The fall marathon season is almost upon us! With only a few weeks to go for many of you, it’s time to taper, to let the body recover and to get ready for battle. At this point it’s difficult to make any significant fitness gains, so dial back on that running. It is, however, quite easy to do a number of different things that can sabotage your performance. One of these detrimental decisions is not managing your race day nutrition properly.
Usually I present novel research studies in this column, but today I am going to give you a breakdown/reminder of what to do during your race to optimize performance. It is important to make a nutrition plan and stick to it. Going by hunger or the desire to consume food will leave most runners not consuming enough and therefore not running to the full potential of their current level of fitness.
When it comes to the research there is a lot in sports nutrition that we do not know (i.e. when exactly is beet juice helpful, if at all), and these areas need more time for definite guidelines to be established. Fortunately there is a lot that we do know for sure, and have been proven to make any runner faster. Here are the three most important nutrition rules to following during your marathon:
