TIps & Training

Marathon training must include a good nutrition foundation. You can’t perform consecutive daily workouts without the proper balance of calories and exercise.

Your nutrition foundation starts by making sure you eat three meals each day and two or three healthy snacks. This will help prevent energy highs and lows throughout the day and make you more energized for training runs.

Let’s Talk Calories

Ask anyone what the word energy means and you’re likely to get a variety of answers. To your body, calories are energy. Similar to fueling your car, the farther and harder you go the more fuel you need; and the better the fuel the more efficient you will run. An adequate balance of whole grain, high fiber carbohydrates (your #1 fuel source), lean protein, and moderate amounts of added fats are important. Calories consisting of healthy food choices will help increase your strength and stamina. Your total daily caloric needs will vary depending on your weight and metabolism, as well as the length and intensity of your workouts.

Decide which of the following you want to achieve and eat accordingly: 
• Weight maintenance (taking in the same amount of calories that you burn)
• Weight loss (taking in fewer calories than you burn)
• Weight Gain (taking in more calories than you burn)

Heavy training periods are no time to focus on getting to your race weight. Achieve a comfortable weight during lighter training periods. It is difficult to balance energy intake for both weight loss and intense training simultaneously. If you are in the early stages of training and want to drop a few more pounds, go slow and lose no more than 1 pound per week.
When increasing your weekly mileage, you may find it tempting to overindulge because you are working out so hard. You may think that you can justify the extra calories, but take caution—excess calories will be stored as excess pounds over time, and this extra weight will slow you down.

There are many on-line tools that can help you estimate your calories needs such as http://www.nutridata.com or http://www.caloriecontrol.org. To create and individual meal-plan that meets your energy needs based on your specific performance goals consult with registered dietitian who specializes in working with athletes. To find a registered dietitian near you go to http://www.eatright.org

Keep having fun with your both your physical and nutritional training!