So, you’ve signed up to a marathon, good on you! You’ve probably already thought about ways in which you can boost performance, endurance and prevent injury – but have you ever thought about supplements?
Supplementing is a great way to get the most out of your marathon performance, but with the market being saturated with products geared towards running it can be hard to know what works best. So we’ve come up with our guide to the best supplements for running to make things a little easier for you…
Things people say when you tell them you’re running a marathon:
- Wow you must be fit! (then continue to visually assess your physique)
- Are you sure? (Yes Gran, I’m sure thank you)
- Go to the toilet before you start! You don’t want to do a Paula Radcliffe…
- Hope you’ve got the nipple tape ready! (Yep, I’m pretty sure that’s the least of my worries).
- Your Dad did the marathon when he was your age, with no training (helpful…).
Enough of the highly motivational comments from loved ones, here’s how you can really get the most out of your training to the time you really want…
Carb loading
The term carbohydrate loading is probably following you around like a bad smell at the moment, but do you fully understand what it means? In short, carbohydrates are ESSENTIAL for running, as they’re the body’s instant source of energy. Loading up on them before the race is so important to saturate glycogen stores. Without fully stocked glycogen stores, you’ll lag early and that’s the last thing you want on race day.
Here’s how you should be weighing up your carbohydrates:
The week before: 10 x kg BW*
36-48hr before: 12 x kg BW
4 hours before: 4 x kg BW
During the marathon: 90g/hour MTC
*Body weight
*Multiple Transportable Carbohydrates – this include gels, sports drinks and bars (such as below)