Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I am here with a different co-host this week. I’m here with Samantha Staines who is one of the co-owners alongside myself with the Runners Blueprint and today we’re going to be talking about nutrition for marathon runners. We’re going to cover as much as we can within a reasonable amount of time. So we’re gonna go through a bunch of stuff. I reckon what we’ll do is we’ll start by going through like, individual topics. The first one we’re going to go through is intra race slash intra training carbs.
Obviously a very important topic for marathon runners. As we know, if you weren’t actually taking intra training carbs, you are probably not going to run a very good race. So it’s something that will absolutely help performance and it will make, you know, ensure that you’re not going to hit the wall or bonk during your race. How much you want to be taking is kind of dependent on a few different things. I’d say for starters, if you are like a newbie, you need to start at a amount that will, you’ll actually be able to tolerate so that your gut sort of doesn’t, you don’t have any gut issues that actually stop you from then being able to do the race in the first place.
But no, we can go up to like at least 90 grams of carbs per hour if you really want to optimise things. And for most of my marathon runners, we do actually try to get up to that point. But yeah, we start on the lower, lower level and we try and train the gut to build up to a higher level that will actually really help optimise performance and yeah, ensure you can get through the race really well and feel your best as well.
Aidan:
Cool. And I think that’s honestly most of what most people would need to know. The next kind of step I would say is if you’re trying to go to those higher amounts, like say above 60 grams of carbs per hour, we would look at multiple carbohydrate sources. So say glucose and fructose or maltodextrin and fructose potentially, just cause there seems to be a cap around about the 60 gram mark if you are only using something like glucose.
Then we’ve got research looking at even numbers that are higher than 90 grams per hour. Like say the highest I’ve seen is 121 grams per hour is the highest I’ve seen. And it’s speculative about whether that leads to better performance. But like sometimes people look at being like, maybe they go higher, but they don’t need to go higher. They don’t benefit from going high, but it is another interesting area as well. And another like little thing that why this kind of matters is say, you’re running a marathon and it’s obviously going to take over two hours because the world record is around two hours. You’re probably going to run out of glycogen somewhere in there.
Even if you like maximise the carb load and everything like that, potentially one and a half hours in, even if you’re having like this 90 grams of carbs, you’re still going to run out of glycogen. And when you do run out of glycogen performance typically does drop. The logic here is the more carbs per hour we can get in, the later you’re going to run out of glycogen and probably the better you can perform.
Sammy:
Yeah, that’s perfect. And that’s it. So it’s, it’s definitely about that performance. And you know, even during training sessions, yeah, it can help with just getting your total calories in as well, ensure that you’re recovering really well, because you haven’t sort of gone into as much of a deficit. pretty much everyone benefits from having intra training carbs and marathon training. I don’t know anyone that has said that they haven’t felt better from taking anything.
Aidan:
So most, if you tried to have 90 grams of carbs per hour, right off the bat, the odds of you having a bad experience is pretty high. But if you do slowly build up, can get to surprisingly high amounts. Some people might never be able to get up to 90 grams of carbs per hour without gastrointestinal distress that makes their performance worse. But everyone has a tolerance and almost everybody or everyone can build their tolerance as well over time.
Sammy:
Yeah. And I’d say like, you know, if you look at most carb gels, they’re about 20 to 30 grams of carbs each. So you can very quickly do some maths for like how could you actually get up to those higher amounts? And you might just need to change like the timing, so maybe having them every 20 or 30 minutes or swapping to carb gels that do have higher carb amounts. Actually, there are some that have 40 grams, which make it quite easy to get in and quite efficiently as well. So have a play around with that if that’s something you’re interested in, it’s really optimising that performance and getting up to that 90 gram carb amount per hour. What ones have 40? 40 is, there is a Morton One, the Morton One 60s. So that means like 160 calories I believe. Yeah, Moreton 160s.
And there’s also one from SIS. It’s the better fuel one. And some of the precision fuels actually have 90 gram carb gels in a big pouch. So if you’re interested in like just getting it in, you know, just having one big pouch that you can put a cap on and sip on over the whole hour, I think that’s actually a really good choice as well, especially for like the really long, either like ultra endurance or even marathon really can definitely work well.
Aidan:
Yeah, cool. And I reckon the last thing we’re doing the intra training stuff is what if somebody’s tried and struggled, like they’ve tried gels and they didn’t sit well or whatever, what would be the next move?
Sammy:
Yeah, well, if, yeah, say someone did just have a gel straight off the bat and it didn’t work so well, I’d be looking at a few different things. I’d say for starters, like you could just lower the amount. Maybe you do only have half a gel that next time and see if that sits any better. Some gels actually do work better when you have them in water as well. So maybe have a sip of water that might actually dilute it a bit so it can be absorbed a bit better. Otherwise you could make sure that that carb gel does have multiple transportable carbohydrates, big word, but that glucose and fructose, like it can make it a little bit easier to absorb. So maybe you do try and get a gel that has those like the glucose and fructose in it. Yeah, otherwise I think that’s the main things I’d go to.
And then just don’t think that if you can’t get that, you know, 30 grams an hour or so to start with, if that’s just not possible for you, it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to get up to higher amounts really. It’s just like training a muscle where, you know, if you can’t lift a weight one way, doesn’t mean you can never lift that weight ever again. You do have to work up. Maybe you just drop it back for a little bit and build up gradually over time. And yeah, use some of those tips I’ve just mentioned to actually be able to do that and try and get up to the higher amounts if you can.
Aidan:
Cool. Let’s talk carb loading. I’ll start with this one. So we’ll go. The purpose of carb loading is based on that same logic of your body can only store so much glycogen and you tend to be able to perform at a slightly higher intensity while you have glycogen stores. So the goal here is to maximise how much you can. I typically call a standard recommended range for carb loading to be eight to 12 grams per kilogram of carbs per day, depending on how many days you want to do it. And let’s just put actual numbers in there to make it easy for a podcast.
So somebody was 100 kilos, you’d be looking at 800 to 1200. Obviously, scale that back based on your actual body weight. But you can do that for one to two days. I typically recommend one to two days. For certain events like a half marathon, I’m more likely to lean towards one day for a full marathon, I might be more likely to lean towards two days, particularly if somebody’s got experience carb loading, somebody’s not as experienced. I’m a bit more hesitant to do two days because like what if they just get sick of eating and don’t actually commit to the second day?
Sammy:
I think the big thing there is with a carb load, you actually don’t need to be hitting like your protein targets for the day. So really don’t focus on that because you’ve done all your recovery and repair them hopefully in the weeks before. So don’t try to be hitting that as well. You actually want to try and make up most of your diet with carbohydrates for those couple days before. And even things like fibre.
I think a lot of people get you know, torn when they say there’s not much vegetables on the plane or fruit and things and I’m lollies everywhere. And I’m going, well, actually, if you’re eating so much carbs, you actually a lot of my carb load plans do end up getting 25 grams of fibre anyway, just from the volume of carbohydrates that you’re having. So it’s really not a big, it’s not a big issue. It’s not going to make you be really like this very small amount of time that you’re doing this for. So it’s not going to impact your health in such a negative way that it’s gonna, you know, it’s not going to be worth it for the race. So yeah reduce your protein so you can fit the carbs in definitely go for you know, low-fibre carbohydrate options. Don’t worry about vegetables.
You know, you want to be using white rice and white, you know white pastas and stuff things like that and another topic that I know you’ve touched on before and definitely in some of the blogs is going a bit Lower FODMAP can actually be really beneficial before a race. So going low FODMAP. We actually do know that can reduce the chance of any GI upsets during the race. So yeah, because you’re reducing that total FODMAP load, there’s less likely to be any bloating or even like, you having diarrhea or constipation, things like that, just because you’ve got a little bit of those FODMAPs out, which typically can cause some of those issues, especially when you’re really upping the carbohydrate content, which, you know, they do have more FODMAPs in them being carbohydrate foods.
So that’s something I would also consider, but that’s a bit tricky like that aspect to do on your own. So I’d also say like, say a dietitian or say someone who has experience in this, cause they can give you a plan. You know, we do it through the Runner’s Blueprint, but yeah, we can give you a plan that actually willing like it will give you your carbohydrate amount. It’ll give you some maybe lower FODMAP options. It will help you get the protein to the just, you know, an adequate amount, not too much to displace those carbs and also lower fibre.
So it’ll make it a lot easier than just doing it on your own, which most people can’t really get those high targets when they’re just sort of eating to what feels comfortable to them because it’s not a normal day of eating by any means.
Aidan:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the most common mistakes in a way. Most people will fall short for a few reasons. One is if you’re not actively tracking it, and I actually do recommend using my fitness pal or something like that to track it. If you’re not actively tracking it, you won’t have that thing that kind of helps you push towards getting these higher targets because you might be like, I think that’s enough and just stop and you could be well short. The other thing we’ve actively tracking and ideally planning it out in advance is it will help you ensure that protein and fat don’t go too high as well because if they do go too high, the calorie amount will end up being absurdly high. And of course you would not be able to eat all of that or you would feel too full and not want to consume that. So it makes sense to do that.
And with the FODMAP thing, FODMAPs by definition are fermentable forms of carbohydrates and sugar alcohols. Therefore, if you just massively increase your carbohydrate intake, you’re probably massively increasing your FODMAP intake inadvertently. So even if you hadn’t identified issues, you might find out in this process as well.
Samm:
Yeah. So even if you typically wouldn’t have issues with FODMAPs, you might doing the carb load, unfortunately. And last thing with that is definitely try it before race day. Don’t do anything new and crazy and different. And that applies to the training carbs as well. Don’t just try this stuff on race day. Try it weeks and weeks out so you know it’ll actually work for you. And cause gut issues are probably the most common thing we’d see if you’ve just tried this without having done it before. And we don’t want that to stuff up your six months of training that you’ve just done. Whilst this is worth doing, yeah, you need to practice it.
Aidan:
Let’s talk electrolytes now. So we might do two aspects of this. We might do like what we recommend you do. And then we might do some caveats. Do you want to the first part and I’ll cover the second?
Sammy:
Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s a controversial-ish topic. And I think it is because it’s just so individual. You know, everyone has different sweat rates. Everyone has sort of different diets as, you know, the weather, what you, you know, this is all the things that can change like your sweat rate, especially and even how much sodium you are losing. So it is tricky to give recommendations because of all those factors. So that’s why I think it is tricky. But yeah, when we kind of, when I do work with athletes, especially for marathon distance, I’d say it is usually worth talking about electrolytes and it’s worth thinking about them a little bit. Giving some recommendations, like I typically would, but we’d practice them and training and see if they feel good and if it works for them.
If it makes them feel any better, then I’m like, great. I think you approach it in a similar way where it’s like, it’s not gonna hurt when you have them, but it might not really make performance go up massively by any means. But yeah, it’s definitely something that comes alongside with your fluids, so for hydration, because if you’re having something like, the main electrolyte we’re talking about here as well is sodium. So if you’re having some sodium along with your water, it probably will help you keep a little bit better hydrated.
But we typically don’t see this having a massive impact on performance unless you’ve lost more than 2% of your body weight in water. That’s when people definitely need to be thinking about their hydration a bit more. If you’re sweating a lot, you’re losing more than 2% of your body weight, then absolutely you need to be thinking about it. But yeah, did you have anything else to add there? And I kind of went over everything in a bit of a vaguely.
Aidan:
I think we’ll have similar guidelines in terms of like, we want people to be well hydrated. I think in many cases, drinking based on thirst will give a pretty good coverage there. I use the 2% rule as well for almost all of my athletes with the understanding that if you look at the best runners in the world, a lot of them who are near world record marathon times will actually lose a bit more than 2%. But they’re just exceptions. They’re outliers. They’re people who are going so quick that could they physically replace all of that water without it being detrimental? And then there’s the other angle about being like, at what point in the race do they cross that threshold? Is it really late in the race?
It just doesn’t matter. Versus if somebody was doing a trail ultra, this probably matters more. Like if they dropped over 2 % within two hours for like an eight hour event or something like that, it’s obviously gonna impact them more than somebody who does it around two hours, who’s got a couple of minutes left.
Sammy:
Yep, exactly. Yeah.
Aidan:
With sodium, I would typically recommend around 300 to 600 milligrams per hour with that same understanding about being like, it might not be doing really anything or much use at all, but it makes sense to cover your bases as well. On that topic of it, whether it does or doesn’t do anything, the simple logic that a lot of people would have was that it could potentially reduce cramps. It could be a bunch of benefits related to that. And I do understand that for sure. It’s also just, if you look at research on this so far, it has been really underwhelming.
So at this stage, I’m like, cover your bases, have some sodium, have some magnesium and potassium potentially as well. There’s no harm in doing it and there might be potential benefits. So if you’re trying to cover everything, which probably should be if you’re doing a marathon, it makes sense to do, but I wouldn’t be overly focused on it either.
Sammy:
Yeah, I agree actually. And I think, yeah, you’re better off considering it than not considering it at all. But I think like it, like everything we said, tried in training, if it makes a massive difference adding them in versus not having them, maybe you can decide based on that, whether it’s worth it for like your races and stuff.
Aidan:
Yeah. I use sodium tablets, do you?
Sammy:
Yeah, I do. I like them. I think I’ve had, so I’ve had actually a client recently who said that she peed more during a race that she had from using the sodium tablets compared to having like an electrolyte mix when she was training. And I’m not sure if that is correlated or not, but I think like there’s pros and cons, right? Like it’s kind of like dumping a bunch of salt in your tummy at once versus like having it mixed in with the water. Maybe you do stay better hydrated. I don’t know if there’s a study on that. Hopefully they’re doing something.
Aidan:
I haven’t seen it compare. I’ve definitely seen like sodium tablets, either reducing urinary output or changing it at all.
Sammy:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Might be an outlier too.
Aidan:
Let’s talk caffeine. So there’s two angles I want to approach this from. One is lower dose versus higher dose. Assuming that people tolerate caffeine well and there’s no issues, particularly GI distress and stuff as well. But from a lower dose perspective, I’ve ordered something that reduces rate of perceived effort, like things just feel easier. And when you’re running a marathon, you want things to feel easier. You want to be able to push harder without it feeling like trash. And from the higher dose perspective, there are potential performance improvements. Like we might be looking at like a one to 2% improvement here. There’s a lot of mechanisms as to potentially why. In terms of the amounts though, we’re looking at for the lower dose, anywhere between one to three milligrams per kilo.
I don’t know how well that would translate to listeners, but if we think of a shot of coffee as typically around 80 milligrams and we think about an 80 kilo person, that is one milligram per kilo. So that’s the bottom end of that range. Obviously you can then think if you’re going up towards that six milligrams per kilo, it starts getting high. That’s the equivalent of six shots of coffee for that same 80 kilo person. Although the one little caveat on coffee, which I’ve talked about before is it’s not necessarily a reliable source of a consistent amount of caffeine. It could be significantly higher or lower than that. So if you were going up towards the top end, I probably wouldn’t use coffee.
If you’re going for that bottom end of the range, coffee would be completely fine because if you were slightly over or slightly under, it’s totally fine. You’re not too concerned. Whereas if you’re at the top end, it could be an issue if you went way over. And if you just went way under, you wouldn’t be getting those same performance benefits.
Sammy:
Yeah, you know, it’s so easy to use other options like No-Doz, which I use all the time with clients because they’re 100 milligrams each. It’s very easy to dose that like prior to your race. Didn’t you have like six or something before your half?
Aidan:
It was like four. Yeah, I like No-Doz as well just because you can control for liquids too. Like, you know exactly the dosage you’re getting and you can control for liquids because if you were trying to get say the equivalent of that six No-Doz through like energy drinks. That’s so much liquid.
Sammy:
Yeah, not worth it.
Aidan:
Not worth it. Yeah, you don’t want that right before a marathon, but yeah, it’s handy. So having something like No-Doz or I’ve seen some more research recently about like having gum or even the Revy is like something that gets absorbed in your mouth, which I think for runners is really good too, because it’s not even going into your digestive system, which to me, there’s a lower chance of like some gut upset potentially in that case. So yeah, you could dabble into that sort of stuff.
And you do actually get the gum, sorry, because it absorbs in the mouth, it does actually go into your bloodstream a bit quicker. So you might get the effects on that within like 15 to 30 minutes versus the like 30 to 60 minutes with like a no-doz tablet or something. And then yeah, we have a lot of gels that actually do contain caffeine. So that could be helpful for during the race, like especially that last, like, you know, you’re getting towards like a 30K mark. That’s where I usually put a caffeine gel in for quite a few of my clients and depending on what their tolerance is, which we’ll try in training obviously, we can have a gel if it’s like a lot of them around 30 milligrams, some are a little bit higher, some can be up to 100 milligrams. So if you’re keen, you could definitely try something like that. And it definitely does reduce the pain, I think, which is a good thing.
Aidan:
And the research really supports that low dose caffeine later in an event as well as like a top up. Like even though it’s only 30 milligrams and that sounds like nothing compared to what we talking about earlier, the research really supports that still actually being beneficial. So that’s probably how I’d recommend using it as well. For the next one we’re gonna talk about beetroot juice and nitrates in general and how that can potentially help too.
Sammy:
Yeah, so beetroot juice is like you can get it in many different forms. You can get it in powders, you can get it in a juice or a concentrate. The main reason someone would want to take this you know, around training or races is it helps with vasodilation. So when you ingest it, it literally makes your little blood vessels a bit more dilated. So it actually does help to push that blood flow around the body and deliver oxygen to your muscles, which just makes the whole experience of running a little bit more efficient. So yeah, it does reduce sort of the energy cost and sort of the effort around running, which is really cool. And again, it’s coming from food. So I think a lot of athletes get pretty excited when they do try this.
Typically we’ll do one of the concentrated shots because again, we’re reducing the volume of liquid that you’re having. Yeah, one little tip with that though, I would say they are pretty gross in taste unfortunately. But if you add a bit of pineapple juice, which is something I usually do for like carb loading and stuff anyway, it honestly tastes like a normal juice. I’m not talking heaps, but just a little bit, just to give it a bit of sweetness. So that’s a little tip for you guys.
But yeah, it’s something that I think has you know, a lot of performance benefits. think we can get up to, it’s between one to 3% improvement. And yeah, it’s very simple. You just take it like one to three hours before the race and it’ll start to peak in the blood and you get all those performance benefits, which is awesome. If you want to take it, you can take it a couple of days before and it does have a cumulative effect. I’d say the only other thing is that it is quite high in FODMAP. So if you are someone who is sensitive, I would definitely try it in your training sessions before. And whilst it is something I usually just use mainly for races, like you’ve got to try it for that reason. make sure you can tolerate it.
Aidan:
Yeah. That covers everything. want to say on that as well. I think it’s just such an easy win to add. The final thing we will talk through is going to be body composition, which is a pretty nuanced topic. If we look at marathon runners at the elite level, a lot of them are very lean. That tells us body composition obviously has to play a role. So theoretically many recreational runners who are looking to take it to the next level probably would benefit from getting leaner, but everything comes at a cost. There is a downside to being in a calorie deficit when you’re trying to do high volumes of training and everything like that. So I guess we’ll talk about how we would plan that out and what we would do. We might even have a tiny bit of differences in terms of how we’d go about it, but do you want to lay out what you would do with somebody?
Sammy:
Yeah, well, hopefully someone’s to start with someone’s come to me quite a few months, I’d hope out from like their key marathon. And you know, if there was an opportunity to then, yeah, optimise body composition based on something that like, you know, they’d express that then I’d be like, okay, great. Well, let’s do this now because the closer we get to, you know, your peak, yeah, peaking sessions and stuff, it’s just, it’s gonna be so difficult to recover and to, you know, train the gut, to do all those things properly and that’s just such an important time in your training block.
So definitely doing it months before would be incredible. And then you’ve got like, you know, eight to 12 weeks out from your race to really optimise everything else. I’d say that’s probably the minimum amount of time I want to be spent, you know, prior to the race with practicing all this sort of stuff. Yeah, and I do it in an approach, I guess with my approach with anything body composition related is like, yeah, I do it in a way that’s obviously gonna support still the persons know, lifestyle and energy levels and everything like that.
So if it was something that was shorter and sharper and that still worked for them, great. Or if we did need a bit more time, then you know, we could do it that way too.
Aidan:
I do things like pretty similar, like I plan out in that exact same block and everything like that. It’s pretty rough doing long runs and or intense training sessions while you’re in a deficit. It, you can definitely feel a difference and that’s part of why it is so, and you just recover so much better as well. That’s part of why I like leading into a marathon. would ideally want to have a decent run of time as you’re building up to those quite high kilometres being on higher calories. But there has to be a phase somewhere. And if you had your entire, like, you’ve a long period of time to plan out when you were doing a race or something like that, it does make sense to adjust these things over time.
Let’s go to the other extreme though, and be like, well, clearly there is a downside of getting too lean. I’ve only really focused on the fact that most marathon runners are relatively lean but that can create a bit of a slippery slope where you just keep chasing lower and lower and lower body weights. And obviously there’s got to come a time where that is an issue. So there’s red flags. What red flags would you be looking out for?
Sammy:
Yeah. So like red flags have just been having a low energy availability would be the main thing there. that’s typically because, you know, someone’s training so much, I’ve got such a high volume of training and there’s not enough energy available to give to a lot of other processes. Processes, I can’t say that word very well, processes in the body that our body doesn’t see as sort of like these essential functions. So that’s like an immune health, gut health, even mental health, menstrual health, bone health, they all kind of suffer because the body doesn’t give enough energy to those functions so it can support this training load that you’ve got. So that’s that state of low energy availability.
And they can be like, go down that path where it is, if it’s for a long time, dipping into that for a short period of time isn’t going to be massively detrimental to performance and health and everything, but for a long period of time, it actually can quite severely impact some of those areas where I often see the stress fractures or loss of menstrual cycle. And for a long period of time, that’s just not helpful for your health at all. And you will cut your running career pretty short if you end up doing that for a long period of time, unfortunately.So yeah, there’s definitely a line and crossing that line can be pretty harmful, unfortunately, if it’s done in the long term especially. Yeah.
Aidan:
Yeah. Love that summary. even at an elite level, you see stuff like that all the time that has such a big impact. But what we’ll do now is we’ll wrap up there. Thank you so much, Sammy, coming on and co-hosting this one. Do you want to do a plug for the Runners Blueprint and the services we offer?
Aidan:
Yeah, sure. Yeah, if anyone hasn’t heard of it, we’re part of the Runners Blueprint. So it’s me, Aidan Muir and Nick Carbone. And yeah, Nick Carbone is also a exercise physio. So yeah, he does the training side of things and we focus on the nutrition and this is everyone who pretty much wants to get into running or even going up to that top end with like really long endurance races as well. So we provide training programs as well as nutrition plans that can help you do your best in those races.
And obviously, yeah, I feel like we’ve got a good knowledge. And combined with Nick, we’re making some pretty awesome plans, in my opinion. We’ve been doing it for almost a year now and we’ve had some really successful runners come through and smash PBs, have really good races and they’re recovering well, they’re feeling awesome. So yeah, it’s been really fun. And if you wanna be part of that journey with us, you can jump on, we’ve got a website, the runners blueprint, and you can find us on Instagram as well at the runners blueprint, I think there’s two underscores.
And yeah, if you want to get involved, can, you know, have a chat with us if you need to find what program will work for you or you can jump on the website and find one that’ll suit you in, you know, your next race or we’ve even got a maintenance plan coming out soon. So that’ll be good if you want to just sort of get faster and just continue your running journey, you know, over the summer in Australia here, it’s pretty hot at the moment. So no races, but just maintaining is a pretty good goal, I think, for now for lot of people.
Aidan:
Awesome. Well, this has been episode 175 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening. And if you haven’t already, if you could please leave a rating and review, would massively appreciate it.