Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

An alternative method of taking in carbohydrate during the marathon or your long runs is to use energy gels. Energy gels are convenient because they come in small packets that you can carry with you. Depending on the brand you choose, each gel packet contains between 80 and 150 calories of carbohydrate. Energy gels are the consistency of pudding. You must follow gels with a couple of sips of fluid to wash them down, and you should take in approximately a cup of fluid afterward to help absorb the gel. The best time to take an energy gel is shortly before an aid station. As always, don’t wait until race day to try an energy gel because it takes practice to get the water intake right and to feel comfortable running after taking a gel. Practice taking gel packets while running at marathon race pace.

If you run the marathon in more than 3 hours on a warm day and drink large amounts of plain water during the race, you are at risk of hyponatremia. This is a condition caused by unusually low sodium levels in your blood; a large proportion of your body fluid is replaced with water, thereby reducing your body’s sodium content. There is some evidence that women have a moderately higher risk of developing hyponatremia than do men. The symptoms of hyponatremia include weakness, nausea, disorientation, seizures, and coma. Hyponatremia typically occurs only toward the end of ultramarathons or Ironman triathlons, but it can occur in the marathon on warm days for slower runners who consume only water. The simple way to avoid hyponatremia during a hot-weather marathon is to consume fluids containing at least 250 milligrams of sodium per liter and to not drink more than you have lost as sweat.

The answer to this question is straightforward: Compare the amount of fluid you consume during the marathon with the amount you’re likely to lose. On a cool day, you’ll likely lose 2 to 3 pounds (.9 to 1.4 kg) of water per hour during the marathon, whereas on a hot day the figure is 3 to 4 pounds (1.4 to 1.8 kg) per hour and can be up to 5 pounds (2.3 kg) of fluid per hour when the temperature gets above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). We already estimated that a typical runner’s stomach can absorb about 28 ounces (840 ml) per hour, which is a little bit less than 2 pounds (.9 kg). On a cool day, therefore, you can just about balance your fluid losses with fluid taken in during the marathon. On warm or hot days, you’ll incur a steady, progressive fluid deficit, and the farther you run, the greater your fluid deficit will be.

It’s imperative, then, to practice drinking while running at close to marathon race pace until you get good at it. It makes sense to slow a bit at the aid stations, but if you’re competitive, you won’t want to lose time to the runners around you. By practicing drinking on the run, you can greatly improve your proficiency at this skill.

If you’re an elite runner, you can usually arrange to have squeeze bottles at the aid stations along the course. This is optimal but obviously not readily available to everyone. Non-elites can help themselves by choosing marathons where friends or family members can meet them regularly along the way and give them bottles. Still, the majority of marathoners must master the paper cup.

A convenient way to practice drinking from cups is the round-and-round-the-track method – simply set up some cups at the local track and practice drinking every couple of laps. The advantage of the track is convenience. The disadvantage is that, if you’re running intervals, you’ll be breathing so hard that you’ll get to experience the dubious thrill of getting water up your nose. Of course, if you can master drinking at faster than marathon race pace, then drinking during the marathon will be a snap.

Another convenient way to practice drinking on the run is the road-loop method. Back your car to the end of the driveway, put a few cups of the beverage you’ll drink during the marathon on the back of your car, and head out for a repetitive loop run, grabbing a cup every time you pass your car.

If volunteers are handing out fluids during the race, try to make eye contact with one and point at the cup so that you don’t surprise him or her. (If the cups are on a table, eye contact with the cup generally won’t help.) If volunteers are offering both water and a sports drink, begin yelling your preference as you approach the aid station so that the right volunteer hands you a cup.

Slow slightly and try to move your arm back while you grab the cup so that you don’t hit the cup with your full running speed. Squeeze the top of the cup closed so that all of the liquid doesn’t slosh out, and take a swig. This will help prevent fluid from going up your nose when you tip the cup up to drink. The trick is to breathe normally. Always take a couple of normal breaths between swigs. When you’re done drinking, accelerate back to race pace.

Grabbing water on the run can be tricky. Unless you’re an elite marathoner, the best strategy on a warm and humid day is to just stop for a few seconds and drink at the aid stations.

Unless you’re an elite marathoner, the best strategy on a warm and humid day is to stop and drink at the aid stations. Water stops in a marathon are often every 5K or every 2 miles, so there are about 8 to 12 stops. If you stop for 10 seconds at each station, you’ll add about 1 to 2 minutes to your time. If you run through the stops while drinking, you’ll slow a little anyway, so stopping isn’t going to add much time, and stopping helps ensure that you take in enough fluid to fight off dehydration. On a warm day, an extra minute or 2 at the water stations can repay you with 10 to 20 minutes gained by the finish of the marathon.

What and when you eat and drink play an important role in how you adapt to training for a marathon. As we’ve seen, neglecting proper nutrition and hydration will mean not reaping the full benefits of your hard work. The same is true for not paying attention to easy days and other aspects of managing recovery from taxing training. Let’s look at what to do to maximize your chance of marathon success during the many hours each week when you’re not running long or hard.

As we saw in chapter 1, every time you do a hard workout, you provide a stimulus for your body to improve in some way, such as your lactate threshold, fat-burning ability, O 2max, and so on. Any one workout, though, provides only a mild stimulus for improvement; it’s the sum of your workouts over time that determines the total stimulus to improve a specific component of your fitness. For example, if you do one tempo run in the few months before your marathon, you provide a mild stimulus for your lactate threshold to improve. If you do six tempo runs in 8 weeks, you provide a strong repetitive stimulus for your lactate threshold to improve.

The training stimulus, however, is only half of the formula for performance improvement. To improve, your body must recover from training and adapt to a higher level. By learning to manage your recovery, you’ll optimize your training. If you manage your recovery so that you can do hard workouts more frequently or so that the quality of your hard workouts consistently improves, then you’ll provide a greater stimulus for your body to improve its capacities.