What to eat before a marathon…

jay_church
jay_church Posts: 8
edited September 2007 in Health, fitness & training
I'm Male, 12.5 stone, reasonably fit but far from super human and in a couple of weeks I'll be doing the 50k at Ruthin.

Can anybody offer me some tips/advise on what I should be eating in the days leading up to, and (probably more importantly) on the day itself.

I did the event last year but without any guidance on food/water intake, got round in 4hrs20…want to improve on this!

J.

Comments

  • ddoogie
    ddoogie Posts: 4,159
    You will soon need to start carb loading. At the moment you should be eating a fairly balanced diet. Enough protein to enable muscle growth and enough carbs to fuel you during training.

    About 4-5 days before the event you should start the carb loading. This is so that your muscle stores of glycogen are full for the race. You should be consuming about 10-11g of carbohydrate per kg of your mass, every day. So, for you, its about 880g of carbs a day. Pasta, bread, rice, honey are all good sources of carbs.

    Reduce the amount of exercise you undertake whilst carb loading as well.
    S-works Stumpjumper FSR

    I'll see you at the end.

    You'll see me on the floor.
  • dan1983
    dan1983 Posts: 314
    Eat bananas on the day of the ride for slow energy release, and take some mars bars or something for quick energy boost if you start feeling tired. But more importantly, what ddoogie said.
  • baccodaddy
    baccodaddy Posts: 128
    i,m also doing 50k at ruthin ,at my last one was eating fig rolls at 6.30 in the morning nothing else till race seemed to work.although i had a virus so couldnt keep anything else down anyway and it looks the same way for this one.
  • jay_church
    jay_church Posts: 8
    Thanks for this, pasta is on the boil!

Categories