This post wraps up the discussion of common themes in the life of a runner. After this one we move on to the races including final travel logistics and reports from the scene as large scale marathons return to the world stage.
In September of 1973 a high school football player on Long Island, New York collapsed during practice and died shortly afterwards. Practice had been going on for several hours with the temperature in the 80’s and the players clad in full equipment. Sadly this tragedy was not unusual for that day and age.
I remember the fallout from his death. Suddenly parents were demanding that coaches allow the players to take water breaks during practice. Coaches bowed to the pressure but I clearly remember that asking for water during practice in that era was considered a sign of weakness.
That child’s death was caused by an unshakeable, mistaken view of how best to train an athlete for optimum performance. The ignorance is all the more appalling in light of the fact that the benefit of adequate hydration was already well known.
Case in point: Researchers at the University of Florida were urged by the school’s head football coach to study how to help athletes replace fluids lost from sweating. The result was Gatorade which debuted in 1965.
Thankfully, attitudes can change. Or maybe it’s just that running and football are so very different. In any event, hydration and its counterpart, nutrition, are now well established as critical parameters in the performance of a runner and marathoners take them as seriously as they do their training plans.
8. Nutrition
A single peanut M&M contains nearly 12 calories. Consuming one of them nets your body 1.42 g of carbs, 0.25 g of protein, and 0.58 g of fat.
I know this because I read the nutrition label on one of those Costco-sized containers of peanut M&M’s. I thought I might need a way to fine tune my carbo loading. They beat out tiny twist pretzels because the pretzels, without the benefit of the peanut, don’t pack as much protein.
In simulating my upcoming Chicago-Boston doubleheader, I ran 20 miles on August 27 and then did another 20-miler the next day. After the first 20-miler I assumed that the tank was empty and I had less than 24 hours to refill it or I’d run out of gas on the second one. Hence the need for carbo loading.
You might think that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the rest of the day after a long run. Try it some time.
Carbo loading made the scene in the late 1960’s when a Swedish physiologist, Gunvar Ahlborg, worked out the role glycogen plays in the performance of endurance athletes.
Running a marathon requires a lot of fuel and due to how rapidly they can mobilize, carbohydrates are the body’s fuel of choice for a marathon.
Glucose, the simple sugar that you learned of when studying photosynthesis, is the carb that actually powers a cell. Glycogen is just a large number of glucose molecules packed together in a way that makes it easy to unpack them for use wherever and whenever they are needed.
The human body can store about 600 grams of glycogen. Most of it (about 500 grams) is in muscle cells and nearly all the rest is stored in the liver. A tiny bit hides out in the brain.
That glycogen will fuel a runner somewhere between ninety minutes to two hours. When emptied of glycogen the runner hits the proverbial wall, the ability and desire to continue ebbs, and the runner questions why she ever wanted to run a marathon in the first place.
It’s worse though when the runner’s glycogen storage is not full to begin with. In this case the crash can happen much sooner. Carbo loading, when properly done, allows the runner to start the race with a full glycogen tank.
But what about those of us mortals who can’t finish a marathon within two hours? Well we have to eat along the way. And because it takes 30 to 90 minutes for the carbs to digest and become muscle fuel, a marathoner must start eating well before the fuel is needed.
In fact a marathoner eats all throughout the race. It’s generally accepted that a runner need consume 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour. This keeps glucose available to cells via the bloodstream thus slowing the burn rate of the stored glycogen.
Just about any carb will do (cookies, peanut butter sandwiches, raw fruit, dried fruit, jelly beans, etc.) but that’s not the whole story. The rest of the story is about comfort.
First of all, most foods must be washed down with water. Also, it’s best if the food does not make the runner sick. No one needs an upset stomach on top of everything else going on in a marathon.
There are many products to choose from including gooey, frosting-like gels, solid gels, packaged nut butters, packaged maple syrup, etc. Most ubiquitous are the gooey gels which don’t work for me. Not that I’ve ever tried them. They just make me queasy thinking about sucking them down during a run.
I like to eat Clif Bloks on long runs and races because they are like candy and I can wrap my mind around candy. They come in packages containing six cubes each and I will down three of them every three miles. That works out to 90 calories and 23 grams of carbs every 25 to 30 minutes. I do need water to wash them down which is fine when I can carry a hydration vest with me. But the Majors don’t allow vests anymore for security reasons so I have to time my eating to when I am coming up on a water station.
I’ve recently tried Maurten Gels as an alternative to Clif Bloks. The carbs in Maurten are bound up in hydrogel which, according to the manufacturer, protects them from digestion in the stomach so they go right on to the intestines where the digestion is more efficient. Also there is a lot of water in the hydrogel so there is no need for additional water to wash it down. I expect to use these while running the Majors.
Back to my amateur carbo loading exercise between the two 20-milers.
I’ve seen estimates that a runner needs at least 3.6 grams of carbs for every pound of body weight in order to adequately carbo load. Hence my target was to consume at least 637 grams of carbs.
The carbs take care of the fueling but for adequate recovery the runner also needs to eat protein for tissue repair. There the rule of thumb is a 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein. That adds another 159 grams of protein to the menu.
The table below details my intake after the first 20 miler. Protein consumption was fine but I fell way short on carbs. I had already eaten all I cared to though.
I could have been more judicious. After nearly 100 peanut M&M’s it’s not really about fine tuning anymore.
Almost 4500 calories eaten after the run and that doesn’t count what I ate before and during the workout. All told I consumed 6700 calories for the day. I doubt that I clear that many calories on Thanksgiving.
I should point out that traditionally carb loading is done during the last three to four days before the marathon. Cramming it in to less than 24 hours is not typical nor would I want to do it very often.
Nonetheless, this nutrition plan worked well for my simulation of Chicago and Boston. Thankfully, I did not crash into the wall on the second 20-miler and despite a little soreness in my hips I felt pretty good the next day. Just one more step closer to success.
Still I have to plan out how to do this carbo loading while I hustle out of Chicago and fly back to Boston. I’m thinking that I’ll be making some food in Boston to carry with me on the plane to Chicago so that I can eat it on the return flight.
I have another, more personal, concern regarding “nutrition”. If I’m out running for four hours, to stick to my medication schedule I will need to take a few of my Parkinson’s pills along the way. I stash the pills in a small zip lock bag that I carry in my clothing and use my watch alarm to tell me when to take them.
9. Hydration
The folks at the University of Florida who invented Gatorade discovered that sweat has a lot of ions in it primarily sodium (Na+) which is why it tastes salty. There are also ions of potassium, chloride, calcium, among others. Nowadays we call these ions electrolytes.
The thinking was that along with the water, the body needed to have the electrolytes replenished for optimum performance. So they mixed up some electrolytes with water and sugar and gave it to the football team to generally positive reviews.
Classic double-blind experimental opportunity missed. Who knows how well a placebo would have done?
Yet electrolyte replenishment is here to stay and there is scientific basis to support its validity. Water flows into or out of cells based on the relative concentrations of ions within and surrounding them. Water exits the cell if the ion concentration is lower inside the cell than outside. Therefore it’s not enough to simply drink water; to avoid dehydration the ions have to be replaced as well so as to maintain the ion balance across the cell membrane.
Every hour, a runner will need to drink three-quarters of a liter of water while taking in 600 mg of sodium.
As is the case with nutrition, there are many hydration products for athletes to choose from. Some, like Gatorade, include sugar so that carb replacement takes place at the same time as hydration.
There are other products, however, with very little sugar. They address the possibility that the runner may not always want or need carbs when re-hydrating. This might be the case for contests of less than one hour where glycogen replacement is not necessary.
This may be a consequence of Parkinson’s but I sweat a lot when I run. I prefer to hydrate with a product having few calories because I want to be able to add more electrolytes to the stew without having to take on more carbs. I typically use Nuun tablets which have 300 mg of sodium in each.
Given a choice I will run with a hydration pack on my back that contains up to two liters of water with a number of Nuun tablets dissolved in the water depending on how long I am running. For example, I will dissolve four Nuun tablets in the water for a marathon.
That’s a total of 1200 mg of sodium in solution with the water. I get another 1150 mg in the 24 Clif Bloks I eat. Even that’s not enough for me so I down electrolyte drinks at the aid stations. Without the benefit of my hydration pack while running the majors I will need to stop at each water hole and drink several cups before continuing on.
The recovery period is important as well. After a long run I will hydrate until I start to feel normal again. On the day that I carbo loaded between two 20-milers, I drank 4.5 liters of water having a total of six Nuun tablets dissolved therein.
10. Support
It often occurs to me that I shouldn’t be able to do this. Run all these marathons in just a few weeks, that is.
And I really can’t. At least not alone. Like most runners I need support in order to be successful. Any runner taking on their first marathon should take heed. Get help, it makes all the difference. It’s very hard to do solo.
Top of my list is my wife, Lynn, who cheerfully allows this indulgence of mine and helps with all my travel and lodging arrangements. I’m also indebted to my children who have been encouraging me all of the way.
I can also count on the community of athletes that I engage with on Strava. This is my favorite social network. There’s no trash talk and all comments are universally positive and supportive.
And then there’s all of you reading this blog and contributing to my campaign. I am energized and empowered by the knowledge that there are people out there who care about my goal and are cheering me on. I’m a very lucky guy and I feel blessed. Thank you.
Full Disclosure
I receive no compensation whatsoever for any of the products mentioned or pictured in this blog.
As you may already know I am a charity runner in the London, Boston, and New York marathons this year.
There’s still time to contribute to my cause (assuming that you have not already done so).
If you share the passion that the Michael J Fox Foundation and I have for finding a Parkinson’s cure please consider contributing to any of the WMM I am running in as a member of Team Fox (links below). All donations are meaningful and greatly appreciated.
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/boston-marathon-2021/joesgottarun
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/londonmarathon2021/joesgottarun
fundraise.michaeljfox.org/tcs-nyc-marathon-2021/joesgottarun
