Nutrition and Hydration During my Marathon

Fortunately during the marathon, the wall and I never met.   Although I'm sure there are many factors (like actual training) I contribute it to two things, not going out too fast and nutrition/hydration. If you look at my pacing in my prior email, you'll see that I really tried keeping it slow in the beginning miles.  As I felt better, I was able to pick up the pace.  I would much rather finish a marathon with extra energy, sprinting towards the finish line rather than a wish of taking the first miles slower.

The second main factor was  nutrition and hydration. This isn't a slam dunk guarantee but it worked for me during this race.

The week before the race I started increasing my grains to about 10 a day.  I chose whole grains and whole wheat (don't confuse wheat with whole wheat or multi-grain with whole grain) over white breads and pasta when possible.  I try and select whole grains during the whole marathon training season and not just during taper.

3 days prior to the race I increased the grains again to about 12 servings per day and also tried to increase my milk, veggie and fruit intake.  I did much better on increasing grains when I added cream cheese (low fat when possible) and my chai tea with non-fat milk.  I wasn't worried about weight gain because I would run it off during the race and was avoiding the empty white sugar calories.

The morning of the race the first thing I did upon waking was drink a full cup of water. I actually do this every morning and drink a glass of water before each snack and meal.  I'm not a big breakfast eater before my long runs but knew before the race eating was important.  I ate one Fall Harvest Muffin (recipe here) shortly after getting up and a second one 2 hours before the race start.  I was still hungry and could have easily eaten another one but held off.  I didn't want to be running on a full stomach.

My plan was to eat a GU (orange burst with caffeine) at miles 5,10,15 and 20.  I didn't however, take into account the water stops were every two miles.  I revised my plan to take the GU starting at mile 6, 10, 16 and 22.  As it turned out I was able to take one at 15 and 20 anyway.  Rather than run the risk of taking in a GU and not having enough water to wash it down, I would start the GU about 1/8th of a mile before the water stop.

Each water stop I took water until mile 10 then upped it to two cups.  I needed to make sure that I was getting enough water and since I often wore half the water in the cup anyways, I needed to get two cups.  The poor volunteers handing me water frequently got splashed too.  Sorry! Water is always my beverage of choice but I changed it up and started taking Gatorade the last couple miles.  I did this for a couple reasons.  One, because I had the last GU at 20 and was still worried of hitting the wall and not having any GU left since I only brought 4 GU and ate 4 GU.  Second, at my first marathon I remember being so tired towards the end but not wanting to take any more water or any more GU.  I thought if I had Gatorade that it would help me.  The only problem with Gatorade is it is sticky and spilling on myself is easy to do.

I was able to finish, almost sprint in and had plenty of energy.  Next time I will repeat the same carb loading nutrition along with hydration that I did for this marathon.

Happy Running!