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Health:Fitness & Nutrition
How to Avoid the Marathon Wall by Calculating Your Specific Fueling Needs: An Interview with Jeff Gaudette
“Bonking” is probably the greatest fear when training for and competing in marathons.
Most know that the human body doesn’t store enough fuel to make it through the whole distance. So, the question then becomes – what do you need, how much of it do you need, and how often should you take it?
In this podcast, we’re going to chat with the head coach at RunnersConnect, Jeff Gaudette, about his experiences with marathon nutrition. He’s also going to tell you how you can calculate your own specific fueling needs to avoid the bonk and explain how the Marathon Nutrition Blueprint can help.
Here are the primary topics that Jeff and I discussed:
1. Jeff’s early struggles with marathon nutrition.In his first attempt at the marathon in Chicago, he had no pre-defined strategy for nutrition. He decided to use only sports drinks, didn’t take enough, and lasted until around 19 miles. At the Twin Cities Marathon the following year, Jeff went the opposite way – he started fueling too early and ended up with a very upset stomach.
Take Action:These 2 results made it clear that you can’t go into a marathon using generalized advice. So, Jeff did the research, found the right calculations and developed several innovative ways to practice drinking and taking other nutrition while training and racing.2. The importance of glycogen, fats, and electrolytes in the fueling puzzleThe human body works most efficiently when burning glycogen but as most marathoners know, the body doesn’t store enough by itself to make through a full marathon. When glycogen runs out, fat has to take its place. However, teaching and training the body to use fat as a fuel source is easier said than done.
Take Action:“I believe the most effective way to train the body to burn fat as a fuel source is through the use of what are called “depletion runs.” These are workouts, ideally at or around marathon pace, that are done after having put the body in a glycogen-deficient state.3. How to calculate your specific needs to avoid the “bonk.”How you can use the data from your weight, goal pace, fitness and individual sweat rate to calculate your own nutritional needs. Plus, we cover how the Marathon Nutrition Blueprint can do this all for you.
Take Action:It’s critical to work with your individual physiological demands for energy. This helps you avoid taking too much fuel and feeling sick or not taking enough and hitting the wall.4. Specific practice tips for fueling on the runHow to go about finding which products work best for you and how to get good at drinking and/or eating while running.
Take Action:All of the nutritional knowledge and strategy in the world won’t help if you haven’t practiced fueling while running, specifically at marathon pace. We cover a couple of different methods to get better at this, especially drinking out of cups.We’d like to thank Jeff for his time and wish him good luck with the release of the Marathon Nutrition Blueprint.
How to Avoid the Marathon Wall by Calculating Your Specific Fueling Needs: An Interview with Jeff Gaudette
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