The Fuelling Guide · Finish your first half marathon

A half marathon sounds short enough to run without eating. Yet after about 1h30 to 2h00 of running your carbohydrate stores can run low, and then every kilometre gets harder. Whatever goes wrong during the race usually starts small: a first kilometre that goes too quickly, or an extra cup of water at every drinks station. And anyone who has always run without food does not yet know how the stomach reacts to a gel on the run. That is why you get your stomach used to it in training beforehand, step by step.

This guide follows the steps of the training package “Finish your first half marathon” and of the heart-rate plan with the same goal: your gut training in three steps, each time in your long run, your 10 km tune-up race as a first trial run, your dress rehearsal at the start time of your race and your race plan for race day. At each step you can read why it is in your plan and what it means for your body weight and your expected finishing time. The tables are calculated using the rules of the package, so the guide and your plan give the same numbers. 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 carb loading makes you finish faster when you also take gels during the race. For each trial the guide explains, you can read who took part: runners, cyclists or other endurance athletes.

What’s inside

• What your half marathon asks of you: what 21.1 km costs, what your body carries in its own stores, how many gels that comes to for each finishing time, and where things can go wrong during the race: a start that is too fast, your stomach and drinking too much or too little.
• The months before: eating enough for your training, eating around your key sessions, your gut training in three steps in your long run (from half a gel to your race products, from ± 20–30 to ± 40–60 g of carbohydrate per hour), your 10 km tune-up race as a trial run and your dress rehearsal at your start time, 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 finishing 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 over the three weeks after.
• Good to know: what research has shown so far about women and older runners, and which new products you don’t need (yet) for your first half marathon.

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 getting ready for their first half marathon, with or without the training package or the heart-rate plan “Finish your first half marathon”. The tables assume an expected finishing time of ± 2h00 to 2h45.

With the training package

If you buy the training package “Finish your first half marathon” (on Payhip: “Trainingspakket · Je eerste halve marathon finishen”, with one or two lactate field tests on the track and a tailored training-plan dossier in Dutch), you get this guide free.

Size

125 pages · 20 figures · 22 tables · 8 worksheets · 117 scientific sources (with a DOI where available) · glossary of 28 terms.

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