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EP 258 : Marathon Training Nutrition Masterclass With Kira Sutherland - Sports Nutrionist, TCS Sydney Marathon
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In this episode, we discuss specific nutrition needs of the body while training for a marathon. Be it the macros, vitamins or supplements, we break it down day by day with none other than Kira Sutherland, Sports Nutritionist of the TCS Sydney Marathon. We talk about:
- how to fuel for easy runs
- what to eat before, during and after a long run
- what blood tests to do to identify supplemental needs
- what should be in your recovery drink
- what is the right way to consume an energy gel
About Vikas Singh:
Vikas Singh, an MBA from Chicago Booth, worked at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, APGlobale, and Reliance before coming up with the idea of democratizing fitness knowledge and helping beginners get on a fitness journey. Vikas is an avid long-distance runner, building fitpage to help people learn, train, and move better.
For more information on Vikas, or to leave any feedback and requests, you can reach out to him via the channels below:
Instagram: @vikas_singhh
LinkedIn: Vikas Singh
Twitter: @vikashsingh101
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But the meal right after endurance sport should be very focused on carbohydrate: breads, grain, rice, cereal, pasta, fruit, vegetables, whichever carbohydrate people want, and then that bit of protein with it. If you're just doing a one-hour run, an hour and a quarter, very much to hunger, after the really long runs, a really big amount, often we will say to people, one gram of carbohydrate times their body weight in kilos. So if somebody weighs 70 kilos, we would say, aim for about 70 grams of carb. Other research actually will go a little bit higher. They'll go to 1.2 or 1.5, but I really think that's big athletes, like people doing huge volumes, professional. I find most of my general runners, not my elites, are gonna be just fine on one.
SPEAKER_00Hello everyone, this is Vikas, and you are watching or listening at Run with Fitpage. In today's conversation, we are discussing about a runners nutrition. This is a topic that we have covered to some extent before, but most of you had requested for it to be a detailed discussion. And for doing that, I have someone very special. I have the sports nutritionist of TCS Sydney Marathon, Kira Sutherland. She comes from a great experience of sports nutrition, naturopathy, and she has been practicing for over two decades now. Not only that, she is a great expert, but she herself also is a great athlete. She runs races, Iron Man, Marathons, practices what she preaches. Let's discuss today how should one run a plan for retaining during and after nutrition. In fact, we also covered the hydration that will help, particularly here in India, because it gets really humid. The topic of electrolytes also has been forever a favorite, isn't it? And we have covered that too. So let's welcome Kira to the show and learn all about your training nutrition. Let's go. Kira, welcome to Run with Fit Page. It's our weekly show and we discuss all things running. Thank you for being with us.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you for having me. It's good.
SPEAKER_00As we were discussing backstage, we'll discuss a few things about nutrition that will help marathon runners particularly. But before that, let's set the relevance. Why are we discussing here today? So we would start with an introduction of yours that will help people know more about you.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So I'm Kira Sutherland. I am a I'm actually a naturopath, but I'm also a sports nutritionist. And uh my specialty is actually endurance sports nutrition. And I am the also the sports nutritionist for the Sydney Marathon and have done so for, I was thinking about this the other day, at least a decade, if not more, maybe coming close to 15 years. I've been doing their sports nutrition protocols. So yeah, marathon is a big thing. And as well, I do a lot of endurance sport, although not this year.
SPEAKER_00Wow, I guess that is why this conversation is so relevant, because uh most of our listeners are marathon runners and they want to be very scientific, they want to be technical. Yeah. And we'll discuss some of those and possibly also demystify some of those, how technical it needs to be. Uh, let's start from the very basic. And then just to set some context, marathon runners who are on our podcast mostly they are full-time employees, they're they have a day job, they have another work as well. And uh in parallel to that, they undertake marathon as a sport and they want to do well at that. So so that's the context. Could be marathon runners anywhere between 2 30 to 6 hours, anywhere along that spectrum.
SPEAKER_01Still doing it, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Still doing it, and uh and I think uh people who spend more time on their feet doing a marathon, they just need so much more as well to be able to support their nutrition needs, etc. Let's start from the very basic when we start to train for a marathon.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_00Why our nutrition has to change and does it have to change at all to even start with?
SPEAKER_01Oh, good question. So, I mean, it really depends as well when people are running. Obviously, you don't run a marathon without a big lead up to the training. So, say I'm gonna guess, you know, often people are a 12-week lead up where they're really starting to get ready for that marathon. But in the few months before, absolutely they need to be changing their basics around nutrition. As their volume goes up, we would probably change around their ratio of carbohydrates to protein just to make sure they're fueling enough as their runs get longer. But overall, your nutrition just needs to be solid. It's about doing the right thing every day and slowly. I think I'm a fan of kind of slowly people changing their nutrition. It doesn't have to be an overhaul to some perfect nutrition. It really depends on the volume, how many kilometers they're doing every week or how many hours. And again, what else is going on in their life? How busy are they, what's possible to get in? So yeah, but the extra demands actually mean extra nutrient demands, whether that be macronutrients or micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals.
SPEAKER_00And so if I were to think of my nutrition, for example, can I divide these among nutrition during training and training related nutrition as one component? That could be before, during, and after. That could be one component, and second could be anything to do with my recovery. Will that be two broad uh divisions that seem like right? And where I'm going to is uh then if you'd agree, then we will drill it further down to each of these components.
SPEAKER_01I think the best way to think about nutrition for training, not the race itself, is to think about the nutrition, as you said. What do I eat if I eat it all before? What should I have during training, but especially recovery? What should I eat directly after training? That's probably the most important thing. And then you have the rest of the day's nutrition, which is kind of a different, I mean, it still has a sports focus, but yeah, really that energy budget, we would say, around the training becomes the most important, especially for recovery.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Okay. With that, let's uh get into the details of it. When we start to train, we are given different types of training by our coaches. And if we are self-coaching, still there are different modalities of the coaching, and also people train in different weather conditions, environments, they come from different training backgrounds and so on. Now, how do I start to plan for my training-related nutrition? Will it be duration-based? Will it be intensity-based? And what all are the components of nutrition that I keep in mind for training to start with?
SPEAKER_01Oh gosh, there's so many things to focus on. Um, I guess, I guess the best way to explain it is if I'm working with, pretend I'm working with a client and kind of how I ask my client their questions really shows how I do nutrition with people. I kind of go through with clients, or, you know, what days they're training and what time they're training. Are they training before work? Are they waking up really early? Are they doing their training middle of the day after work? Because that's also going to depend, and again, what weather they're training in, how hot is it, things like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Shorter duration training doesn't really need fueling during the training, um, besides water. One hour or less, that's not a problem at all. A lot of people get hooked on, oh my god, I have to eat all this stuff during training. But an hour, even an hour and a quarter, I'm fine for people just to do water.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01If they want to have electrolytes in their water because it's really hot and humid, or they're a heavy sweater, that's up to them. But there's no real need up to kind of an hour, hour and a quarter to have anything but water. The debate is do you eat before training? And it that really also depends on what time of day it is. So I'm going to pretend the person's training first thing in the morning, because especially the weather you're in right now is really hot. I don't think people are running in the middle of the day unless they're inside of an air-conditioned building. Again, should you train fasted or should you fuel before training is a very big debate in sports circles. Generally, if it's an hour or less, yes, the person can train fasted. It doesn't matter, um, even up to an hour and a half. Fasted training is considered okay, but it's not always optimum. I think people get really hooked on fasted training, and it's also not necessary if it doesn't feel good. So sometimes with clients, I'm saying, you know, 20, 30 grams of carbohydrate, like simple carbohydrate, be it a banana or some dates or a piece of toast, something easily digestible, but 20 or 30 grams of carb before the training session, just to give them a little bit of extra fuel, especially if they're not doing low training. If they're doing just recovery training, zone two, I'm not worried if they've eaten or not, but if they're doing higher, you know, um, if they're doing sprints, if they're doing intervals, higher tempo kind of training, I'll bring in some carbohydrate before training.
SPEAKER_00Okay. It's actually a good base. And uh I would request to just stay on here for a bit and uh and explain this uh in detail to people. So what we are saying is if we are training for an hour, hour and quarter, and zone two easier for training, you possibly don't need to um take a lot of uh food or nutrition during the workout. Uh water and electrolytes uh could be sufficient depending on the weather, for example. Yeah. Before training, and we are assuming that this is first thing in the morning, and that's right. Most of us we train first thing in the morning and possibly by 6 37 a.m. we are done with the training. Yeah. For that duration, when we are running early in the morning, before the workout, I'm assuming about 30 minutes or so uh in advance of starting the workout.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, even 15, 20 minutes is soon enough because if you're as long as it's like fruit or simple bread, we're not having a lot of protein, we're not having a lot of fat, so it's easily digested. So kind of 15 to 30 minutes before.
SPEAKER_00Got it. And and that will primarily serve as a purpose to uh recover your glycogen depletion overnight. Is that why it will help you?
SPEAKER_01Yes, so it's giving you, you know, while we sleep, our body is using the glycogen from the liver, not from the muscles, because you can't really access that unless you're moving. So it's just to top up glycogen stores, or it's to top up what it's actually doing, is it's giving you food to fuel the actual run. Because if it's a simple carbohydrate, we'll digest it pretty quickly. And especially for about the second half of the run, that fuel will actually be in the system to help you finish a stronger session. Um, and yeah, not fade so much at the end of a session.
SPEAKER_00Got it. What could be the role of uh caffeine here as well? Like I'm I personally am a fan of caffeine this morning. This morning my machine wasn't um it wasn't hot, so I went for a run without coffee. And uh I'm my goodness, I want to just get back as soon as possible and have a coffee.
SPEAKER_01Look, there's great research for coffee and um and sport, especially for running at I mean for endurance sports. So, yes, if you're used to having coffee in the mornings, absolutely have your coffee before you go. That's just, I mean, it's a mental thing, it's a ritual thing. But yes, caffeine, especially the longer the session, you know, you know, it takes caffeine a little bit of time to actually get into the system. I know we feel it quite quickly, but for caffeine to kind of peak in the blood isn't till about an hour, hour and a half from memory into when we've ingested it. But you definitely feel it within that 30 minutes. So, yes, I'm all for the caffeine and coffee before the train. I would I will not actually leave my house and train with coffee. My husband will go out straight, waking up straight. And I'm like, no, I'm waking up half an hour before him to have my coffee and then go out. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Same with me. Um we have it set on the app to make sure the coffee machine is ready before we wake up. And uh, if for whatever reason it's switched off, uh it just seems like you cannot get out of the door.
SPEAKER_01No, I would have delayed the run personally. I literally will not go on it. That's like my one non-negotiable is coffee before exercise. So caffeine actually helps us feel like the exercise we're doing is not as hard as it is. It actually has a, you know, a benefit to make it feel less difficult. There's a more scientific word for it, but it's escaping my brain right now. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00Got it. It reduces a sense of perceived exertion, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's thank you. Perceived exertion, you know, and you're just like, hmm, I can't get there right now. Um, yeah, so it's a decrease of perceived exertion, it feels better. Again, during a race, you always want to, and I'm sure we'll talk about race nutrition later. There's always how to time the caffeine and how much caffeine and things like that.
SPEAKER_00So And uh before we start the run and in terms of the caffeine dosage, is there a guideline of how much of caffeine you should have? Should it be espresso, americano, cappuccino, with sugar, without sugar? How should it be?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, I mean, there are actual calculations we can do for caffeine and our body weight, but really on a daily basis, I don't bring that in with people. It's pretty much what they're used to. During racing, there are actually calculations. We can talk about that later. It really depends how we make our coffee. All coffee strength really depends on the method you make it. Like an espresso out of a proper espresso machine potentially has about 80 milligrams of caffeine per shot. Whereas like American style filtered coffee, it's actually like 120 milligrams per cup. So it's actually stronger, even though it tastes weaker to me. So most people are probably doing between 80 and 150, 180 milligrams of caffeine per se. But again, it's up to them and how to take it. It's really up to that person, you know. It's if someone is looking at fasted training, you know, there is research for enhancing fat burning, for, you know, training low glycogen state. So if we're, and that's usually suggested to only be fasted training kind of twice a week is all we need to really enhance mitochondrial biogenesis, help the body, you know, access fats better, fat adaptation as we call it, that really only needs to happen twice a week. But if we are doing a fasted train on purpose and we want to have caffeine, then we basically just have to have black coffee. There's no milk, there's no sugar, black only, because the minute you add in calories from milk or milk alternatives or sugars, that actually breaks the fast and gives you carbohydrates. So if someone's wanting fasted training, absolutely black coffee. If they're not trying to do a fasted train, they can have their cappuccino, their latte, whatever they want. And again, if you want sugar in your coffee, you gotta count that as carb. Like if you're aiming for 30 grams of carbohydrate, you know, a teaspoon, well, like two tablespoons, which is a lot, but okay, let me go back. One tablespoon of honey is 15 grams of carbohydrate.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01So people need to know how much sugar they're putting it. Do you put sugar in your coffee?
SPEAKER_00Never. I think it's crime to put sugar in the coffee.
SPEAKER_01I do too. I have a I have a teenage daughter, and at the moment she sweetens her coffee and I'm like, it's gotta stop.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and also I would not let anyone touch my latte art with the by putting sugar on top of it. Not at all. It has to look good as well before you consume it.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm just a I'm actually just a black coffee drinker by choice. Every now and then I put a dash of cream, but yeah, I'm just black, just black. Keep it simple.
SPEAKER_00Nice. No, I'm uh I'm an espresso uh person generally, and cappuccino, I love both of these, but I would love to make it myself. So so yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Um, and I actually uh thank you for also answering the faster training because this was going to be one of my questions.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, it's a huge question.
SPEAKER_00Right, because uh as people start to train, one of the reasons also is to lose some fat. And uh fat-adapted training seems to be one of the ways through which people can do it. So thank you for covering that as well. And it seems like uh you don't have to uh run every day faster, just twice a week is enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what a lot of the research is kind of pointing to, because especially if you're doing higher tempo training, those should not be the faster training. The ones, you know, the low glycogen training state, you're better off in a recovery run. Or sometimes I do, I I did do, I had a someone doing the TCS marathon in a couple months came to see me the other day. And we were discussing taking their long run, which they do once a week. And I was like, well, we could for the we're two months out from the city marathon. I was like, this month, you could do about an hour to an hour and a half fasted in your long run and then bring in your fueling for the run. But when we get to the month before the run, I said, no, that's not what we're gonna do because we really need to train the gut so he's used to his race nutrition. And I I I hate when I hear about people fasted training their long training runs, and then they try to consume some enormous amount of carbohydrate during the race and they feel sick. And it's like, that's what happens when you don't practice.
SPEAKER_00Totally, totally. And uh and that's one of the important uh topics as well to discuss later uh today because uh that that is of great value. Now, we discussed faster training, we discussed uh training up to duration of 60 to 75 minutes, and we talked about how to consume and when to consume nutrition. What about water and uh electrolytes? How much is too much? Do you think we should use the sweat calculator that we see generally online to figure out how much of electrolytes do you need or not? Just to also give you some context, here in India, for last year or two, we are seeing almost every month um a few hydration companies coming up. And uh some are giving uh 500 mg, some are giving thousands, some 1500 mg of sodium uh per sachet. How do I calculate and how much is the amount generally I should consider per hour of training?
SPEAKER_01So my favorite thing to do is to get people. Look, you can go into a lab and spend a lot of money and find out, you can do sweat tests if you have the money to know what your electrolyte, like sodium loss is that's amazing. There's like little patch tests, there's all kinds of things. But for as far as volume of fluid goes, I still most of the time get my clients or suggest to people, and I I'm always amazed that people don't do this, but you get up in the morning, have your coffee, whatever it is you do, go to the toilet, weigh yourself naked on a digital scale, write it down, and then you go and do a one-hour run at your race pace, come back, towel dry off, take off all clothes so you're weighing yourself again naked, and see how much weight you've lost. Now, if you've drunk anything during that hour, we need to know the exact amount. So often I just say try to do a run with no drinking for the hour, and um hopefully they don't urinate as well. Um, because you would have to measure that, but we're not gonna do that. So, anyway, weighing yourself after one hour of race running, race base, and so say you lost 800 grams. So that means about 800 mils of fluid an hour is your sweat rate. Yes, you've lost a little bit of body weight burning up glycogen, but they actually say I know the IOC and a lot of big governing bodies kind of consider this good enough to know your sweat rate because the big thing is not overhydrating. You know, the danger in marathons and longer endurance is that people actually consume too much fluid per hour, or then there's the dehydration consuming too little. So we want to consume near to or up to what our loss is, but never over it. And again, it depends how fast we're running a marathon and things like that. But in general, I make my clients do that test, so a sweat test in different seasons so that they know, because especially like for you, winter to summer is gonna be very humidity difference, sweat difference. So also really looking at what the temperature is gonna be estimated to be for their actual marathon race or half marathon, because you really want to do the test in a similar condition. I'm it's not perfect. But yeah, so I I do that with all people. That's a real thing for me before designing race nutrition because we want to know yes, you can finish a race dehydrated by little amounts, and that's fine, but we also don't want them over hydrating. So finding out that sweat rate's really important. And then as far as electrolytes go, it's there's a lot of debate around this. I love a lot of the electrolyte sachets out at the moment. You probably have different brands to me, but um, the it's really personal preference as well, as far as sodium goes. I mean, old guidelines, I'm talking decades ago, used to say average about a gram an hour on really long distance endurance events was really safe. But now we're kind of saying that might be too much. Should we just do 500? But then are you in a really humid environment where you're gonna lose a lot more? Also, if you're traveling and moving to like if you're traveling for a race that's in humid conditions and you're not normally in hot, humid conditions, the first two weeks you're acclimatizing, you will actually sweat more and I think dump more electrolytes as well. So, oh my gosh, the how much to have, if you really want to be accurate, you would have to go do some testing. Otherwise, for a marathon, unless you have a lot of cramp problems, um, or you know you're a really heavy sweater, sodium sweater, 500, somewhere between 500 and a thousand is gonna be safe. Like it's not gonna do you wrong, it's not gonna cause any problems if you really only needed 500, but you've done a thousand. Yeah. Did that make sense?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know that makes sense. And that seems very similar to what what most of us are following and we've been okay. If people are very heavy sweaters, and which could be the case because of the humidity as well here, then at times people go up until say 1200 mg, etc.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, generally five to six hundred milligrams of sodium per hour of workout seems like sufficient, at least feels good.
SPEAKER_01It feels good, it feels safe. If people are really craving salt while they're racing or they're just daily life, you know, we might bump it up a little bit, but it's really each of us are so individual. There's no kind of big statement anymore about you have to do this or have to do this, it's really dependent. The other thing is during racing, especially or training, if it's too salty to your liking, you're not gonna drink it. That's the other thing. Like it has to be to a sodium level that you enjoy, or you literally will under drink.
SPEAKER_00No, totally. It has to taste, and particularly when you're riding for this long, you're very sensitive to the taste. So it's uh it's important. For me, if it's not chilled, I'd I find it very difficult to be able to drink.
SPEAKER_01I like really, really cold drinks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Awesome. So that sets uh very good context to move forward. If it is now more than an hour of training, and um, for example, I'm going for my three hours long run on a Saturday or on a Sunday, for example. How do I now plan for it? Because most people are training anywhere between five hours to eight hours per week and or or nine hours per week. And uh I think every recommendation that you said so far will cover for most of other days, except this really long run. Yeah. So how do I plan for it now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so long run, there's a couple options. Again, 30, 50 grams of carbohydrate before the run will be enough if you're the type of person that doesn't like to eat a lot before a long run. Other people I know love having a full breakfast before a long run or a you know, medium size, and they want to. There's also the point of at least a few times before a marathon practicing what you're gonna have on race day as a breakfast before the race. But in general, I find people are like two pieces of toast with some honey or some, you know, banana, some dates, whatever it is that they like. Some people do oats. Um, but I'm in Australia. I don't I don't know if you're a big oats eater over there. Are you, Vicus?
SPEAKER_00I love oats and oats uh consumption is uh increasing significantly. Rolled oats, yeah, rolled oats all the way with with your yeah.
SPEAKER_01A lot of people love that before a run. So you can have a little bit more protein and fat in the you know, pre-long run breakfast, but you're really gonna want to do that about an hour before the rum. You just don't want to be that heavy, you know, smaller amount or like more simple carbohydrates the closer to the run you're eating. And again, some people are gonna choose to start their long run, always the coffee before if you want the coffee. That's just a given. That's the constant. That's a constant. But you don't have to have coffee if you're not a coffee drinker. And again, some people are gonna want to do that first hour fasted, and that's okay, but I usually try to get them to bring in fueling by the hour, hour 15, if they're doing that beginning fasted. But say they have eaten before a long run. I often, depending on the volume, you don't really need to then start fueling until about an hour, 45 minutes or an hour into the run. Um, and again, depending on body size, depending on digestive comfort, um, you know, how much they want to be ingesting per hour, I would probably start it at the 45 to one hour mark. And I do like people to be consistent with their fueling during the run. So I I'm a fan of fueling every 30 minutes. If they're trying to do a really big volume per hour, we would fuel every 20 minutes. So you're not doing little sips of a sports drink constantly, you're having a big amount of sports drink every 20 or 30 minutes, or you're doing a gel or a chomp or chew or whatever. It depends what sports products people are obsessed with. Yeah. Yeah. So do they need to go full race nutrition volumes during training? No. If they're trying to lose weight, I'll actually skinny them down a little bit on their volume of carb. Like say they normally wanted to do 60 or 70 grams of carb an hour during a race. If they're really trying to lean down, we could do 40 or 50. But if they don't feel good doing that, we'll take them back up. But sometimes I do just get them to do a little bit less just to enhance that, you know, fat adaptation. And then again, trying to figure out how much fluid they should be having and are they carrying it with them or are they stopping somewhere to do it? But making sure they're practicing, especially the high, I mean, you need to practice how much carb you're having, but especially fluid volume. I find a lot of runners are like, oh, I don't really like to drink that much during runs, but then they get to race day and their body's not used to taking in six, seven, eight hundred mils of fluid an hour, and it's becomes a problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. When I'm starting to consume uh fluid, whether it's sports to drink or or I start to consume energy gel or chew, for example, um, at around 45 minutes, uh, would it be safe to take anywhere between uh 20 to 30 grams every 30 minutes? Of course, um it is a function of how much can you ingest and keep it in your stomach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and maybe people will start slow and and take it slow. But will it be simple carbohydrate? Will it or should it be fruit? Can they have whole food while uh while running as well, or not assuming that these are absolute beginners, for example, some of them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. You know, sports gels and chews are just amazing because they're so easy, but they can get very expensive for people. So, yeah, absolutely you can do fruit as long as it's not bothering your digestive system. You could do, I know people that make sandwiches, so they're having like white bread or you could make little like rice balls, but it so that it's you know, just simple white rice is very, you know, really easy to ingest as well. So, yeah, it can be done in foods or a banana. Um, as long basically, you can have any food as long as it doesn't bother your system. That's what it really comes down to. The gels and the chews or chomps. I'm a huge fan of the chomp, the the chews. Somehow I I feel like I'm getting a lolly or a candy. Um, they come in really handy because they're heat resistant, you can carry them really easy if you're not doing loops, you know, and you're going out and back. They're very portable, they're not messy. Um, so they tend to be favored, but they can't, you know, it adds up over time if you're having to consume a lot of them. But yeah, I am a really good fan. And then you also know exactly how much carb you're having, it's a lot more easy to control.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, and I I've seen uh generally combining two, three sources also works with the taste buds better. Uh, or else at the end of two hours, two and a half hours, it becomes very difficult to now consume the same thing over and again.
SPEAKER_01The technical term for that is flavor fatigue. They actually, there's a sports nutrition term for that, um, which definitely happens in marathons, but you really see it in ultra-endurance events, you know, ultra-running Iron Man and all that kind of stuff, where you're eating all day and then the last thing you want is something sweet. You could do baked, you know. I have clients that do little bags of baked potatoes um with a little bit of butter and a ton of salt onto them. Um yeah, you you can do all kinds of stuff, but yeah, it's hard to get running, it's hard to carry a lot. So that's where the sports drink or the gels the chews come in. I personally like sports drinks are amazing. Um and some people prefer that over the gels and water. I'm more of a fan of gels and chews and just keeping my water as water, just so that I have a clean taste. But again, everybody has a preference.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, fair enough. Now, if someone is consuming an energy gel or a chew, for example, which is simple curve, um uh fast, and uh it's it's easy to, of course, ingest and be able to use it to by the body uh pretty quickly. How long generally it takes once it's in the body for it to start working?
SPEAKER_01It's interesting. You know, let me back up, especially for the beginner marathonners or beginner runners. Sports drinks are originally created because they were created first, and their sports drinks are made up. Like if you buy a commercial one already pre-made, they're gonna have six to eight grams of carbohydrate per hundred mils of fluid. So that's a six to eight percent solution, we call it, right? Because we know water absorbs really fast through the gut lining, whereas six to eight grams per hundred mils, we know also will absorb really fast through the digestive system, a little bit in the stomach, but mainly the small intestines is where we're absorbing. And um, and we want to be absorbing really fast because getting it into your stomach doesn't actually mean it's into your bloodstream and helping fuel the body and hydrate. So we want really fast absorption. Um, once we're above eight percent or eight grams per 100 mil. So once you hit 10, 11, 12, like um sodas tend to be like a Coca-Cola Pepsi, all the whatever brand, those are typically 11 grams per 100 mil, those slow down absorption because it's too concentrated in sugar, which is why sports drinks are made at a really specific amount. And a lot of people don't understand that. So when we're having gels and chews, what we need to be doing, if you're having a 25 gram gel, you actually need to be having about 300 mils of fluid or what 300 mils of water specifically to dilute the gel in the stomach so that it becomes less than an 8% solution. Am I making sense for I know you probably know this, but yeah. Yeah. And one of the big mistakes people make in endurance sport is having gels and chews and not having enough water or washing it down with a sports drink. So having a gel and a sports drink at the same time, you've just created like a 35% solution into your stomach, and that is gonna take ages to absorb. So we're hoping for absorption. You know, to be honest, I don't actually know the time. I'm gonna, I'm gonna estimate 20 to 30 minutes really for that to hit. If it's going fast, 20, slower, 30, but you don't want it taking 40, 50 minutes, right? Because you're putting more stuff in. You want it absorbing fast. Sodium helps pull, you know, the electrolytes in these products actually helps pull the fluid across the gut lining, which is an we need the electrolytes while we're training, but we also it facilitates crossing the gut lining, which is a good thing. And um, if you are the faster you're running, the worse your digestion. The slower you're running, the better your digestion. So if you're walking, you can like digest anything, basically. Whereas the faster you're running, that actually just the running itself and the bouncing, but it actually slows digestion. So um that's something to consider as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which should sound very intuitive to people, I assume, why it will make sense if they are putting in more effort in running. Uh, the gut is uh very busy and uh and the blood supply is to other working muscles.
SPEAKER_01Sitting at the muscles, not at the digestion.
SPEAKER_00Not in the gut, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But if people are starting to have a gut problem in a race, a lot of people's I'm gonna get a bit mean here, a lot of people's ego doesn't want to slow down. But in reality, if you're having gut problems, if you slow down a little bit off and drink water, it will often clear the gut plug, as we call it. Um whereas a lot of times they're like, I don't want to slow down, I don't want to slow down, and then their gut gets even worse and yeah, they run into problems. Slowing down for five to ten minutes is a big help. Yes. No one wants to know that though. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I agree. The runners, uh, some of us do have high egos, and and we think uh you know, alpha, uh very type A personalities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that seems to go with endurance for it. Yes.
SPEAKER_00I know, I know. How about the caffeinated versus non-caffeinated uh products during training and uh what should be the right protocol of mixing the two?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, I think the biggest thing is if you want to do caffeine in a race, it is pretty good to practice on it on the long runs, but also reading the labels of what gels or chews you're doing because it can say caffeinated, but some gels only have 10 milligrams of caffeine, other gels will have 50, 60, 80 milligrams of caffeine. It's the same with sodium, right? It's so different between different gels. So, you know, if you're having a little 10 milligram, 20 milligram caffeine, you can have that every time you have a gel. Whereas if you're having a big 80 milligram gel, 80 milligrams of caffeine in a gel, you're not doing that every gel. You're doing it like every third gel. I typically, it's really different for everybody. You know, everyone thinks, oh my god, caffeine more is better. There's actually a point where you have too much caffeine and you could actually, it doesn't enhance performance. So it's also about playing with what works for people and how many hours you're gonna run a marathon for, right? So I typically with clients, I get nervous above kind of 40 or 50 milligrams every hour. But again, some people are used to it and do more than that, but I I just get nervous because you can also have bowel issues if you do too much caffeine and people already have bowel issues in marathons.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How much caffeine do you take in per hour during? I'm curious.
SPEAKER_00I generally start in the second hour, and every third gel I have is uh every third gel. So every 90 minutes I get in uh it's uh it has a hundred mg of caffeine. Yeah, uh, but but when you when you remove it from the gel sash it, generally I think 80, 85 may be coming, remaining are left because you're running fast, etc.
SPEAKER_01So and a hundred is fine, especially if that's only every hour and a half. 90 minutes, right? Yeah, yeah, that's not yeah, that's pretty, I I feel like that's pretty much what most people find to be comfortable.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01I get nervous when it's too much. Often also clients will do, you know, they'll do their caffeine before race start. And then some people I know will actually wait. I mean, you might be running a three-hour marathon. I I don't actually know how fast you run.
SPEAKER_00I didn't look no, not right now. Not not right now. I'll be at a 320 fitness right now.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um some people love to save caffeine for the second half of the race, and that's yeah, that can be nice too. So they kind of just a little bit before halfway, then they start doing the caffeine again because it takes a little bit for the caffeine to hit the system, and that way, especially the last hour, they're starting to peak with the caffeine when you're in that terrible 35 kilometer plus icky space for your begging for it to be over. Yes.
SPEAKER_00I know. So uh once what happened was um my non-caffeinated gels were over, and I dared to take two caffeinated gels one after other in the last hour of race, and uh I puked, I felt nauseated, I just could not take it, and it was so miserable. I pledged that I'm never going to do this ever again. So, so I I so agree with you that you know you should not you should not attempt to take it.
SPEAKER_01I'm trying to think how many marathons I've run. I think if I count, because I do I used to do Iron Man triathlon, and as my husband says, you get a free marathon at the end of the triathon. So, and I've done the Sydney marathon a few times. So six, seven, I think I've probably done seven marathons all up. A lot of haves, but but I did get really sick. But in an Iron Man, not a not oh no, I have had gut trouble in a marathon once. And yes, I vomited in a race once. It is not pleasant, and I know exactly what I'm doing nutritionally, and it still happened. Um, but it turned out I was about to have a stomach bug, so there were other situations happening. But yes, vomiting in a race is not pleasant.
SPEAKER_00No, no, not at all. And so, yeah, it's better to be to be safe uh than being adventurous, uh which ought to get to uh be that way.
SPEAKER_01You know, perfect nutrition can still go awry. Like you can have the, you know, you drop gels and you run out of fuel, and then you have to use what's ever on the course if you're more preferred to bring your own, but also sometimes your body, you know, you're about to be getting sick, or um, you know, for females, different times of the month can feel harder than other times. It's just stuff just happens. The body sometimes doesn't like what you're doing to it, and and that's okay too. It's disappointing, but the body isn't isn't a machine that just should be running perfectly every day, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of the things I have learned over a period of uh running for so many years that is uh my success metric doesn't have to be running every time or running well every time for that matter. My success metric is to feel good when I'm running. Yeah, when I don't when I don't feel good for whatever reason, I'll just pause. I'll stop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_00I think that could be one way to look at it.
SPEAKER_01So you're not you're not living as a as a servant to your garment or your whatever. Yeah. It's amazing how people get obsessed with their data and then will push through even when they're not feeling but my data looked good. And I'm like, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00I can stop my garment at 11.99, I'll be okay. Oh, right, you're right.
SPEAKER_01Not completely a type A personality then. Yeah. I always laugh when I see those people having to do that one extra in the parking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's not me. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Maybe my husband, but I'm not sure, actually.
SPEAKER_00Occasionally, maybe. Moving ahead, uh, now we are done with the training, and the more important part comes in that is recovery. Do I take a recovery drink after every workout or after certain duration, after certain effort? And if yes, what kind of recovery drink is something that's recommended?
SPEAKER_01Look, you know, it's such a great question. But the other question is what is in the recovery drink for people? So I think the bigger thing to focus on, yes, you can have a recovery drink. Absolutely, if that's what people want. You can also just eat a meal, right? Like people don't have to spend the money on a recovery drink. Food is gonna do it as long as you can get to the food soon enough.
SPEAKER_00Soon enough.
SPEAKER_01If you have trouble getting to a meal and you delay eating too long, I would say a recovery drink if it's pre made or if it's right there is a really smart thing to help start your glycogen replacement right after the training. So so probably the biggest thing in sports nutrition is, and a lot of I'm always amazed how many people don't understand this. Is especially when you're doing endurance sports. So we're talking runners, right? We're not talking going out and lifting weights here. When we're doing aerobic exercise, we are, yes, we're using body fat, but we're using glycogen or our stored our stored carbohydrates plus any carbohydrates we eat. But when we finish, our fuel tank is lower of carbohydrate called glycogen, and it's time to fill it back up. And your body metabolically is primed to fill your fuel tank really efficiently and quickly if we eat soon after training. Yes, it's really you have about a two-hour window metabolically, but I would never let a client go two hours. I don't even tell them two hours, even though they're gonna hear it on a podcast. I say, I say 30 to 45 minutes because I know they're gonna get lazy and it's gonna go to an hour. But basically, the sooner you can eat a meal or a snack with carbohydrate in it, it will help keep glycogen synthesis of the body creating more glycogen. It'll keep that high, like happening at a good amount. So I say to people, please eat a meal within 30 minutes, 45 at the worst, of finishing exercise. And typically for endurance and running, we're looking at um, I mean, the science really says a four to one ratio of carbohydrate to protein. Although I do find a lot of people prefer a three to one ratio, which is probably good enough. I know a lot of females feel better on three to one, but the science is between that three and four. I don't want to get in trouble from the scientists. Um, but yeah, carbohydrate is super important post-training to replace the glycogen. Plus, we've stressed our immune system. Cortisol is higher, but that's normal with exercise. Everyone's like all freaked out about cortisol at the moment. If you train all the time, your body's used to the cortisol going up. But the way to turn it back down is to eat, and especially to eat carbohydrate, and that will then, you know, you want to rehydrate, you want to repair muscle, which is why the protein is in that meal as well. But the meal right after endurance sport should be very focused on carbohydrate breads, grain, rice, cereal, pasta, fruit, vegetables, whichever carbohydrate people want, and then that bit of protein with it.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah. And in terms of potion, I think it should be to hunger, or do you have to really measure it?
SPEAKER_01Look, if it's just if you're just doing a one-hour run, an hour and a quarter, very much to hunger. Um, after the really long runs, a really big amount, often we will say to people, one gram of carbohydrate times their body weight in kilos. So if somebody weighs 70 kilos, we would say, aim for about 70 grams of carb. Um, other research actually will go a little bit higher. They'll go to 1.2 or 1.5, but I really think that's big athletes, like people doing huge volumes, professional. Um, I find most of my general runners, not my elites, are gonna be just fine on one. And but if you're a hundred kilos and you're trying to lose a bunch of weight, maybe keep it a little bit like you know, maybe stick to the 70 or 80. You don't need to do the hundred, and um you'll be calorie restricting anywhere, anyway. But yeah, in general, in general, one gram times the body weight in carbs, in got kilos, not carbs.
SPEAKER_00Got it, got it. Yeah. And and it could be uh if people are trying to lose weight, maybe closer to their goal weight.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh in in grams. Uh I try I try to take Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I sometimes it's if they have a huge amount of weight to lose, sometimes I'll do halfway between goal weight and what they weigh now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Got it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So for it. What do you do?
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm 74 kilos, and uh I consume about 100 grams total, which will be 25 grams of protein and 75 gram of uh identical to what I just said. Yeah, it's exactly you are actually perfect. I think my nutrition my nutrition is perfect. Training has to be better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's all to get to get to three hours.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And after a really long run, and most people will feel this anyway, like your long weekend run, you'll do that, and then you'll want to eat again within the next two hours, have another snack or small meal, can be more mixed. You know, it's not so important what the ratio is there, but the one right after training, that three to one or four to one ratio, is big because glycogen synthase, which is an enzyme responsible for helping make more glycogen, it's really active. Your cells are actually really responsive to getting food or you know, carbohydrate in. Even people, you know, if if there's runners listening that have whether they're type two diabetics or you know, insulin resistant, they have some metabolic issues where they're they have trouble getting food into the cells, your body is actually more responsive to getting food in right after training, even if you're metabolically a little bit compromised. So it's it's the great safe time to actually have their carbohydrates. Got it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And as they train more, hopefully that will slowly disappear anyway, that issue. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. That's the good news. So so that's another reason why people, if they have those conditions, should keep training anyway. Now we covered pre-during and uh after over a period of training. Generally for us to stay healthy, for us to stay fit, so that the immunity is not compromised, we don't catch a bug or something similar. Training for a race leading up to the race day. What could be some of the other nutrients? I should keep in mind that uh I'm uh I'm right there, whether it's uh vitamins, could be vitamin D, B12, but I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I want your expert advice on what should I be measuring against and seeing whether I'm okay or not.
SPEAKER_01Are you actually talking like blood tests?
SPEAKER_00Do you want to know what or Yeah, I was I was wanting to see that when we train, uh this is for a training session, which we talked about, but over a period of time, our training and performances do get compromised and there are certain things we do not know of. It could be a blood test and the result from it. Yeah, but generally do I think in general?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. What do I do?
SPEAKER_01So, you know, the more volume of training you do, the more nutrients you're using. And and as you get towards a race, the last thing you want is to get sick because then you detrain. Um, so the nutrients to be really aware of. Well, you know, iron, we always want to be really aware of iron, but iron is not safe, it's not great to take if you don't know that you actually need it, right? Too much iron is also dangerous. But the more endurance sport people do, the higher their need for iron. So if you're a meat eater, eating a little bit more red meat, when you eat your iron-rich foods, also having foods high in vitamin C actually helps with the iron absorption. Taking an iron supplement, a lot of athletes will need it, but they should get that tested. Of all things to test, I'm a huge fan of getting the iron tested, and you also get what's known as your ferritin tested, which is your stores of iron. That's probably, and because the iron carry capacity of the of the blood is what holds oxygen, which helps us create energy. So if we're we're low in iron, we're actually you'll actually be breathing harder. Um, and it won't feel as good. Like you will feel exhausted because you're not like, yeah, not oxygenating anywhere near to the level you need. But again, dangerous to take it if you don't need it. So food meant food first. Checking vitamin D levels is always good. Vitamin D, a lot of people, gosh, I don't even know what people think vitamin D is for anymore. I mean, D is really important for bone health, but it's also, it's actually a hormone, and it's super important for your immune system. So just making sure you have adequate or optimum levels is important, and it also depends um where you're living on the earth and how easy it is to synthesize vitamin D or not. Like the further from the equator, the harder it is to synthesize vitamin D from the sun. Some people also have a genetic anomaly where they don't synthesize D from the sun very well, and then also the darker your complexion, so the more olive, the more tan, the darker in your genetics, you don't synthesize as much D. That the melanin in the skin actually protects you from the sun. So the darker your skin, I'm always curious for those people to get their D tested as well, just to make sure they're okay. Because yeah, low D is not great. And again, every country uses different measurements, so I'm a bit loath to say numbers, but in Australia, you might have the same measurements as me. I don't know, 50 and below is considered deficiency. And but optimum is can be anywhere from, I mean, they say normal is any, you know, 50 all the way up. I don't even know what the upper number is, but a lot of people in Australia, a lot of integrative doctors I know will say try to get it above 80 or even to 100 as an optimum number. But I don't know if you're doing numbers the same as me.
SPEAKER_00So uh in India it's uh it's between zero to a hundred and uh 30 and below is um is uh deficient. So you're 20 and below is extremely uh deficient. Generally, uh it's considered 50 to 70, 80 is a great sufficiency range. Right. Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad you know because it's definitely different here. So 50 is our deficient, and we really want to see people kind of above. I mean, they'll say if you go to the doctor, they'll be like, oh yeah, your bloods look good because it's not sufficient, but you really want to be above 80, if not towards 100. I'm one of the people who has eye supplement because I can't, I don't synthesize it well from the sun.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Got it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, but but makes uh makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so D's a big one. Zinc, zinc-rich foods. Zinc is super important for like thousands of things in the body, but zinc is really important uh for making hormones and also for the immune system. So zinc-rich foods, which are meats, um, a lot of seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, oysters, you can you can chat GPT, any um any um, you know, hot foods high in zinc, and it'll give you a great actually AI is really good for that, I have to say. Yeah, it's really good. So, vitamin C also important, stabilize that immune system. You don't need to do huge volumes of anything, but just making sure it's adequate. If you're really worried about the immune system, we look at probiotics, whether you're eating fermented foods or you're taking a probiotic, like if you're traveling for sport, most of the time I would suggest taking a probiotic while traveling. Your immune system does also sit in your digestive system. So probiotics are known for with athletes. And oh, I'm trying to think what else. Not evidence-based for helping in sport per se, but then one nutrient I hand over, very evidence-based for a lot of other things, is magnesium. I'm a big fan of people taking magnesium. Not all practitioners are. I love a magnesium visclycinate or a magnesium citrate, chelate, just you know, you're using up, you know, for energy, for muscle cramping, for just general, you're kind of churning through a lot of your micronutrients. So I am I am a big fan of magnesium.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was going to I was going to ask, will magnesium be on your list now?
SPEAKER_01Magnesium is actually it's my number one. Like if, you know, and you also have all your B vitamins.
SPEAKER_00How much?
SPEAKER_01Look, the average person is, you know, just 300, 350 milligrams is enough. Some people I know go a little bit higher, but I'd be really happy with just 300, 350 for most people per day.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay. And uh between B12?
SPEAKER_01B12. I also I do tend to get clients to get their B12 tested. Again, that's coming in animal sources. So if somebody is vegetarian, they're not having as high of B12. So I do get people to test B12 because that also has to do with energy production. But all the Bs are really important. I'm a fan. I mean, again, we have different products in all different countries. I'm a big fan of powdered magnesiums that have some of the other electrolytes and have most of the B vitamins in it as well.
SPEAKER_00I think from training to post-training recovery, we covered all of it today. Race and nutrition is something that we have left, but I want for it to be a very specific session just to cover race, and maybe I would request you for another session on if whenever time permits for you.
SPEAKER_01I would love that. That would be good fun. Yeah, I would love that. Race nutrition is so specific.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so for that, I was I was thinking we'll we'll cover another 45 minutes to an hour session in a separate podcast so that it's only for the race, so that we don't uh mix it with anything else.
SPEAKER_01I would love that. That would be really fun. I've really enjoyed chatting too, by the way. It's fun. And you keep saying you do exactly what I say. Science says you should do, so I love that even more.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much for your time today. And I'm I'm happy that I'm following some of the advic that uh that someone like you would recommend.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you sound like you're doing really well. So I hope you have a great week of training and um just let me know. I'd be happy to be back on the show.
SPEAKER_00I look forward to speaking again. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
SPEAKER_01See ya.
SPEAKER_00That was all. I hope you enjoyed as much as I enjoyed speaking with Kira. Let me know how it went and let me know which are the components you are going to implement in your training journey. Goodbye for now. Keep running.
