October 27, 2021

How to Fuel for a Marathon

31 minutes

Team! It’s marathon season! As I gear up to run the NYC Marathon to raise money for City Harvest, it’s time to get dialed on all things marathon prep. In today’s episode, we dive into the primary variables to focus on to achieve your ultimate performance. One of the primary things to nail is eating enough food. Studies have shown that going from recreational running to marathon training, women on average adjusted their overall energy intake requirement by 40% and men increased theirs by 15% due to their increased training. Overall, individuals going into a marathon are significantly under fueled, and that dramatically affects performance.

So how do you know how much you should consume? First, you need to understand your body and how it responds to food. The simplest way to understand the ratio you should be shooting for in your meals is 50% carbohydrates, 30% fat and 20% protein. While approaching this ratio, increase your food quantities to the extent that feels comfortable as you increase your exercise load.

The second major component is hydration. On the topic of hydration, we are looking at electrolytes. When we are training for a marathon, we sweat a lot. When we sweat, people tend to immediately drink a lot of water. This is great, however we need to specifically focus on our electrolyte levels. When you train, you typically lose 200 - 700 milligrams of sodium per hour. We need to be increasing our sodium, potassium, and magnesium intake to improve our performance.

Specifically, we discuss: