Your Marathon Training Diet
Your marathon training diet should be focussed on consuming quality carbs at the right times! With all of your training, it’s important that your diet is rich in carbs, with a good remaining balance of protein and fats. On a day to day basis throughout the many months of your marathon training program , a good ratio to shoot for is carbs making up 65% of your daily caloric intake with proteins closer to 20% and fat making up the remaining 15%. During pre-marathon week, your carb intake can increase to 75% as you aim to top off your newly-enlarged glycogen storage tanks to go the distance!
Having said that, the two biggest questions remain:
Why Carbs and What Kinds of Carbs?
Why Carbs are King for Endurance Training
In order to properly understand what foods constitute a good marathon training diet, let’s examine the purpose of endurance training in order to properly prepare you for the vigours of the marathon.
As you likely know, when training for a marathon, the long run (on
this website defined as anything farther than 15 miles) is the most
important running workout in your program. These long runs provide a
long list of training benefits including the stimulation and development
of slow twitch muscle fibres, mitochondria development and on the topic
of a good marathon training diet, of particular importance is ‘glycogen
sparing’.
While running, your body always uses a balanced combination of
body fat and glycogen (converted sugar stored in your muscles, liver and
blood) as sources for fuel energy. As you
increase your running pace
, your body shifts to using a higher percentage of glycogen than fat
since fat needs an abundance of oxygen to burn to produce energy. While
we all have enough energy in the form of body fat to literally run for
days on end, our body also needs the glycogen for proper brain and
muscle performance. The challenge is that glycogen stores are limited.
In fact, glycogen stores and your body’s ability to use them sparingly is probably the single most important success factor for marathoners.
Concerning how much fat and how much glycogen to burn during
running, training for many continuous hours invokes two important
physiological responses. The first response is that your body learns to
conserve your glycogen by burning a higher ratio of fat while running.
The second response is the size or storage capacity of your glycogen
stores increase.
Specifically, your muscle stores can be trained to increase by
50%! This adaptation is basically what protects you from ‘hitting the
wall’ or running out of muscle glycogen.
It’s this very training adaptation that requires you to pay attention to
the quality, quantity and timing of the food that you consume.
Which Carbs are Best?
Not all carbs are equal. For runners and non-runners alike it’s
generally wise to pursue carbs that score low on what’s known as the
‘glycemic index’. The glycemic index rates carbohydrates according to
their effect on our blood glucose levels. Lower GI foods produce
smaller fluctuations in blood glucose and insulin levels. This results
in a more stable and sustainable energy supply.
In general low glycemic foods consist of high fibre, unrefined
breads made with whole grains or stone-ground flour, cereals consisting
of oats, barley and/or brans, most fruits and vegetables, pasta,
noodles. One thing to note is, like the individual training response,
the glycemic response is that is does vary person to person and also is
affected by the way the food has been prepared. For example, a boiled
potato has a lower glycemic index than a baked potato.
For a complete but simple low down on the whole glycemic index
eating strategy to get your marathon training diet right, including
lists of foods and recipes, check out the following two great reads:
Marathon Training Diet Summary
- Aim for 65% of your daily caloric intake to be from good quality carbs. Up it to 75% during the week before your marathon.
- Hitting the wall is depletion of muscle glycogen. Marathon training
long runs protect you from this by causing adaptations that result in
increased muscle glycogen storage – as much as 50% more! - Lower glycemic foods provide more sustainable energy for endurance
exercise – they enable to you last longer before your glycogen stores
deplete. - Runners benefit from higher glycemic carbs during the first few hours after
running workouts
as they quickly replenish glycogen stores for a speedy recovery.
*For much more information on how the timing and frequency of eating and nutrition for runners in general, check out the
nutrition for runners
page.
Courtesy of meet-your-running-goals.com
