Burke LM, Maughan RJ. The Governor has a sweet tooth - mouth sensing of nutrients to enhance sports performance. Eur J Sport Sci. doi: Almario CV, Ballal ML, Chey WD, Nordstrom C, Khanna D, Spiegel BMR.

Burden of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in the United States: Results of a Nationally Representative Survey of Over 71, Americans. Am J Gastroenterol. de Oliveira EP, Burini RC, Jeukendrup A. Gastrointestinal complaints during exercise: prevalence, etiology, and nutritional recommendations. Sports Med.

How do I avoid GI upset during a competitive endurance race? Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising.

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Measure content performance. Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources. Develop and improve services. Use limited data to select content. List of Partners vendors. Wellness Fitness. By Laurel Leicht. Medically reviewed by Allison Herries, RDN.

Allison Herries, RDN, is a registered dietitian for a telehealth company. In her role, she provides nutrition education and counseling to help her clients set and reach their personal health goals.

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com uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. Your body also uses dietary fat and to a lesser degree dietary protein for energy, but carbs absorb into your system the fastest and are the most efficient way to fill up on something called muscle glycogen.

When you exercise, your body taps into those stores to create glucose, which your cells use to produce energy. As I said, your body also likes to use fat both adipose tissue and dietary fat as fuel, but it needs a little more processing than carbs.

A handful of nuts, on the other hand, is mostly fat. Technically, it can be converted to fuel, but that generally only happens in the absence of carbs and fat.

The notable exceptions are branched-chain amino acids BCAAs. These amigos — leucine, isoleucine, and valine — are unique in that your muscles can use them as fuel. BCAAs are best targeted for use as part of the recovery process.

As you can see, carbs are the real hero here. Most people store enough glycogen in their muscles to allow for 90 to minutes of hard exercise. No need to carb-load. There are a couple ways to go about supercompensating.

The easy way is to simply consume as many carb-y foods as you want: fruit, starchy veggies, whole grains, and beans. For 24 hours after that effort, go for it with the carbs.

Then shoot for 5 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight per day. But before you bust out your abacus, keep in mind that these numbers are just suggestions.

Consider them ballpark figures, which you can adjust based on your own experience. If possible, top off your glycogen tanks with a carb-rich meal 3 to 4 hours before your event. One thing truly magical about being an endurance athlete is that you're part of a tiny demographic that actually benefits from tall-stack pancake breakfasts.

Researcher Asker Jeukendrup has a good article explaining reactive hypoglycemia. The takeaway is that if you are prone to reactive hypoglycemia, you can:. Anxiety and excitement can affect how you respond to eating.

Stress can alter gastric emptying and gut motility, and GI distress can result from either speeding them up or slowing them down. Caffeine may exacerbate GI distress in these scenarios. If you struggle with pre-race jitters, the eating habits that work before training a lower stress environment may not work as well on race day.

This is part of the reason you should schedule lower-priority competitions. They are a great opportunity to test out race-day nutrition in a higher stress environment.

Above all, getting your pre-race and pre-workout meals right takes practice. Start with the basics and then experiment with a variety of foods and combinations to see what works best for you.

Learn step-by-step how to overcome limited training time and get faster. Walk away with a personalized plan to increase your performance.

Email Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Or is it important to get as many of the carbs as possible in the system, as far out as possible?

Thanks for the article. Hi, mealtime recommendations before races or hard interval workouts is a game changer to help us all preform the best as possible.

Your the best, Thanks. Most races start early in the morning. Eating 4 hours in advance means losing sleep. Is that really the right trade off? Pingback: Nutrient Timing: Updated Science for Cyclists, Triathletes, and Runners - Chris Carmichael.

I kind of always knew this, but reading your article and seeing it in a graph is conformational. Thank you!

Your analysis and prescriptions are always good and whats more, work.

Despite months of training , many runners fall short of their goals come race day due to a halfhearted attitude toward their prerace nutrition. In short, the goal with prerace nutrition is to optimize fuel stores while avoiding gastrointestinal distress. You optimize fuel stores by carb loading in the days prior to race day and by having a carb-rich breakfast the morning of the race.

You should take the time to determine the volume of carbs your body needs, as well as what that looks like—meaning, make a nutrition plan based on your preferences, gut feedback, and available options.

Avoid becoming a midrace bonker or a mile two bathroom-stopper, and take the time to develop and practice a smart and effective fueling plan using the following tips. While races less than 90 minutes do not require carb loading, longer events—like the marathon —do. The Mayo Clinic currently recommends that you consume 8 to 12 grams per kilogram of body weight of carbohydrate per day in the two to three days prior to their event, while resting or significantly dialing back their training.

To convert your weight from pounds to kilograms, simply divide your weight in pounds by 2. Once you have determined your total daily needs, divide it by the number of meals and snacks you plan to have in the day s leading up to your race.

Meaning, if you need grams of carbs per day while carb-loading, you could break that up into grams each at breakfast , lunch, and dinner, and then 60 grams each for your mid-morning, afternoon, and bedtime snack. Needless to say, carbohydrates should make up the vast majority of your intake.

Moving on to race morning, guidelines suggest targeting 2 to 4 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight two to four hours prior to your race.

For example, a pound runner should consume just under grams of carbs. This could look like: a cinnamon raisin bagel with apple butter spread, one medium banana, and 12 ounces of a sports drink three hours prior to your race.

Then, 15 minutes before the start, eat either a couple Medjool dates or a gel. However, if you will be traveling for your race, some extra thought is necessary. The key to fats and proteins is to find things that your stomach can tolerate well.

For shorter events, eating what would be considered a normal breakfast should be sufficient. Try to avoid the overly processed, sugary cereals. Great options here can be:. If you have to be up and eat breakfast long before the start of the event, you may want to consider bringing along a gel packet or something small to help tie you over.

Otherwise, a healthy breakfast should help carry you through. Longer events, say anything lasting longer than minutes, will require a bit more fuel for the day. The trick for these longer events actually happens well before competition day. On your longer training days, experiment with different foods and amounts for breakfast.

For longer duration events, it is important that you pick foods that do not cause any digestive discomfort but stay with you long enough to give sustained and consistent energy. Slow digesting carbs work best and examples include:. For longer events, fueling during the event can be important as well.

When choosing what to eat during a longer event, there are a few things to consider. The first issue is the portability of the food. Food such as peanut butter sandwiches do not travel very well.

The second issue is the ease of which the food item can be consumed. Again, a peanut butter sandwich is pretty messy and tricky to eat while doing an event. This is where gel packets come in real handy. Just tear them open and enjoy. You can stash a couple either in pockets or even carry in your hands.

Just please remember to discard the container and not just throw to the side of the road. Following an event , you should eat carbohydrates to replace depleted glycogen stores and lean protein to enhance the speed of recovery and reduce soreness.

When I was in college, I took this as a license to eat lots of carb-heavy foods: frozen yogurt, bagels, whole wheat pasta, pizza, and so on. Few things are more unpleasant than GI distress during a race or even a normal training run. What you eat the day before and the day of a run directly impacts how your stomach will behave during your workout.

Even more so, your nutrition and fueling during the entire length of a training cycle will affect your GI system on race day. Eating the best types of carbs for you will definitely help you achieve your race day goals and, most importantly, enjoy your race!

Therefore, the meal should consist primarily of carbohydrates. But, a small amount of protein will help balance blood sugar and reduce muscle breakdown. On top of this, your ability to burn fat will be maximized by a small amount of fat, and you will feel as though you have had an adequate amount of food.

Apart from this, your pre race meal is not just about what you eat the morning of your race right before you head out, but also the meal you have the night before the race! We often talk about race morning, but what to eat the night before a long run during training and coming up to your race is important.

While I am no nutritional expert, I highly recommend avoiding heavy pasta or bread dish before a race. But unfortunately, it might do you more harm than good. Inflammation negatively affects many aspects of your health and can cause bloating , constipation, nausea, indigestion, and other distress to your stomach.

The stress of training and the anxiety surrounding the race can make your stomach extra sensitive, so a large serving or, realistically, multiple servings of gluten in your pre-race meal may harm more than help your running.

Instead of heavy dishes, select less processed sources of carbohydrates from whole foods, which will have a low glycemic index and therefore provide a regulated and steady stream of glucose into your bloodstream as you digest them.

Steady blood sugar will decrease your likelihood of waking up famished before your race or bonking during your marathon.

Read more about the myths of carboloading to feel better about your choices! Knowing what not to eat is just as important as knowing what to eat as part of your pre race meal.

Spicy food can also lead to digestive issues, as well as inflammation. So save that spicy food you love for some time after the race! Bananas are one of the best foods for runners, and for a good reason. These easy-to-digest and completely unprocessed fruits will fuel you with 31 grams of carbohydrates in the form of natural sugars.

Additionally, bananas contain potassium and magnesium, which are two of the electrolytes your body requires for running. Having a banana is my favorite pre-run snack since even one has enough carbs and calories to fuel my run but will not weigh down or upset my stomach.

Rice has a very low glycemic index, which means that it will provide you with lasting energy. You can have rice for dinner or even breakfast before a race. Skip the sugary cereal and opt for heart-healthy oats instead. Enjoy a bowl of oatmeal before your race, although make sure you allow a couple of hours for digestion since oats are higher in fiber and slowly convert to simple sugars once digested.

Or, enjoy a bowl of savory oats with some eggs the night before the race for a satisfying meal! Potatoes have undeservedly earned a bad reputation over the past few years, thanks to the popularity of low-carb diets such as Atkins and Paleo.

However, the potatoes themselves are not unhealthy, but rather the ingredients and fats added in the preparation of many potato dishes. The humble potato, however, is a naturally gluten-free source of carbohydrates. One medium russet potato contains 38 grams of carbs along with plenty of potassium, magnesium, and vitamin B Additionally, potatoes are gentle on the stomach, which is ideal for runners who get race-day nerves and want to avoid GI distress.

If you do not like white potatoes, choose the delicious and healthy sweet potato. Enjoy a plain baked potato add a bit of Greek yogurt instead of butter or sour cream as part of your pre-race dinner.

You can even eat a potato as your pre-race breakfast, as it is easily digestible, or cut up a baked potato into small chunks and carry them in a baggie as mid-race fuel. Now this has largely been focused on what to eat before a race, but here are some great runner snacks or ideas for what to eat before a run.

There is something you can do in the weeks leading up to your race that will help you figure out exactly what you should or should not eat pre race. The best carbohydrate sources are ultimately those that work best for your body, but discovering which ones work best requires some trial and error.

Treat your long runs like trial races when it comes to every aspect of fueling. Use your training journal to record what you ate before each long run and how it affected you so that you can easily assess what worked and what did not near the end of your training cycle.

Eat what you anticipate you will eat the night before the race, consider this your practice pre marathon meal. This allows you to evaluate how the meal sat on your stomach and impacted your energy levels well before you toe the starting line.

Expand beyond the typical bowl of pasta to find what truly works best for you; you may feel good after pasta, but run even better after eating brown rice or a baked potato. Even if it means waking up extra early {allowing your food to digest more} and then going back to bed for a bit, eat before your long runs what you plan to eat before the race.

You need plenty of time pre-race for your body to do the work. On the run itself, take your gels at the exact intervals as you will on race day. Note how these affect your stomach, and experiment with different whole foods , gels, and timing until you find your perfect fuel.

If energy gels or chomps have upset your stomach in the past, use your training runs to experiment with different brands or even whole foods. A lightly salted plain baked potato, dates, raisins, crystallized ginger great for soothing stomachs also , and bananas are easy to eat and digest while running and provide your body with plenty of carbohydrates.

In the days of carbo-loading before a marathon, try to vary your carbohydrate sources as much as possible. Avoid simply eating toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner, as this will not only leave your stomach feeling heavy and your digestive system backed up, but it will deprive your body of the essential nutrients needed for running a strong race.