I’m trying to figure out how to manage eating meals with my marathon
training – especially at night. I generally run during the dinner
hours, and don’t get home until at least 9 p.m. I don’t like to eat
before running (aside from maybe a granola bar) but 9 just seems so
late. It has, however, gotten a bit easier to swallow ever since I went
on the pump, but still, it’s pretty late to be eating a full-on meal.
I’m hoping that you guys might be able to provide me with some tips/insight.
Thanks.
Katie
Frankly, I don’t see a way around eating a meal after your evening run. Your body needs the nutrition for recovery. It doesn’t have to be a gut buster, but it should be well rounded. Say tuna salad and a slice of bread. Or chicken salad. You’ll get some protein and some carbs.
Another option is to eat while you’re running - which will get easier to do and more necessary as your runs go longer. Of course that food will be higher in carbs to provide energy during your run. You’ll still need some protein afterwards - some nuts or some soy or some meat.
You might get some good ideas from Sheri Colberg’s book “The Diabetic Athlete” or by posting your question in the Athletic Diabetics group.
Or you could run in the mornings instead of the evenings. That will more closely mimic your actual race day.
Good luck. Which marathon?
Terry
are these youre regular week runs or your long runs? don’t know that you need a full meal after just 30-60min run but probably a good idea to replenish your glyogen levels and have some protien to repair/rebuild after a long run - maybe a a salad w/ chicken or fish?? +1 on diaetic athlete book. good luck and keep us posted on your progress.
To echo what Terry and Eric say, you’ll have to eat post run for recovery.
As stated, you need a combination of protein for muscle recovery and carbs for glycogen recovery.
I’ll add that for marathon training, it is imperative that you get post run carbs in for glycogen recovery. You can’t recover glycogen stores while you are training and, depending on where you are in your training schedule and weekly milage, I’d guess that you’re probably burning through glycogen stores during your training.
Data vary but it would seem that the window for optimum glycogen recovery is somewhere between an hour and two hours after training. I don’t have any first hand experience because I’ve never trained for anything longer than a 5K. So, as always, YMMV.
for some reason I thought the window was more like 30 minutes. quick google found this:
http://newhope.com/nutritionsciencenews/NSN_backs/May_99/sportrecovery.cfm
Yeah Joe, the data are all over the place. 30 minutes is on the shorter end from what I’ve seen across the board for various types of excercise. About two hours out is the furthest I’ve seen. Regardless, the consensus seems to be that glycogen recovery occurs best at some point after training
.
Personally, as a Diabetic, I couldn’t train then eat within 30 minutes unless I had an MRE waiting for me as soon as I step outside of the gym. I usually eat about an hour after training. That’s enough tme to get home, relax a bit, maybe take a shower, prepare a meal, shoot up, then eat. I recover well enough but, then again, I’m not training for a marathon. As with everything, it’s another variable to play with.
Edit:
Wow, been awhile since I’ve done a Google search on this but here’s a cycling website that cites sources saying optimal recovery occurs 4 hours after training. Haven’t checked the sources.
Thanks everyone for the responses.
Yeah, there’s no way I could get through this without eating (I love food too much 
and if I didn’t eat, I’d wake up in the middle of the night with a growling stomach). I usually have about a cup of soy chocolate milk right after my run or about a quarter cup of nuts or a granola bar (my runs are usually about 45 minutes from home, so my car sometimes asks as a kitchen cupboard!) And then when I get home, I’ll sometimes have a salad with high fibrous soup (Happy Planet brands) and naan bread, or an omelette and toast, but beyond those simple meals, I really have no clue what to try … the tuna salad sounds like it could be a good option for me. And like I said before, the pump is really helping with flexibility (injections were a nightmare for eating this late at night) but I still do worry about the overnights sometimes … I’m sure it’ll get easier as I go though.
This is my first full marathon (I’m doing the Portland marathon in October) so it’s all pretty new to me – and it’s the first race I’m training for with an insulin pump, so we’ll see how it goes. But I got to say, tudiabetes has been great for getting questions like these answered!
Thanks again, and I’m definitely going to check out that book!