Pre-Race Nutrition

I've learned so much about nutrition from the book Performance Nutrition for Runners. I've literally read it several times from cover to cover. The book talks a lot about training and hydration and has a great section on pre-race nutrition too. I thought I'd summarize it.

Basically, the week before the marathon, your nutrition should stay about the same as it has during training. Because the mileage drops, you have to be careful not to overeat and put on a few extra pounds. The book recommends rougly 60% of your calories come from carbohydrates. During training, it is important that these be "healthy" carbohydrates--fruits, vegetables, whole-grains, but during the pre-race week, any carbohydrates will do. . . even sugar.

So really, all week, I've just been making sure that my snacks are things like raisins, pretzels, apples, bananas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, all high in carbohydrates.

The book also recommends upping your sodium consumption just slightly in the 3-4 days before the race. Sodium incrases water retention and can help with pre-race hydration.

The traditional idea of doing a "pasta" dinner the night before the race is not that important, unless for some reason you have been unable to "up" your carbs in the week leading to the race and therefore have to try to "catch up" on glycogen storing with that dinner. Dinner the night before the marathon should be something easily processed by your body, meaning that if you ARE going to do a spaghetti dinner, don't make it a whole wheat pasta because (while this is usually considered the healthier thing to eat) it is harder for your body to process and you want something easily processed the night before the race.

The morning of the race, the main purpose of the meal is to fill your liver with glycogen. Liver glycogen fuels your nervous system while you sleep, and as a result your liver is rougly 50% glycogen depleted when you wake up in the morning. The muscles, inactive during the night, remain fully glycogen loaded from the previous day.

The ideal time for a pre-race meal is about 4 hours before the race because it's early enough that you can digest and store a large amount of energy, yet late enough that this energy won't be used up by race time. 4 hours is not an option for me. I'm not waking up at 3:30am to eat breakfast. I'm dedicated but not that dedicated.

2 hours out is still an acceptable amount of time to eat before a race. You just need to eat a little bit less. At least 80% of the calories you consume in your pre-race meal should come from carbohydrates. Keep your protein and especially your fat and fiber consumption low, because these nutrients will only take up space that would be better utilized by carbohydrates. Bagels, bananas, energy bars, meal replacement shakes and oatmeal are all decent forms of breakfasts before the race. I am planning on having half a bagel with light cream cheese and blueberries. I may have a banana on the way down to the race too, depending on how I'm feeling.

The book suggests that between the time you eat your pre-race meal and roughly 1 hour before the race starts, you sip a sports drink.

From 60 minutes to 10 minutes before the race, stop drinking so that your body can clear out excess fluid before the race begins. I plan on immediately getting in line at the port-a-pots when I get to the starting area for the race and just staying in line until I have to line up for the race. Hopefully this will work out.

Between 60 and 30 minutes before the race starts, the book suggests taking one or two caffeine pills (think No-Doze). Caffeine is obviously a mild nervous system stimulant. It has been shown to enhance performance in prolonged endurance exercise. In longer events it helps to delay fatigue by reducing the perception of effort. It increases the concentration of beta-endorphins have a positive affect on your mood and reduce perception of pain as well as create a sense of well-being. Caffeine has also been found to delay fatigue during exercise by blocking adenosine receptors. Adenosine is produced during exercise and inhibits the release of dopamine. Decrases in dopamine have been linked to fatigue during exercise.

However, the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine decrease with habituation to caffeine intake (aka drinking a lot of Diet coke) so the book recommends eliminating caffeine consumption for several days before racing. It also states that caffeine pills are more effective than other caffeine sources such as coffee. Some energy gels contain caffeine, but not in amounts sufficient to have much of an effect on their own. Recommended intake is 5-6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight 60 to 30 minutes before racing.

I've experimented a little bit with caffeine pills in my last couple of medium and long runs. What I found is that one caffeine pill is amazing. Two caffeine pills is too much and made me feel wierd. Hopefully, combined with adrenaline, one won't be too much on Sunday.

10 minutes prior to the race, the book recommends creating your "bolus" or contents of your stomach. Believe it or not, you want to create a relatively large bolus before running a race because the fuller your stomach is, the faster it empties and the faster fluid and energy are delivered to your blood and muscles as you run. It is important to wait until just a few minutes before the race so that it ends up in your stomach and not your bladder. I will probably eat a Cliff Shot and drink some water, 10 minutes before the race, depending on how I'm feeling.

I guess we'll see how it all works out!