My Food Tips and Tricks

                As much as I love diving into the mindset of a runner and writing about issues we wrestle with, I also want to post some workouts, recipes, running book reviews, and various tips and tricks.  Probably the second most common topic people ask me about in regards to running (behind injury questions) relates to food.  What do you eat on race day?  What do you eat on a long training run?  What do you eat to recover?  In this blog post I will let you into my own personal world of food tips and tricks that I have found to work well for me.  There is no guaranty that any of these food-isms of mine will work for you, but I encourage you to try some of these things if you want, and experiment on your own.  It is an invaluable practice to experiment with your running nutrition on training runs, especially when you are covering distances that get well into the double digits. 

                I should first tell you my philosophy on running food.  I try not to dissect things and analyze too much.  I analyze things all day in my professional job, as well as in my coaching job.  When it comes to my own personal time, I don’t want to have to think that hard about it.  I keep it simple.  I’ll try eating something, and will then pay close attention to how my body reacts and how my performance is in my workout.  If it’s good, I keep it.  If I get queasy, I don’t like the texture of it, if it feels hard to digest, if I get sluggish, if it’s hard to carry or stash on a route, it’s out.  Simple as that.  There are tons of conflicting sources of information out there telling you what to do and what not to do with the food you consume in regards to performance.  I look into quite a bit of that information, but the voice I listen to most closely is my own body.  That being said, let’s get into my food quirks.

                The night before a long training run or a race that is marathon distance or longer, I stay pretty traditional.  I do angel hair pasta, and a meat sauce that consists of tomato basil sauce and browned ground turkey.  I’ll also have an organic salad with extra veggies on it – usually cherry tomatoes, a couple different colors of peppers and cucumbers with a little bit of organic dressing.  I think that meal is pretty standard for most runners.  We grew up hearing about carbo loading and had pasta dinners before meets, so it is just as much tradition as it is strategic eating.

                Here is my first real ‘tip’ I will give you, and it works incredibly well for me.  A friend of mine who is a cyclist told me this trick because a Graeme Obree (a world champion cyclist nicknamed ‘The Flying Scotsman') did this.  To preface this, I have to tell you one thing.  I hate running and racing in the morning.  I hate getting moving before I’ve been awake for 7 or 8 hours, I hate forcing a big breakfast down so I have sustenance to get going, I hate the creaks in my body as I get rolling before the sun comes up.  It’s just not my thing.   When we are sleeping at night we are basically fasting. We aren’t drinking water, we’re not snacking on almonds and applesauce.  We’re just sleeping.  I always felt that I had to have a very large breakfast to offset the fasting factor before I hit the road for more than 15 miles in the morning, which lead me to choke down a big breakfast, digest slowly, and be somewhat miserable.  Here’s the trick – drink two or three large glasses of water in the last hour before you go to bed.  Put a granola bar and a banana (or whatever works for you for a snack) on your night stand next to your bed, and set your alarm for the morning when you have to eat breakfast.  During the night you will have to get up and pee because of all that water (if you don’t wake up to do that, you were probably dehydrated that day which is a whole different issue).  Your body will naturally wake you up to go, and when you do, eat that snack you laid out the night before when you get back to your bed.  You should fall back to sleep pretty quickly and you have a little extra fuel in you before your alarm goes off. 

                You might be wondering why I don’t just say to set your alarm for 1am to eat. The problem there is that you’ll be jolted out of your sleep.   You will most likely have a harder time getting back to sleep, and you’ll be more tired when your alarm goes off to eat breakfast.  When your body naturally wakes you up, it is much easier on your body and your sleep cycle.  I totally swear by this and it has helped me a ton for my morning runs.

                My pre-long run / pre-race breakfast is always the same.  Two packets of oatmeal, a sliced up apple with peanut butter, and a cup of coffee.  I make sure I have finished it within 1 hour and 50 minutes of the start.  If I’m racing a marathon or longer I also have half a Snickers bar 45 minutes before the gun goes off.  That is probably superstition more than anything, but for some reason it works for me. 

                What I choose to eat while running depends on the distance and the weather.  Worst case scenario I’m running long (further than… 22 miles or so) and it is hot, humid and uncomfortable.   I will of course carry water and make sure there are spots along the way to re-fill.  I know that I will need salt because I’ll be sweating so much out, and in that case there are two things I love for salt replacement.  Boiled red potatoes dipped in seas salt, and chicken broth.  The potatoes are just fine cold (so I boil them the night before, cut them up and put them in ziplock bags), but the broth I like at least warm, even on hot days.  For that I’ll heat it up in the morning and put it in a thermos.  If I have a crew member they hold on to it for me, or I will stash it along the route to drink half way through. 

                On hot humid days, and even just on very long runs in general I like to add some electorlytes to the water I’m drinking every hour or so.  I prefer Nuun tabs that you can drop into a water bottle.  You can find them at REI.  The lemon lime ones I get have a very subtle flavor and dissolve quickly.  Even on a touchy stomach this works well with me.

                After years of trying gels, candies, and liquid calories, my favorite staple on long runs are Cliff Shot Blocks.  They are easy to get out of the plastic sleeve, they don’t get sticky gooey stuff on your hands or face, and the texture is totally bearable.  I don’t like intense flavors of anything if I’m running long, hot, or hard, so I stick to ones that are lighter in color.  I’m in no way scientific, but I feel like the more intense the color, the more intense the flavor. (The cranberry raspberry ones are dark red and WOW – super intense flavor.) I eat something every three miles on those long days.  It is probably more than I need, but I prefer to be a little ahead of the curve.  I hate to say this, but *knock on wood*, I have yet to ‘bonk’ while eating this way. 

                As for a post run / post race food, I make sure I eat something with carbs and protein immediately after (usually a banana with some nuts), but I also listen to what I’m craving at that time.  I’m a big believer that when your body is craving something in those situations, it’s telling you something.  After the Madison Marathon in 2006 (I think) it was incredibly hot, and all I could think about was nachos and Coke for the last 8 miles or so.  You can guess what I had as soon as I finished the race.  Nachos and a Coke.  And I felt great afterwards. 

                Again, I encourage you to experiment.  I’ve tried all sorts of things on runs.  Dried fruit, oreos, Cheez Its, Red Bull, Ensure, peanut butter pretzels, Pringles, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, …. Your options are endless, so try some things.  Listen to cravings.  Try things that sound weird – you never know what will end up being your go-to food combination of choice 30 miles down the trail!