After months of training, I usually feel like I could undo all that good work by eating the wrong thing, at the wrong time, leading to mid-race digestive issues.
After trying and failing lots of methods, I’ve realised getting race week nutrition right isn’t that complicated. In fact, overcomplicating it is what made things worse for me.
At its core, you want to keep things as similar to your training as possible because all a race should be is an effortless performance of your training.
Here are the core principles I now swear by when it comes to race week nutrition:
- Nothing new on race week
- Focus on carbs
- Hydration is key
- Plan it all out
- Take it for a test drive
Nothing new on race week
The term ‘nothing new on race day’ is well banded round the running community and rightly so. Having a big bowl of pasta before your race when you’ve been religiously having toast before all your training sessions is going to be a shock.
Our bodies like routine and often don’t respond well when you throw it off – e.g., grogginess when you wake up super early to get to the airport dad hours early. The same goes for race week prep.
The more predictable you can make your meal choice and timings on race week, the more your body will give back to you in performance on race day.
Focus on carbs
While I am keen to emphasise that you should keep race week nutrition as similar to your training weeks, there is only one thing I would encourage you to change – carbs.
Why carb load
Studies have found that carb loading in the run up to a race improves performance by 2-3% in events longer than 90 mins, compared to those who did not carb load.[1]
Carbohydrates are our bodies’ primary currency of fuel – fact.
The only issue is that our muscles and liver can only store so much of the energy from carbs (as glycogen). And if those stores are not fully filled before a race longer than 90 mins, you’ll feel an almighty wall of fatigue hit you late on in a race.
To delay this wall of fatigue, we can fuel during the race but most importantly, is to fill up these glycogen stores prior to the race through carb loading.
Who should carb load?
If you’re running for 90 mins or longer (half marathon and beyond).
Studies found that carb loading has little to no benefit on races shorter than 90 mins – so maybe don’t add garlic bread to every single meal if you’re running a 5K (soz).
When to carb load?
There is no real consensus on when is optimal to start carb loading. If you’re able to string together 2-3 days of elevated carb intake, you’ll be able to reap the benefits.
I recommend finishing carb loading (and eating your last big meal) at lunchtime the day before race day. This is to make sure that everything is processed and digested before your race so that you don’t experience any discomfort (or vomit!).
How many more carbs should I consume?
Ok, the bit you’ve been waiting for – here’s how many more carbs you should eat!
Research suggests you should up your carb intake to 5-12g of carbs per kg of bodyweight per day.[2]
So, for someone who weighs 70kg, you would consume 350-840g of carbs per day on your carb load. Yes, it’s a big range but where you fall in it depends on daily intake of carbs, weekly mileage, etc.
A good way of applying it is using a strategy from the bodybuilding world – simply double your carbs. In practical terms, that could literally be applied in a few ways:
- Extra carbs on your plate
- Extra smaller carby meals (toast, oats, fruit, etc.)
- Count the calories (only if you already count calories)
The only caveat I will put on the carb loading (soz for putting a downer on the best bit) is to try not to load up on the carbs that ride along with fats such as: chips, crisps, cookies, pizza (pizza without loads of cheese is fine), ice cream. Fats and protein should be making up a smaller proportion of your diet as we increase carbs.
Hydration is key (water & electrolytes)
We all know that staying hydrated is key to help our bodies simply err function. Even more so for runners when we lose loads of fluids through sweat, leading to:
- A reduction in performance
- Fatigue
- Muscle cramps
- Dizziness
In race week, it’s important to just maintain your hydration levels – I say maintain because overhydrating dilutes our natural fluid balance with electrolytes.
I could give you the guidelines of how many litres of fluid per day you should consume but the test I swear by is just making sure your pee is consistently a pale straw colour.
Consistently replenishing electrolytes is also crucial because they help regulate fluid balance in your body, maintain nerve and muscle function, and control blood pressure. You can probably get them (sodium, potassium and magnesium) in foods, but I like to take an electrolyte drink each day.
I currently take an Awesome Supplements mix daily. It’s does the job nicely, the dose is informed by research and tastes ermmm awesome haha. (p.s. the watermelon flavour is a properly decent cocktail mixer 🤫)
(p.p.s. you can also sneak 10% off using my code POWELL10 🤯)
Plan it all out
Planning your race week (and race day) meals in advance gives you a real advantage and sets you up for success. Yes, it helps take away some decision fatigue and buys you back time you can spend with your feet up.
But more importantly, it sets the intention that you really care about the race, so you need to be fuelling with quality foods, in big quantity.
(From a personal point, it also stops me from caving and buying a maccy’s!)
Plan it all out the weekend before, sort your shop out and prep as much as you can the weekend before. Here’s an example of what I would typically plan:
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
| Mon | Bagel, PB, protein | Paella | Spaghetti Meatballs |
| Tue | Oats, protein | Paella | Sweet & Sour Pork |
| Wed | Bagel, PB, protein | Paella | Spaghetti Meatballs |
| Thu | Oats, protein | Paella | Sweet & Sour Pork |
| Fri | Bagel, PB, protein | Rice, Chicken, Veg | Spaghetti Meatballs |
| Sat | Oats, protein | Rice, Chicken, Veg | Sweet & Sour Pork |
| RACE | Bagel, PB | beer | beer |
As you can see, it really doesn’t need to be complex, measured to the gram and to the minute. If you plan the big stuff ahead of time, the smaller things can take care of themselves.
Take it for a test drive
Before coming into your race week, make sure you test drive your strategies for:
- Pre-run foods that sit well with you
- How many hours you take on food before the race
- What gels sit well with you and how often you need to take them in race
- How often you take on water (including where water stations are)
Coming back to ‘don’t try anything new on race week’, your training weeks are the opportunities for you to test stuff out, fail easy and find what works best for you.
In terms of race day nutrition, it’s finding the foods that sit well with you when you’re running at a high effort, for a prolonged amount of time. As I said, it’s better to find out that maybe your body doesn’t operate so well on a bagel and Nutella during training than on race day (personal example: Edinburgh Half Marathon 2022…).
Of course, there will be some pre-run meals that objectively won’t sit well under intensity, such as 2 large Double Quarter Pounder meals with milkshakes. But the key thing here is that everyone has different preferences and rituals you just need to play around with and find out what works best – no judgement.
The bottom line is that the body likes predictability. The more you can make your body think that race day is just another training run with these rituals, the more likely it will pay you back with a flawless performance.
Race Day Pointers
The big day has arrived… Race Day is about an effortless performance of everything you’ve trained for, it shouldn’t be anything new to your body. Here is a checklist to consider with fuelling, everything here must be practised before race week!
Before
- Light, carby breakfast that you’ve already tested out (bagel, peanut butter + honey for me) 2-4 hours before
- Some caffeine with breakfast to help get things moving down there…
During
- Some water with breakfast and very slowly sipping until 30 mins out
- A gel every 30-45 mins if your race is over 90 mins
- Top up with water, in-line with your strategy and weather conditions
After
- A beer, you earned it.
TL; DR
On race week…
- Avoid ‘new foods’ on race week
- Focus on carbohydrate intake
- Carb load if your race is over 90 mins
- Stay hydrated, maintaining fluid and electrolyte balance
- Plan ahead and test drive
[1] S92 Despite the review being published in 1997, the results are still valid and hold. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9291549/
[2] Coyle, E.F., Jeukendrup, A.E., Oseto, M.C., Hodgkinson, B. J., & Zderic, T. W. (2001). Low-fat diet alters intramuscular substrates and reduces lipolysis and fat oxidation during exercise. American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism, 280, E391–E398.
