Once you have determined your total daily needs, divide it by the number of meals and snacks you plan to have in the day(s) leading up to your race. Meaning, if you need 540 grams of carbs per day while carb-loading, you could break that up into 120 grams each at
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then 60 grams each for your mid-morning, afternoon, and bedtime
snack. Needless to say, carbohydrates should make up the vast majority of your intake.
Moving on to race morning, guidelines suggest targeting 2 to 4 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight two to four hours prior to your race. This could look like: a cinnamon raisin bagel with apple butter spread, one medium banana, and 350 millilitres of a sports drink three hours prior to your race. Then, 15 minutes before the start, eat either a couple dates or a gel.
Think realistically about what foods will be available
If you are running a local race, the options you can add to your pre-race nutrition regimen are flexible—you’re the one who brings home the bread after all. However, if you will be traveling for your race, some extra thought is necessary. For example, consider where in the area of your race you might be dining beforehand, and go ahead and select some options that are similar to what you can practice with in training. You can even contact the restaurant beforehand to make sure the ingredients of the entrée are all familiar to you.
Another option is to simply travel with your own pre-race nutrition (a practice common among elites). Carbohydrate sources that travel well include pre-cooked rice or noodles, instant mashed potatoes, instant oatmeal packets, crackers, pretzels, bagels, granola, dried fruit, fruit squeezable pouches, and gummies.
We get it, munching on bland carbohydrates brought from home in the day(s) leading up to your race doesn’t sound all that delish, but that post-race burger and fries will be even more satisfying if you’ve just crushed your race energised and with no emergency bathroom stops.
(Gently) practice your pre-race nutrition
Once you have a general plan in place for carb loading and your race morning meal, practice, practice, practice! If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Your long run is the dress rehearsal for your race. That phrase couldn’t be more valid when it comes to performance nutrition.
A two- to three-day carb load isn’t generally recommended often during training. Doing this weekly would jeopardise other vital nutrients you need to train and recover (antioxidants, fibre, healthy fats, protein, etc.), especially within peak training. However, you can gently practice your pre-race routines. Pre-race dinner and pre-race breakfast are good options to consistently practice throughout training. It’s also advised to practice carb loading for an entire day before several of your longest training runs. Figure out what carbohydrate sources work best for you. (It’s also important to practice good hydration habits prior to your long run as well.)
Keep a food journal
Keeping a food journal throughout your training is where the magic happens. While it’s not necessary to be overly obsessive about food journaling in training, taking notes of pre-long run meals, snacks, and hydration, as well as your during-run fuelling and hydration regimen can be super helpful.
Keeping a food journal is one of the best things you can do to make a plan that works best for you. Training for a half marathon or marathon takes months, which gives you plenty of opportunities to tweak your fuelling plan over time. For example, some salty sweaters even find that adding extra sodium to their pre-long run dinner helps them retain the fluid they need to finish their run strong.
Listen to your body and take notes! Putting in a little bit of extra thought to develop a custom pre-race nutrition plan is truly a game-changer that can boost your odds of crushing it on race day.
