The Fuelling Guide · Run a faster marathon

A faster marathon costs more energy per hour, and a larger share of it comes from carbohydrate. Without topping up, your stores run low after about 2h00 to 2h30. At a higher pace your stomach usually tolerates a gel less well, and in research runners took less carbohydrate during the race than they had planned. That is why you practise your gels in training beforehand, at your race pace too.

This guide follows the steps of the training package “Run a faster marathon” and of the heart-rate plan with the same goal: your gut training in four steps, with a gel in your long run and in your race-pace sessions, your half marathon as a dress rehearsal four weeks before, and your race plan for your target time. At each step you can read why it is in your plan and what it means for your body weight and your target time. The tables follow the calculation rules of the package; where the heart-rate plan gives a range, the guide falls within it. You can also use the guide on its own.

In eight chapters, a box (a table in chapter 16) sets out what is well supported, what mostly comes from practice and what is still open, such as whether 75–90 g of carbohydrate per hour makes recreational marathon runners faster than ± 60 g per hour. For each trial the guide explains, you can read who took part: runners, cyclists or other endurance athletes.

What’s inside

• What your marathon asks of you: what a faster marathon costs per hour, what your body carries in its own stores, how many gels that comes to for each finishing time, and where an attempt at a faster time can go off the rails: a start that is too fast, the wall, your stomach at race pace and drinking too much or too little.
• The months before: eating enough for your training, eating around your key sessions, your gut training in four steps (from ± 30 to ± 60 g of carbohydrate per hour, with ± 75–90 g as an option) with a gel in your race-pace sessions too, and your half marathon as a dress rehearsal, with the weigh-in test.
• The final days: carb loading with a table for your body weight, race week day by day and the breakfast that suits your start time.
• Race day: your gel plan for your target time, a lower race plan if your gut training went less smoothly, your gels and the drinks stations, drinking to thirst with an upper limit from your own weigh-in test, salt, caffeine, hot, cold or wet weather, and an emergency plan if things still go wrong.
• After the finish: what you eat and drink in the first hours, and how to get going again gently in the week after.
• Good to know: what research has shown so far about women and older runners, and about 120 g per hour, hydrogel, bicarbonate, ketones and other new products.

With eight worksheets to print (your race plan, your weigh-in test, your gut-training ladder, a 48-hour loading planner, a breakfast planner, a test log, a supporter card and an emergency plan), a reference list and a glossary.

Who it is for

Anyone who has already run a marathon and now wants to go faster, with or without the training package or the heart-rate plan “Run a faster marathon”. The tables assume an expected finishing time of ± 2h45 to 4h30.

With the training package

If you buy the training package “Run a faster marathon” (on Payhip: “Trainingspakket · Marathon verbeteren”, with one or two lactate field tests on the track and a tailored training-plan dossier in Dutch), you get this guide free.

Size

127 pages · 20 figures · 24 tables · 8 worksheets · 124 scientific sources (with a DOI where available) · glossary of 31 terms.

This guide gives general information on nutrition for endurance runners. It is not a substitute for advice from a doctor or dietitian.