Fuel your marathon training

We explain the importance of a diet rich in the right nutrients, the timing of consuming those nutrients, and how to fuel your workouts. All this so that you hit the day of your marathon with the highest level of fitness and shape possible.
We have written about a wide variety of topics in the past, many of which are relevant to this discussion, so we refer to these articles where appropriate. Please feel free to follow the links if you would like to learn more about a particular area of interest. We pride ourselves on being very thorough and any information you would like to know on this subject is available on the TORQ website through these links. However, we have deliberately kept this article as focused as possible and limited to the most important topics and messages.

The Macronutrients

The term 'Macronutrients' refers to the main food groups carbohydrates, proteins and fats, each of which plays a central role in our biological functioning. These macronutrients become even more important when we add in the physiological stress of training for a marathon. These main food groups give us energy to train, aid in post-workout recovery, and help us maintain our general health so we don't get sick. We'll look at them one by one:
Fat: Even the leanest of us store a significant amount of fat, so unlike carbs, it's not a nutrient we should look to to fuel endurance exercise – it's not a fuel that will ever run out. That being said, dietary fats aid in the absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K, which are known as fat-soluble vitamins. Fats also play a structural role in cell wall formation, cholesterol regulation and even brain development. However, it's important to note that fat is exceptionally high in calories, at 9 kcal per gram, so when you're getting fat from the diet you really need to aim for quality over quantity. Saturated fats are generally of lower quality and are usually found in poor quality fatty meats, butter, cream, savory snacks and processed foods. However, unsaturated fats, especially those high in Omega 3, should be consumed in small amounts and provide the health benefits discussed above. Unsaturated fats with a healthy Omega 3 content can be found in foods such as oily fish, avocado, nuts and seeds, to name a few.

Since we are known to burn a lot of fat for fuel when training for a marathon, many people mistakenly believe that it makes sense to eat a lot of it. This is absolutely not true, because any calorie we consume in excess of what we need is stored as fat – so you don't need to eat fat to maintain fat reserves.

Protein: We've covered protein extensively in our article Protein, Performance & 20-25g Protein Recipes, so take the time to read it if you want in-depth information on this vital nutrient. Protein is responsible for building our physical human structure and controlling how the cells in our body function. The human body consists of tens of thousands of different proteins that make us who we are. From skin, hair, tendons and muscle tissue, to the enzymes that break down our food and the hormones that regulate blood sugar levels, such as insulin, each protein has a specific function. Unlike fat and carbohydrates, protein cannot be stored in the body and so it is important that we take it at regular intervals (every 3-4 hours) throughout the day, aiming for around 20g-25g per serving. This becomes incredibly important when you are training your body for a marathon, as this regular intake of protein speeds up recovery and adaptation, helping you to become stronger and stay healthy. Our article Protein, performance & 20-25g protein recipes gives you plenty of ideas on how to find foods and make meals that contain 20-25g protein. For example, our Explore Breakfasts contain 25g of protein each and can be eaten at any time of the day, so they are really convenient and effective.

Since protein allows us to grow, repair and adapt, it naturally plays a vital role in post-workout recovery and adaptation. That's why we have TORQ Recovery Drink formulated as it provides an optimal blend of 20-25g of high quality protein with multi-transportable carbohydrates (we discuss carbohydrates below) and should be consumed immediately after training, when the body needs the most nutrients. Protein consumption doesn't stop there, of course - you should remember to take more 3-4 hours later and then again 3-4 hours after that! Protein is much less energy dense than fat and provides 4 kcal per gram. Protein can be obtained from foods such as red and white meat, fish, eggs, cheese, tofu, beans, legumes, nuts and seeds. With protein as

such an important nutrient to help us recover and adapt from our marathon training, we remind you once again to read our aforementioned article where you can learn more about protein, high protein foods and we provide recipes for some delicious meals to build into your weekly menu.

Carbohydrates: The main role of carbohydrates is to fuel your working muscles and major organs to function. Carbohydrates are broken down to produce ATP (our cells' energy currency) during both light and intense exercise. Carbohydrates are stored in the human body, albeit in very limited quantities, as liver and muscle glycogen, with a maximum amount of about 500 g (2,000 kcal). Because carbohydrates can be quickly broken down as fuel, they become the fuel source of choice as the intensity of exercise increases.

Carbohydrates are usually classified into two forms, simple and complex varieties. Simple sugars are short-chain carbohydrate molecules that are sweet and occur naturally in sweet-tasting foods such as fruits and honey. Regular sugar (also simple sweet carbohydrates) is added to many processed foods for sweetness, which often have a bad reputation from a health standpoint, often because they are mixed with higher-fat foods to produce chocolate, pastries, and cookies, for example. Complex carbohydrates are formed from longer chain carbohydrate molecules, are less sweet and are usually found in foods such as rice, pasta, potatoes, grains and bread. These are generally considered healthier, especially in their whole grain/whole grain form, as they contain fiber and a variety of other micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), and often some protein as well. However, from a functional point of view, carbohydrates are carbohydrates, and if you're running a lot of miles during your marathon training, simple sugars are a convenient way to get the extra carbohydrate calories—calories you need. For example, you double the carbohydrate content of a piece of toast if you put honey on it! Pretty handy if you need the calories and it has the added benefit of making the bread easier to eat.

During exercise it's a different story and we'll talk about that in a moment. Like proteins, the energy density of carbohydrates is equal to 4 kcal per gram, but carbohydrate stores can be quickly depleted in just 1.5 hours of exercise. When the supplies are completely depleted, you can no longer run - this is called "running into the wall" in marathon running. That is why carbohydrate intake before, during and after training is very important for anyone training for an endurance run such as a marathon.

Micronutrients
Micronutrients include vitamins and minerals and are consumed in much smaller amounts than the larger macronutrients. Although we do not need a lot of volume from micronutrients, this does not mean that they are less important. However, deficiencies are much less likely to show up, so you won't "hit the wall" because you didn't take a vitamin pill, but your recovery and overall health could be compromised in the long run if you neglect this area. You put a lot of strain on your body training for a marathon, especially during the winter months when your immune system is likely to be in worse shape, so the best advice we can give is to encourage you to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and a wide variety to fresh foods. We're not suggesting that you should eat only fresh foods, but the more you eat, the more micronutrients you'll get. Many of these foods are not high in calories, so can be used to supplement your macronutrients.

The immune system is an area where you could use some extra help through supplements, especially in winter, which is why we developed our immune system support products. We have also put together a comprehensive set of immune system support resources for you to read at your leisure. The scientific evidence clearly indicates that most of us are deficient in vitamin D during the winter months, that zinc can be depleted during exercise and that there are additional measures we can take at the first sign of a cold or flu.

Quality nutrition for quality training
The human body is an extremely complex structure, regulated by numerous mechanisms to maintain a state of homeostasis (equilibrium). When we complete a training session, the main goal of the session should be to disrupt this homeostasis, causing training stress and fatigue. Although fatigue is usually considered a negative by-product of training, it is in fact fundamental to the training process. The fatigue caused by the training session (Phase I) leads to adjustments specific to the type of training performed.

For example, doing a 2-hour endurance run (Phase I) will put pressure on all the muscles of your body.

Once you are fully recovered and adjusted, you will find that you have a new increased level of fitness (Phase III).

The key to successful training lies in taking advantage of this increased level of fitness and then generating a new fatigue stimulus, as shown in the diagram below.

Consuming the right foods at the right times will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of our recovery and adaptation, as shown in the chart below. Consumption of a high-quality recovery drink immediately after training provides the required 20-25 grams of protein and a good dose of carbohydrates and is by far the single largest intervention you can do to speed up your recovery. Remember, the faster you recover, the sooner you can get back to training and the more fit you will be before the day of the marathon.

It's hard to separate the importance of a recovery drink from the right nutrition for your workouts, because the calories you expend during the workout are perfectly timed and have a direct impact on how tired you are at the end of your workout. Essentially, careful fueling will make your recovery drink less work. We'll discuss "fuelling" in the next section, but take the time to watch the video below, which provides a solid summary of how to optimize your recovery.

The video (and previous discussion in this article) emphasizes the importance of continuing to consume high-quality calories (protein and carbohydrates) throughout the day, as all of these play an essential role in your physical recovery and overall health. Remember to consume 20-25 grams of protein every 3-4 hours and maintain a high carbohydrate content!

For more information about the interaction between training and nutrition, we recommend that you read our article on optimal nutrition. And if you haven't read our immune system support tools yet, we highly recommend that you do. It explains how consuming carbohydrates during and immediately after exercise helps immune function and there's nothing more likely to make a relapse in your workout than illness. It is so important that you keep yourself healthy.

You can read more about effective training in this article. If you want to learn more about how to prepare, train and peak for your marathon, take the time to read our series of articles on periodization and peaking:

Periodization and peaks 1: The off-season

Periodization and peaks 2: planning your training

Periodization and peaks 3: peaks for competitions

Fueling your training sessions
When we exercise aerobically, usually at a low intensity exercise, both fat and carbohydrates provide the fuel to propel us. However, the proportion of carbohydrates increases as the intensity of aerobic exercise increases. As training intensity continues to increase, we begin to work anaerobically (without the presence of oxygen), with carbohydrates being the only fuel the body can use. Basically, the harder we work, the more carbohydrates we burn and the more carbohydrates we need to expend as fuel to maintain our intensity. At 70% of our aerobic capacity, carbohydrate becomes the major fuel source, and this is referred to as the aerobic fuel utilization crossover.

The graph also shows that even at a very low exercise intensity of 40% of our aerobic rate, 50% of the energy comes from carbohydrates. The message here is that both high and low intensity exercise deplete our carbohydrate stores, but low intensity exercise does so over a longer period of time.

We mentioned earlier that the human body can store about 500 g or 2,000 kcal of carbohydrates, which will keep you going for some time, but once these stored carbohydrates are used up, you hit the wall with nowhere to go! No carbs = no performance. People hit the wall not only while running a marathon, but also during training, and that's not a nice place to be. Not only is it a very unpleasant experience, but it will seriously affect your recovery.

The way to avoid running out of fuel, or delay the dreaded "hitting the wall," is to fuel up on carbs during exercise. The Why Fuel video below highlights the importance of fueling for runners and shows how carbohydrate-rich fuel sources (exogenous fuel) help preserve your stored carbohydrates (endogenous fuel). Please take the time to watch the video as it explains the subject much better than we ever could with words. This is a very valuable video to watch.

While the video references energy drinks, gels, and bars for fuel, marathon runners often choose to use only gels and take water for hydration at the supply stations. are gels

very easy to consume while running and we always recommend them as a primary fuel source. We'll talk about hydration in a moment, but during training it can be helpful to leave water bottles hidden away during the longer runs so you can take care of your fluid intake and practice the routine you want to follow during the marathon itself. On warmer days where the level of perspiration is higher, we recommend adding a Hydration Drink to your water bottles. More about this soon too.

Now that the importance of refueling is clear, the FITT principles determine your daily refueling strategy and whether you should opt for 1, 2 or 3 TORQ units per hour (30, 60 or 90 g carbohydrates).

The FITT principle is an acronym of the 4 methods of manipulating training load. These 4 methods are: frequency (how many times a week you train), intensity (how tough the session is), time (how long the session lasts) and type (sprint or endurance session).

We have already discussed intensity and time, but the two principles we still need to consider are frequency and type. In terms of frequency, we can choose to schedule back-to-back sessions and strategically neglect recovery to generate a deep valley of fatigue, which (if a suitable recovery period is planned) will generate a significant amount of adaptation.

Such training can become unmanageable if nutrition is neglected during training. When you train consecutively, your recovery period is limited. Fueling your workouts prevents the carbohydrates (glycogen) from depleting your muscle and liver stores. This means that when you consume your recovery drink and subsequent meals, you will have less to replenish and recovery between sessions will be much easier. So not only does fuel for your runs help with the recovery process, but then it also aids the adjustment process. The more training stress you can generate and the faster you can recover, the fitter you will become.

The chart below shows the comparison between a high carb and a low carb diet and how both diets affect the availability of stored carbohydrates over multiple sessions. Interestingly enough, the same graph can also show our performance within each session. If the carbohydrates become depleted, we will almost certainly see a reduction in our performance capacity.

There are times when fueling your workouts isn't necessary. In that case we have to take into account the type of training (according to the FITT principles). For example, on a short recovery run, where both duration and intensity are low, you don't run the risk of carbohydrate exhaustion. If you want to introduce advanced techniques into your training, you can also consider Fasted Training sessions, but they must be introduced with care and knowledge. Be sure to read our article on the subject HERE, as there are some gains to be made, but if you're in any doubt about execution, stick to the basics in this article and you'll run a great marathon.

For detailed information on how to fuel yourself effectively with TORQ Products, visit our TORQ Fueling System pages. We make it very easy for you to follow and understand. The message of this section is that you don't need a lot of fuel for less strenuous workouts, so you could use 1 TORQ Unit (30g of carbohydrates) per hour. For the heavier sessions you should take 2 TORQ units (60 g carbohydrates) per hour. For particularly heavy carb training sessions, aim for 3 TORQ units (90 g carbohydrates) per hour. Practicing this strategy as you approach marathon day will train your gut so you can feel confident that you can apply this strategy when it really counts during the event.

Carbohydrate loading: Fueling your longer runs
During your longer workouts you will of course need to refuel, but it is just as important that you have enough carbs in your tank before you start. If you start out with low liver and muscle glycogen stores, you're likely to hit the wall, because the amount of carbohydrates we can burn per hour far exceeds our maximum intake of exogenous carbohydrates (fuel) at 90g/hr. Just as you need to fill your car's gas tank for a long ride, you need to fill your muscle's fuel tank with carbohydrates for a long run.

Sufficient recovery time before your long run and a carbohydrate-rich diet are sufficient in most cases, but there may be times when you want to do a particularly long run, perhaps at a higher intensity than usual. That's when you need to load up on carbs.

When carb loading, we strongly recommend following the 1-day protocol discussed in our Carb Loading section.

as this has proven to be much less disruptive to your life overall, while still offering all the benefits of a traditional 6-day protocol. Don't just eat more, but be strategic with your meals and increase the amount of carbohydrates in your daily diet to about 70-80% of your daily intake. You may also find it difficult to get up to 80% of your daily calories from carbohydrates by eating foods like pasta, rice and potatoes due to their bulkier and more fibrous composition. To remedy this, consider eating some simple carbohydrates such as jelly babies, wine gums, flavored rice cakes (sweet or savory), or even a TORQ Bar or Explore Flapjack. Finally, stay hydrated! It takes 3 grams of water to store 1 gram of glycogen, so make sure you drink plenty of water and always have a bottle of TORQ Hydration on hand when loading your carbs. You can learn more about the intricacies of carb loading by clicking HERE.

Hydration
Water availability plays a major role in several factors that influence and regulate our physical performance, so if we want to maximize our marathon training, hydration is one factor we must pay constant attention to before, during and after training. Hydration affects our cardiovascular function, mental performance, our ability to thermoregulate and our ability to absorb nutrients such as carbohydrates. Electrolytes are also lost in sweat and these aid in water retention and optimize muscle contraction.

If you properly fuel your workouts by following the TORQ Fueling System, hydration should take care of itself. Watch the short video below. While the tone of this video may be more focused on actual marathon day, the principles of refueling and hydration remain the same. Note that TORQ Hydration Drink is the new name for TORQ Hypotonic, which is referenced in this video - the product formulas are exactly the same.

Hydration is a hugely important topic and we encourage you to take the time to read our definitive Hydration Guide where we leave no stone unturned on the subject.

Conclusion
Proper nutrition is vital if you want to successfully fuel your training efforts and achieve the fitness gains you need to perform at your best on marathon day. It is fundamental to ensure that your diet is high in carbohydrates, contains a dose of 20-25 grams of protein every 3-4 hours and is rich in fresh fruits and vegetables to provide a range of micronutrients. Nutrition during training ensures better quality running sessions, promotes recovery and ultimately improves your performance. Carbohydrates during and immediately after exercise also support your immune system and you should also consider taking specific immune support supplements. A high-quality recovery drink is strongly recommended immediately after training, containing both high-quality protein and carbohydrates. Carbohydrate loading is recommended prior to particularly long runs, or long runs that require a high pace, and making sure you always stay hydrated is crucial not only for your performance, but also for your ability to take on fuel.

Don't forget to tune in for our next article in the spring “Fuel Your Marathon”.