal pace of racing.
 
You should note that your caloric intake and heart rate are inversely related. As you start to exercise, blood is diverted from your stomach to your working muscles and skin to sweat and help cool you. As your heart rate rises, you are less able to digest the calories you ingest. The food will sit in your digestive system instead of being used: this causes discomfort and gastro-intestinal stress for athletes. Your race day nutrition plan is intimately bound to your racing heart rate.
 
Fuelling properly means maintaining (as much as possible) your balance in caloric deficit and constantly refilling depleted glycogen stores. Eating or ingesting calories from the beginning is critical. If you wait until you are tired and hungry, you will never catch up.
 
What to eat and how much to eat is a strategy that each athlete has to work out for themselves. Your training should include a method to work out what your race day nutrition plan should be. Every long training session should include a plan for nutrition and hydration, including how many calories, what specific foods and fluids to take and when to take them. You will have to try out your plan many times in training in order to figure out what works for you. Note that fuelling well in training is not just about planning for race day: eating properly on training runs means you optimize your output for that day and you ensure a proper recovery, both aspects to progressive improvement in fitness.
 
As a coach, I have seen many training sessions derailed and failed due to one totally avoidable factor: not planning nutrition and hydration.
 
Quick overview on nutrition

• Never compromise on taking food and fluid on long training days. Pre-plan stops when necessary or take all fuel with you.
• Plan your pre workout meals on long training days. Eat what you will eat the night before and on race day morning and at the appropriate time. If you drink coffee, drink coffee before training and on race day. Hint: If you are busy and going from work, count back from your planned workout time and eat at the proper timing.
• Take in food exactly how you will do it in the race: practice opening gels while running, using your water belt, and practice opening zippers and pockets while on the move. Don’t do anything new for race day.

Formulating your personal nutrition plan – the numbers here are not set in stone but guidelines only, and I would have someone start formulating their plan months in advance. If you don’t have months, you’ll have to use some powers of recollection and deduction based on what you have done in training.

1. Before a long training session, lay out your products and make a note of calories and liters of fluid. You should plan for 250-400 calories per hour, regardless of source and 500-750 ml of fluid per hour. You may have to plan water stops on your run. Also take note of electrolytes, ensuring adequate quantities there: Sodium: 500-1000mg/hr, especially if you sweat a lot, and caffeine 200mg/3hrs. Temperature, the terrain, your effort level and your unique physiology all come into play, which is why practice and revision is always necessary.
2. For the first 30-45 minutes of the run, sip water and take in minimal calories, mainly in the form of sports drink. Let your body adjust to the pace and let your heart rate settle. On race day, the start excitement makes your heart rate spike a bit so waiting to feel settled is important. When you have settled into a good rhythm, start eating. At this point, start your watch on repeat timer mode, and eat every 15-30 minutes. (15-30 minutes is the average range of eating and drinking intervals).
3. Looks for gels and drinks with maltodextrin and fructose as the types of carbohydrates. Aim to fuel with both types of carbohydrate at the same time, which allows your stomach to absorb more carbohydrates than consuming a single form.
4. Keep eating and drinking right until the end; don’t let yourself ‘run out dry’. This will have a positive impact on your post race enjoyment of the event and your recovery.
5. If using gels, you can empty all your gels into small hand flasks before the event, mixed with a little water to keep them easy to drink. You just have to know how much you need to sip every hour.
6. Eat when on the flats and downhills – higher heartrate of climbing make it hard to digest.
7. Keep the intake steady and consistent as much as possible, don’t miss a feed out of apathy.
8. In training, or at the end of a test event, empty your pockets or wrappers and count your bars, gels and other food consumed. Add up the calories, sodium and caffeine. Take notes on how you felt. This is the foundation for formulating your basic plan.
9. Weigh yourself and compare your post and pre workout weights. Every kg lost is equal to losing 1L of fluid. Dehydration is proven to negatively affect performance so this is an important step to your success (and safety) on race day.

There are some athletes who prefer real food – dried fruit, bananas, sandwiches – for endurance events. While I avoid packaged food and eat simple, nutritious whole food in my daily life of training and living, I always stick with sport specific nutrition during races. Packaged bars and gels are easy to carry, easy to consume, have little fibre (way easier on the stomach), and is more precise and efficient when determining calories.
 
Once again, plan for success, and the success is more likely to happen. Long distance running is one of the coolest things you can do, so take care of the details and enjoy the trails!
 
Run For Joy!
Lucy Smith

Finlayson Arm 28k 2017. I had a water belt and gels in pockets. I knew there was a water station to re fill my bottle.