What do you eat leading up to a race?
My pre-race meal, if I can swing it, is sushi.
Carbs. Protein. And delicious to boot.
I think one of those tactics of race prep that tends to fall by the wayside, even in experienced runners, is figuring out what fuels you in the day before a race. The body is machine and needs energy: the right kind, in the right place, at the right time. It can sort a lot of this out on its own, but feeding yourself at the right time with the right things has become the overthought effort of many racers leading into a big race.
And it seems simple enough. It used to just be all about the carb loading, so the old rule of thumb (but now almost a cliche) was a big pasta meal.
Pasta? No. It’s never been so simple for me.
My gut and are have had some disagreements as I’ve crept into my forties and onward to five-oh. It’s no longer keen on spicy food. It punishes me for making poor choices.
Too heavy. Too sweet. Too fried. Not good.
Oh, and then caffeine. A friend recently sent me an Insta reel reminding me of our running joke about the effects of drinking too much coffee pre-run, but then I’ve had to give up coffee in the last year for other reasons. (That is a whole other post.)
Another friend borked on a recent marathon because of food-related gut issues…. because look. It’s not a trivial concern. And your gut cramping up with a third of the course ahead of you really, really sucks.
All that planning, all that training, all that work and you are kicking yourself for messing it up because you ate the wrong thing.
Key, I think, especially pre-race is finding something that digests easily but also stocks up blood sugar to appropriate levels. Simple foods with minimal spice. This has been critical, for me at least, and particularly for longer races.
Which brings me back to sushi: carb-rich, thanks to white rice. A bit of clean protein in the form of fish. And a favourite meal besides, even on a non-race-eve. Â
Figure out what works for you and you’ll almost certainly race happier.
Definitions
- august
- In the month of August where I live summer peaks and the days are often relatively hot (in the high 20s or low 30s) muggy, smokey and dry. Rain is infrequent, but when it arrives it comes in the form of drenching downpours and epic thunderstorms. We begin our runs earlier in the day because the local marathon runs late in the month and our training distances are maxing.
- carb
- Short for carbohydrates, this usually refers to the complex sugars found in grain products like bread, pasta, and rice. Carbs are easier to digest than oils and proteins.
- five-oh
- I started running when I was barely thirty-ish. I was a bit overweight and out of shape, but young. Twenty years later I started writing this blog on the edge of turning 50. Five. Oh. And running at that age, even when you've been doing it for twenty years, is a whole new game.
- october
- Fully into autumn, October is a month of shifting seasons, short days, long shadows, and gorgeous sunsets. The cobwebs are hung on the eaves in preparation for halloween, and here in Canada we're running off Thanksgiving dinner for a couple weeks after a proper good meal mid-month.
- protein
- A general term for a complex macronutrient group made up of chains of amino acids, the building blocks of muscles in people. Usually protein in a runners diet is about recovery more than it is about fuel.
- race
- You train and train and train some more, and then for no clear reason you pay a bunch of money to run as fast as you possibly can at a very specific time with a bunch of strangers along a course lined with more strangers (or along paths lined with trees if you are an ultra runner) at the end of which you are handed a medal and a banana and a sense of achievement unlike anything you will feel again (until you sign up for your next one.)
- september
- The days are noticeably shorter when we realize that September is upon us. The post-summer routine kicks in and people are back to regular work schedules and kids are back in school. It can still be warm, but the hottest days are behind us and most of the biggest races of the year are in the rear view. We savour September knowing winter is too soon to come.
