Planning for a marathon is about more than just sketching out your workout plan. Indeed, while it is incredibly important to stay on top of a fitness regimen?and to keep ramping up your miles as you get closer to race day?you can still do all the right things, training-wise, and still fall short of your goals during the marathon. How come? Because diet and nutrition matter almost as much as training and fitness when it comes to marathon preparation.
The Marathon Challenge
A marathon is a long race. Most people never attempt one, and even the majority of long distance runners view those 26.2 miles as the gold standard of fitness and determination. (Ultramarathons, meanwhile, are reserved for the most daring professional runners.) Finishing a marathon is an immense accomplishment no matter who you are, and that's because it's not an easy. Heck, even for die-hard runners, there's no such thing as an "easy marathon." There are plenty of reasons for why running a marathon is such a challenging athletic pursuit. 26.2 miles is a long way, and at some point, you might find yourself contending with an injury or dealing with dead legs. Physical exhaustion is a major hurdle in any marathon, and your hope will obviously be to become so tough in training that you can stave off physical exhaustion.
Mental exhaustion is also a factor. With how long a marathon is, you might find yourself just getting bored or disengaged somewhere along the way. Furthermore, while your body is going to suffer fatigue during a marathon, it's your mind that is going to start tossing around the "I can't go on" and "I need to give up" thoughts. However, writing for Shape.com, former Team USA member Heidi Pashman said that the number one reason runners fail to finish marathons is not injury or mental exhaustion. "The number one reason for dropping out of a marathon is gastrointestinal problems," she wrote, quoting what she'd read the first time she opened her U.S. Olympic Committee packet. In other words, the gut is not prepared to handle a marathon?at least not by default.
The Glycogen Issue
Even runners who don't drop out of their marathon races traditionally run into problems that can be traced back to nutrition. There's a phrase in running about how athletes "hit the wall" late in a race and find themselves no longer able to hold their pace or push themselves as much as they would like. To put this bit of running slang in a different way, most runners just run out of gas somewhere after the 20-mile marker. More accurately, they run out of glycogen. Glycogen is defined as a "polysaccharide" that acts as "the principal storage form of glucose in animal and human cells." In essence, your muscles convert glycogen into glucose to derive energy.
Once your glycogen reserves are depleted, your body loses a chief energy source. The result is extreme fatigue and loss of energy, which can make it difficult for athletes to move much at all?let alone keep up with a fast pace. Glycogen depletion explains why most runners?even Olympic athletes?run the first half of their marathons markedly faster than the second. Beating glycogen depletion?or at least staving it off for as long as possible?is essential for getting to the finish line of a marathon or retaining a solid pace for the entirety of the race. While there are several ways of increasing your body's ability to store and efficiently use glycogen, nutrition is likely the most important method at your disposal.
Devising a Smart Diet Regime for Marathon Training
One of the tips that long-distance runners often receive is to eat a lot of carbohydrates. In particular, pasta is a popular food among runners. It's true that, by "carbo-loading" after a tough workout or long race, you can replenish your body's glycogen levels quickly while also giving your muscles the ability to store more glycogen. Being able to store more glycogen, obviously, is important to getting through a race without "hitting the wall." The problem with loading up on high-calorie foods is that the more you eat of them, the bigger your regular appetite is going to be. Naturally, you might get to the point where you want to carbo-load all the time, just to satisfy your appetite. There is no way that you can go through a proper marathon training regimen without experiencing a growing appetite.
The 2008 Olympics, much was made of United States swimmer Michael Phelps and his incredible daily eating habits. The Wall Street Journal noted that Phelps usually had one pound of pasta, two large ham and cheese sandwiches, and thousand-calorie energy drinks. And that's just lunch! When you are burning through way more energy than the average person does in a day, you will need more fuel to keep you going, hence the burgeoning appetite. However, eating nothing but calories all the time will cause some weight gain?even if you think you are burning all of those calories in your workouts. More body fat gives your body more dead weight to carry during a race, which can result in quicker burns through your glycogen reserves.
So while carbs do increase your body's glycogen reserves, building your diet on nothing but carbs can make those increased reserves a moot point because you burn them faster. As a result, most trainers recommend that marathon runners mix their pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, and other carb-rich foods with more traditionally "healthy" foods. In other words, you should carbo-load in the evenings or after a big workout, but fill out the rest of your diet with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, nuts and seeds, and dairy. These lighter foods are particularly ideal for your pre-workout meal or snack. Oatmeal, fruits, fiber-rich cereals, and yogurt are particularly popular pre-run foods, but you can try out different combinations and twists to avoid monotony.
The Energy Drink Question
Food is only a part of your marathon training regime; what you are drinking is obviously incredibly important as well. It goes without saying that staying hydrated and drinking plenty of water is vital for every stage of your marathon lead-up. But what about energy drinks? Are they a smart choice for getting more carbohydrates and replenishing essential bodily nutrients? Or should you avoid them and just stick with water instead? Most experts agree that, when you are running as many miles per day as marathon runners do, you need the help that energy drinks can provide. Quite simply, the electrolytes and nutrients included in energy drinks are vital to keep your body running, to keep you hydrated, and to push your endurance and performance.
There is a caveat to energy drinks, though, and it's that you really only need them after your toughest workouts. In the case of shorter runs (or even longer runs at an easy, leisurely pace), you won?t see much benefit from downing an energy drink. Furthermore, some researchers are of the opinion that energy drinks can impair your body's ability to adapt during marathon training. Your goal with training is to improve your physical fitness and boost your body's ability to store and use glycogen. Drinking energy drinks can convince your body that it doesn't need these adaptations as much. In other words, energy drinks can be like training wheels for your fitness and endurance: they will definitely make you feel more comfortable, but they will stunt your capacity to grow and develop new abilities. Skipping the energy drinks for all but the toughest workouts, then, is an important step to getting your body ready for a marathon.
Conclusion
You can find more information all over the web about marathon dieting and nutrition. Numerous world-class athletes have even shared their dieting habits online for all to see, so you can get an idea of what other people are eating and drinking to get ready for their marathons. Combining these resources with the tips above?and, of course, always listening to what your body is telling you?will help you to devise the perfect diet regimen for marathon preparation. We can't say that any of these dieting tips will make your 26.2-mile race easy, but they will make it easier. Follow @SportNessUK
