Nutrition Deep Dive: The Carb Load Playbook For Improving Race Day Performance

Carb Loading for Endurance Athletes: What Actually Works?

Is carb loading really necessary before a marathon, Ironman, or long endurance event? How many carbs do you actually need, and will carb loading make you feel heavy, bloated, or gain weight?

In this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, Board Certified Sports Dietitian and endurance athlete Katie takes a deep dive into the science and practical application of carb loading. With Grandma’s Marathon just weeks away, Katie shares both the research and her personal approach to maximizing glycogen stores before race day.

You'll learn:

•  What carb loading is and why it improves endurance performance 
•  How glycogen fuels long-distance events and helps delay fatigue 
•  The difference between old-school and modern carb-loading strategies 
•  Who should (and shouldn't) carb load 
•  How many carbohydrates you actually need before a race 
•  Common mistakes that can sabotage your carb load 
•  Why fat and fiber intake matter in the days before competition 
•  Whether carb loading causes weight gain 
•  Practical meal and snack ideas to help you hit your carbohydrate goals 
•  How to combine carb loading, race morning nutrition, and in-race fueling for optimal performance 

Whether you're preparing for a marathon, half Ironman, Ironman, ultra marathon, or long cycling event, this episode will help you create a carb-loading plan that supports your performance goals and helps you avoid hitting the wall on race day.

Tune in to learn how a well-executed carb load can help you start your race with a full tank and finish stronger.

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. My name is Katie, and I am one of the co-hosts of the podcast. And I'm actually going to be doing another deep dive today on a nutrition topic, and I'm going to be diving into the con the topic of carb loading. So I am doing this kind of for a little bit for more selfish reasons. I am three a little less than three weeks out to my grandma's marathon. And I am starting to think about the carb load, how I'm going to do it differently this time than I've maybe done before, how I want to structure it. So selfishly, this is as much for me as it is for you. A little, a little reminder for me of the carb load and selfishly kind of scheduling out my own carb load, and then also here to kind of help you with potentially yours and how to kind of go about it. So a little bit of background before we dive in, just to let you know that I'm not just somebody talking about this and have no personal experience or expertise. I'm actually very experienced and have a lot of expertise. I've been a dietitian for like 15 years and I've been working with endurance sports for about that long as well. And the longer I've been involved in endurance sports, I've been a runner for 30 years, but I've also a board-certified specialist in sports dietetics. So I'm not just somebody coming at you who is maybe an influencer, somebody that thinks uh they know a lot. I actually feel as though I might have some expertise in this area. So let's get started. Um yeah, so I'm gonna talk about why carb loading matters for endurance athletes. Common uh fears that we kind of want to address. So won't, you know, that fear of carbs making you feel heavy. Uh, do you really need carb loading? Is it really gonna make that big of a difference? And gaining weight. So those are common fears. We'll kind of address that as we go. Um, the brief overview of carb loading is what it is and how it works. So we're kind of gonna go over that, maximizing glycogen storage and why glycogen is is so important. And then we're going to kind of just talk about practical applications of carb loading. So, what does that mean? How do we go about planning a carbload? What are we thinking about? And I'm gonna give you a little bit of insight into my own plan for grandmas. So, yeah, let's dive right in. Um, so what is carb loading? Yes, well, I think most of us have an idea. So this one's pretty simple, but um, you know, the simplest for simplest explanation for this is just loading a bunch of carbs, eating tons of carbs the days leading up to your event, right? That's a simple definition, just having carbs, but why? Like, why is this important? And I think most of us as endurance athletes know about glycogen and what that is. But I'm gonna give a little bit of background here in case, you know, maybe you're new to it and you're not sure what is glycogen and why is it important? So hang on if you already know all this. But I think it's helpful sometimes to give a little bit of a visual of what, you know, what are we when we're thinking about glycogen, it's kind of like this abstract thing. It's glucose stored in our muscle and our liver, but a visual can kind of help get some clarification on what's happening. So I didn't come up with this, so don't attribute this to me, but this is just the way I think of it in a visual I've used and I've heard before. So I think of glycogen as like a bunch of cubby holes, just tons and tons of cubby holes that I mean not tons and tons, but a certain amount of cubby holes, but not infinite. There's only a certain amount, like a wall full of cubby holes, that we would store glucose in. So if you think of like glucose maybe as little balls or like little glucose molecules, and there's lots of cubby holes, and we're stuffing that glucose into those cubby holes and filling those cubby holes up, that's kind of what glycogen is. And glycogen is stored in our liver and our muscle. So in our liver, we have a little bit less glycogen, maybe 400 calories worth, but there's a lot more glycogen that we can store in our muscle. So our muscle is going to be the major source of glycogen storage. So when we are carb loading, essentially what we're trying to do is just really fill up those cubby holes. And we only have an a certain amount of cubby holes. But when we carb load, we can kind of stuff a little more glucose in. Not infinite. It's not like you can just eat carbs and the more and more and more and more carbs, and you're going to be able to infinitely load glycogen. But when we like think of being it at this way, maybe you can stuff a couple like more glucose molecules in some of those cubbies, and you're just over, you know, making it as full as possible. And there isn't a single empty space. And that's kind of what you're thinking of when you're carb loading is that that you're just loading it up, and sometimes even it's a super compensation where they can stuff in a few extra glucose molecules here and there to get a little extra. Um, but it's not infinite. And so we're just trying to get that little extra really, that extra amount that's gonna maybe help us prevent that sort of bonking that might occur. So when kind of on that subject, you know, we only have so much glycogen. If we have a scenario where we don't fuel ahead and we don't fuel at all during, and but maybe our glycogen is like fully stocked before we start, but we aren't taking in anything during, you know, we might be able to make it like 90 minutes to two hours before we substantially reduce glycogen. Now, here's the other thing we want to keep in mind. Our body will not let us completely eliminate all of our glycogen. We are going to hit that bonking scenario before all of those cubby holes are emptied. There's a certain amount that our body kind of wants to keep in there because glucose is kind of the thing that's keeping us alive. When our glucose levels go really, really low and we don't have that glucose in our blood to fuel especially vital functions, that can be a deadly scenario. In fact, people that have very low glycogen, like extreme hypoglycemia, can like go unconscious. It's it's it's not a good thing at all. So our body is going to have mechanisms in place to not even allow us to completely deplete glycogen. And so even with all those full cubby holes, there's a certain amount that we can deplete. And then our body says, hey, no, mm-mm, we're stopping. This isn't, we're gonna slow everything down because we're running out of fuel. And so that there is a limitation to this, and that is when we sort of hit the wall. Now, hitting the wall can also be other things. It's not always related to glycogen. Sometimes we hit the wall because we started out too fast. You started the marathon or the race and you just went out too fast. And there's other physiological things happening that are causing you to slow down at the end of the race because your breakdown in muscle or the fatigue that you're accumulating is just too much, and your body cannot continue at that pace. That may cause that feeling of hitting the wall or fatigue. Another thing would be just not being prepared for the race, like not training adequately and training to do the race, and you're probably gonna have some level of fatigue no matter how much you fuel. So there's some other things that cause bonking, but let's say it's that scenario of like you've trained and you're ready and your pacing is right on point. But if you're not fully stocked on glycogen and you're not fueling before or during, likely you're gonna hit the wall at some point and you're going to slow down because the body has these adaptations to prevent you from continuing to push at that pace and continuing to deplete glycogen because it essentially wants to preserve your life. Um, so you want to kind of think of it that way. This is why not only does carb loading matter, but what we're going to talk about more during some of our episodes as well, or in future episodes, is this concept of training the gut, fueling during exercise, maximizing how much you can fuel during. All of these things, these high carb um strategies are really there to help improve performance and delay that sort of fatigue that we're going to experience where our pace starts to fade and we can no longer keep going. And so it's it's it's important. And I do carb loading can enhance performance and it can make a difference. So I want to mention that. The biggest thing is just supercompensating those carb stores in the muscle and just sustaining that pace for longer. So when you get to the marathon, hopefully you hit mile 20. Sure, you're gonna feel tired, but the key is being able to maintain your pace for those remaining six miles. Can you get there? Can you do that, finish out the race strong without fading, which is common in a marathon? Those last six miles are the toughest point. That's when a lot of people say the race begins because that is essentially when you're really depleting. And you also have all these other things going on with fatigue in the muscles, and all of these things are happening. So we're really trying to have this one piece of the puzzle, making sure that that's on point so that you can perform better. Another thing I want to mention is carb loading is is happening in the days before the event. It's not this that huge pasta dinner you eat the night before. That's not enough. This is not, sure, that that's great, you know, have some carbs before, but that's not enough. So it's actually it's actually a sort of structured, planned out certain amount of carbs that you're going to be consuming in the days leading up to the event. So who should carb load? What is who are the people that would benefit the most? What are the races? Well, generally it's going to be anything longer than 90 minutes to two hours of higher intensity work. So you don't need to do a carb load the night before your very light, you know, 90-minute run where you're just out, you know, in zone two. You don't need a carb load for that. You don't need to carb load, you know, maybe even for a two-hour run that's, you know, lower intensity. But if you're going to be doing like a long run that involves intensity and you're prepping for your marathon, that might be an option to carb load. Any race lasting longer than about 90 minutes to two hours where you're going to actually be racing, that might be an opportunity to carbload. But definitely for events like the marathon, half Iron Man, Iron Man, Ultras, long cycling events, those are going to be key races and events that you want to make sure you're carbloading for. Um things like half marathons, sure, you know, some level of carb loading is probably helpful, but not as critical, especially if you're running 90 minutes or faster. If you're on a two-hour, 230 half marathon track, you might benefit more from carb loading because you're out there longer. So it really kind of depends. Who doesn't really need to carb load? Well, that's our 5K, 10K, sprint triathlon, short race distances. You're just not depleting glycogen to the extents that you would for a marathon. So sure, like, yes, when you're doing a all-out 5K, it's depleting glycogen fairly quickly because it's very glycolytic, it's very fast-paced, but you're not depleting, you have enough glycogen stores, even if you're not fully super compensated with carb loading to help last you through the event. In fact, if you eat ahead of time and, you know, make sure you're fueling well the days ahead, that's perfect because you're probably topping off glycogen at least pretty well. But you're not, you're not needing to necessarily do a full carb load for those because you're not depleting that carbs, that glycogen like you would be for a longer duration event. So it's not something I would recommend generally for those shorter distance. Just remember that the longer and the more intense the event, the more valuable glycogen stores become. So we really want to remember that. Um, let's look at the historical perspective here. I sometimes like to look back at where we've come from, like where we started, what we thought, and now where we are at, because it's fascinating. You know, carb loading is not a new thing. It's actually been around a while, but the way we used to do it is different than kind of what's recommended now. So prior, and this is the old school method, I'm new and friends that sort of did this, but I personally just never did. I've never been a big fan of like low carbohydrate diets, and I've never been a big fan of in my eyes, unnecessarily uh making myself suffer. So I've never tried this protocol, but I do know of people who have. Uh, and I do I am aware, you know, it's been around a little while. So this whole carb loading thing is not new, but this is how we used to do it back 20, 30 years ago. So the old school method was a period of depletion. So six to seven days out before the event, you would start, you know, low carb, uh less than 100 grams. Maybe not necessarily changing your running structure, but you would just be eating low carb, depleting your carb glycogen stores. This is kind of the depletion stage. So kind of a low carb, like low, lowish carb. And then that the concept here was that it was going to help the body produce more glycogen once the carbs were re went reintroduced. That was the theory. However, you know, we'll kind of talk about why that may not necessarily be the case to have to carb deplete to have that same thing happen, but that was the theory. And so then after those periods of days, about three to four days before the race, the carb repletion or the carb loading phase would now be in place. So you would go low carb and then kind of go over to a phase of high carb. Now that was kind of how it used to be done, and then it would be like kind of, I don't even know, you know, if they had a specific carb amount that they would recommend if it's the same as it is today, but it would be low carb followed by high carb. There's also like a more extreme example of this where it'd be like an extreme low carb depletion phase where maybe even further out from the race, athletes would do like a low, low carb plus a higher volume to really deplete glycogen, followed by like four days prior to competition, a high carb phase. This was pretty popular with cyclists back in the day. But again, you know, there's there's actually a l some risk to this. So, first of all, besides the fact that it just sounds kind of miserable to first of all, be in the taper. If you know, you've ran a marathon or done a race before, the taper is already hard enough. You think it's gonna be easy because you're like, oh, I'm decreasing my mileage, but your anxiety starts to go up. Sometimes you don't feel that good in a taper, anyways, there's like mystery, like aches and pains. And so on top of that, trying to do low carb, which is also fairly uncomfortable and doesn't maybe make you feel very good and makes you feel flat during your runs. I don't feel like that's a really great way to feel super confident in your abilities right before a race. The second problem with it is that when you go low carb, especially when you're not used to being low carb, it can make you more susceptible to illness. So your immune system is gonna be a little bit off, and you're going to maybe be more susceptible to getting sick, which kind of sucks if you get sick right before your race because you decided to do this low carb thing, you know, before. So, a couple reasons why I don't think that's a great idea. Those methods were difficult, kind of unnecessary, and the research really suggests that you know what, we have similar benefits, if not the same benefits with just the carb loading on its own. So no need to do the depletion, just do the carb load. Don't have to suffer. Because actually, as I'll talk about the carb loading, it's kind of difficult on its own to eat that many carbs. You think, oh gosh, I get to eat all these carbs. If you've never done a carb load before and you're thinking that, your tone may change because it is hard to do because you're just stuffing yourself with carbs. Um, it's an and it's interesting. But yes, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So don't suffer, just do the carb load. That's hard enough. Uh so the modern approach, the current carb loading recommendations is a taper plus your increase in carbs. So you're already tapering, now you're increasing carbs. The tapering reduces the amount of glycogen you're burning through on a daily basis, and the carbs allow you to then store more glycogen. So you're kind of doing two things at once. The typical recommendations are about eight to twelve grams of carbohydrate per body weight per day for like anywhere from four or two to four days prior to the event. Sometimes it's like one to three um of high carb. I've also had it, because I mean, okay, calculate that out. For me, I'm gonna give this away, but for me, that's uh about four or five hundred grams of carbs, like before the event. If I'm doing eight grams per kilogram, roughly, eight, eight or ten. That's a lot of carb. A lot of carbs. So it's quite a bit. I mean, maybe on a high training load day, I might be getting three to three fifty, maybe maybe four. I mean, counting all of the carbs I'm taking in during my training, uh, during you know, my long run, maybe it's it's upwards, but that's because I'm taking like 70 grams an hour also during training. So this is just like hanging out, running my 20-minute pre-race jog and trying to get in that amount of carb. For somebody that's uh are more Clyde stale athletes or people who are, you know, I I kind of wonder too about the research here. Like, is this research on, and I'm I'm you know, I think it is, like kind of like recreational athletes or maybe runner types that are leaner. Um, you know, I'm I'm I'm guessing there's probably not a lot of people in this cohort cohort that were kind of um maybe heavier athletes or more muscular athletes, because if you're like a 200 or 250-pound athlete, you could be looking at 800 grams of carb, which is a lot. So what I sometimes tell my athletes who are um maybe not the leanest, lightest athletes, to maybe consider calculating this based off of an adjusted or an ideal body weight rather than their current body weight, or do on the lower end of like six to eight grams per kilogram, but do this for maybe four days leading up. So instead of so much, so much all at once, the two or so days, maybe like doing a little bit of a longer duration approach so that you're not having to stuff yourself with so many carbs the days leading up. So it is something to consider is weight, because 10 grams per kilogram is just a lot of carbs. Um, calculate it for yourself. It's kilograms your weight divided by 2.2 times 10. It's a lot. Yeah. So for me, it's 400 to 500, and that's in the few days leading up to the event. So we want to make sure like might gonna be easy, it might be a little easier to do that for smaller athletes, larger, larger athletes, a little bit more difficult. So maybe it's some discussion around that and and using some sort of um adjusted or ideal body weight for those larger individuals might be something to consider because it's very, very hard to get 800 grams of carb an hour or an hour uh a day. An hour that would be impossible, but a day, yes. GI tolerance is uh different for different people. So sometimes as people increase carbs, if they have previous previous GI issues with certain types of carbs, there is always that risk of having some sort of bowel issues. This is why we want to practice the carb load in periods before the race. So we don't want to just wait till race day. Ideally, you would be doing this carb load before a long run or before a a B type race or a half marathon or something you're doing leading up to the goal race. So you've already sort of experienced what this is gonna be like and how it's gonna make you feel. So you don't have this big surprise that you're trying to do this right before your race and you've never tried it before. Probably not a great strategy if this is like a big key race for you. Um and um yeah, so those are the big kind of individualized things that I want to mention. Um, mistakes. So sometimes the problem with this is people make some mistakes that make it the GI issues much worse. Or um they are also eating other things with their carbs that make the fat intake go up, or the calorie, the total calories is astronomical because they're not mindful of this. So big mistakes that typically happen are eating too much way too much fat. So consuming um lots of fat with the carbs. So examples of this would be like smothering peanut butter on all the bread, all the bagels you're eating. Um maybe instead try honey or jelly to even get more carbs and a little bit of peanut butter or cream cheese or something just to give you that taste, but being really careful of the added fat. Potato chips, which are one of my favorite things, are full of fat. So, you know, I don't want to rely overly on something like potato chips because although they have a lot of carbs, they have a ton of fat. So those are examples of why, you know, we don't and fat makes us feel really full, so it can be make it much harder to get in those carbs that we need by adding a lot of fat fatty foods. So we want to kind of choose those higher carb, lower fat options. The other mistake people make is fiber. So Yes, this is where performance nutrition and ideal health don't col don't, you know, coincide. This is where they kind of collide a little bit. Carb loading is not a health, uh, healthy thing to do. This isn't something we want to do every weekend when we're preparing for our long run. We don't want to be constantly carb loading. This is really just a strategy for performance and it doesn't jive very well with health. So this is just a strategy we do once in a while. You know, we don't want to be doing this all of the time because we're recommending like these really processed, like high carb foods that are low in fiber, because obviously fiber is good for us. But when we're consuming lots of high fiber foods, that also can disturb our gut. And we don't want to have a lot of residue and fiber in our gut going into the marathon because it's not going to be good for your race. You want to try to keep the low residue, low fiber foods in the days leading up. So things like rice and white pastas and white breads and maybe some oatmeal, maybe some fruit, but not overdoing that those things. And definitely no, like lots of don't have lots of beans and lots of legumes and lots of full whole grain products. Those are lovely healthy options for when we're not carb loading, but we aren't going to want to prior to prioritize those things when we're carb loading. It's going to be those more simple carbs, easy to digest carbs, low fiber carbs, because if we load up too much on fiber, not only does that cause issues while we're carb loading, but the issues might also come into play on race day. And we don't want to be having bathroom issues. We want to have everything go smooth, want to get all of that, everything out before the race. So you don't have to use the porter potty ideally during. So don't overdo the fiber. Not in this context. Now, every other context, you know, when you're just training day to day and just trying to be generally healthy, yes, absolutely. Fiber is great, but not in this context. You also want to make sure you keep protein moderate, so don't inadvertently increase protein substantially when you're increasing carb. You kind of want to keep the protein the same, you know, make sure you're getting enough, but not overdoing it. So we're not decreasing protein, we're not really increasing protein, we're just kind of keeping it where it needs to be and keeping the fat kind of low or where it needs to be, keeping fiber low, but we're increasing carb. That's kind of the big key. Um we worrying about carb loading causing weight gain. I can see that being a s a concern. This like eating that many carbs might be a little bit triggering or hard for somebody who has restrictive eating behaviors or has still of that mindset of restrictive eating, or somebody that's using exercise as a means of burning energy and not really maybe adequately fueling their body. This whole carb loading thing could be potentially triggering because there may be some anxiety of like, oh, I'm going to gain weight. I guarantee you though, like two days of carb loading, yes, like overall the carbs are high and the calories maybe because you're having this extensive amount of carbs, maybe a little bit on the high end for a few days, but it's not enough time to experience any significant weight gain. In fact, if you gain any weight, it's likely the fluid that's associated with glycogen. So when we have glycogen store, we also store fluid, and that can cause a little bit of weight gain, but not anything substantial. So it shouldn't be enough to worry about. And so I'm just gonna try to put that peace of mind is like this is not going, you're not going to be two days, three days of carb loading is not going to cause you to gain substantial weight. It's not possible. So don't worry. If you're doing it right, you'll be fine. Lots of people do this, elite runners do this, and they're fine. So hopefully taking that worry off the plate so you can do the carb load and not worry about it. And if you are for some reason, I know I've mentioned continuous glucose monitors before. If you're using a CGM, maybe, maybe don't use it for the carb load. I made this mistake. It's hard to see the big spikes in glucose. It's inevitable. And this is also where performance goals and optimal glucose control or optimal health do not jive. Sometimes when we're opting for high performance, it's not jiving with optimal health. And this is one of those examples. So if you happen to be wearing a CGM and you decide to you want to experiment, see what it's gonna be like to have that on during your race and you're doing a carb load, you are going to see very large glucose spikes. And it's inevitable. There's no amount of eating apple cider vinegar, having apple cider vinegar, trying to have protein first that's gonna mitigate that when you're trying to get this amount of carb. So you either need to just like not look at the CGM or just realize that's gonna happen. Because that's what happened to me when I was wearing it, and it was really hard for me to see that and not kind of get a little bit of anxiety over it because I know that big glucose spikes are are not good. I know that over time they're not good. Um, but again, this is where high performance and optimal health are not jiving. So you need to find a way to sort of let that go. My suggestion would be just to um over the course of the carb low, just not really look at it. And then maybe you can input inputs of what you're eating or what you're doing just out of curiosity, but try not to spend a lot of time looking at the data until maybe after the race, you know, and then being curious about it and being like, wow, that's interesting. This is what happens when I'm doing this, and knowing that it's not something you're doing all of the time and it's going to be okay. So just a point I want to make in case there are people listening who are, I don't know, like using a CGM for just curiosity or performance reason reasons, or even maybe, you know, some of our um athletes that maybe do have diabetes or something, it is just uh that's a hard one to adjust for too, because there's sometimes, you know, it's a whole topic on its own, is like carbloading for those special populations of people. I'm not gonna go into that, but it's just something to keep in mind. The car, the, the glucose levels may not be optimal exactly during this time. Um, what carb load looks like in real life? So these are just c examples of foods you can use, and then kind of my schedule for carb loading. So examples would be like rice, pastas, potatoes, bagels, bread, fruits, um, you know, some certain fruits like bananas and maybe um you know, apples, potentially, melon, watermelon might be great. Yes, they have fiber, but some have a little bit less fiber than others. So maybe choosing the lower residue, lower fiber, higher glycemic index fruits, like when we're doing bagels and breads, just like white bread, white bagels, potatoes, maybe just without the skin, potentially to minimize the fiber. White rice, fruit juice is fine, sports drinks. So this is kind of where some of those you can utilize, maybe some of those like high carb drink mixes like scratch or tailwind have some options because you can get quite a bit of carb and just drinking drinking it. Pretzels, pancakes, low fiber cereals, um, crackers, things like that that are going to be on the lower, higher carb, lower fiber. And so those are just examples of foods that you might be able to incorporate thinking about for your carb load. Um, so for my example, let's just uh put out an example here. So I'm aiming for 400 to 500 grams per day. So at breakfast, this is kind of an example what I put together. I'm gonna do a bagel, or in my case, I w my son has celiac disease, so we pretty much do all gluten-free. So it'll probably be a gluten-free bagel. In fact, everything I list here is for me probably going to be more on that end of things, but it'll be a bagel with maybe some fruit jelly, maybe a light amount of cream cheese, or a little bit of peanut butter, but not much. One cup of fruit juice, so maybe apple juice. I really love apple cider. So something like that, like orange juice, some kind of juice, Greek yogurt, so I do get a little protein with a little bit of berries, because I like berries, and then some maple, tablespoon of maple syrup, maybe a little bit of granola, but that's gonna equal about 120, maybe a little more grams, 130 grams of carbs. For snack, I'm gonna do two ounces of pretzels with a 10 ounce of high carb drink mix, so half of a high carb drink mix mixture of 45 grams, so that's about 90 grams of carbs. For lunch, it would be some two slices of bread with a little bit of deli meat and cheese, a banana, another cup of fruit juice, so again around 90, maybe up to 100 grams of carb. Snack would be this is one of my favorite snacks, just as a uh, I don't know, a suggestion if you like sushi. I make sushi rice. So I'll do a one cup of sushi rice, would make it with some rice vinegar, kind of like it you would make it with sushi, even with you know, sometimes adding a little bit of sugar in there. And then I take the nori packets, the the seaweed, and I roll the sushi rice into the nori. And I dip it in soy sauce. It's actually really good. And I can get like a couple of like a whole cup or more of sushi rice, where I do that, have a couple roll-ups with the sushi rice dipped in the um, you can even maybe do a little wasabi if you needed a little spice. But uh, that's a really great way to get carbs, so that's at least 60 grams right there. And then maybe dinner I have a cup of pasta with a little bit of lean meat or the bread sauce, maybe a little small side salad. Um, you know, again, no overdoing the fiber, and that would be roughly 60 grams of carbs, and then maybe for dessert I have a cup of rice checks with milk, so 40 grams. So that's about 460 or a little more grams of carb. Lots, you can see lots of snacks, lots of eating carbs. It's hard, it's very hard to do. This is not easy. So I'm gonna finish up my discussion on carb loading with a little bit of an overview of what I talked about in the episode. So just a reminder that we want to start the carb load when you're doing it properly, about two to four days ahead of time. So somewhere between two and four days. We want to practice it maybe at a race or a long run at least once before. It's not something we want to do all the time, but we definitely would benefit from practicing and doing it at least once before just to know what it's like and kind of how to implement it. We want to make sure as we're doing the carb load that we're choosing lower fiber foods, lower fat carb choices, and we want to have simpler carbohydrates and some more small, small frequent meals, or you know, you're going to be maybe wanting to have carbs a little bit more often in that carb load just to make sure you're getting enough. We don't need to do the sort of low carb, then high carb approach. That's the research really deems that pretty inappropriate or unnecessary. I mean, and we want to make sure that we are trying this carb load before, like I mentioned, and that maybe you're planning ahead and writing out and kind of planning like I did when I did my example of like how to implement the carb load, how you're going to what you're gonna need, what foods you're gonna need, and kind of almost creating a meal plan to make sure you are getting enough carbs. So it may be something that involves a little bit of forethought or planning. And it's not gonna be easy, like I mentioned before. It's it is a little bit of challenging to do, but there can be an improvement in um performance. I don't think it's necessarily like a absolutely huge performance improvement, but anything, you know, two to five percent improvement can mean a pretty big deal if you're looking for a PR or you're just trying to make it to the end without crashing. That's uh something that, you know, just making it in and feeling good the whole time can mean a lot. So those are some things to think about. Sometimes I do understand that there are appetite changes and anxiety before races. So these are things that we want to kind of think about and maybe plan for a little bit. So if you do have like a nervous stomach before race, you know, but that is where sometimes the simpler carbs are or trying to drink some of the carbs can be a little bit easier, um, trying to spread it out smaller, more frequently, just to kind of get the carbs in without feeling like you're eating a lot. I think a lot of people kind of feel bloated, so this is why you would want to kind of practice that feeling. Uh, usually what happens is because there's a lot of water retention with glycogen, we will have a bloating sensation that kind of goes away once the race starts. And so, sort of that feeling of a little bit heavy, bloated. Usually most people report within the first, you know, few handful of miles, they start to feel better. So sometimes that is why I think experimenting can be helpful. So you kind of know what that feeling's like, and you know that once you start, you'll you'll quickly like feel better and it will go away, versus kind of having that feeling sometimes at the beginning of the race without knowing that that's what's happening can be like maybe mentally challenging. And you know, you don't want to go into a race feeling like, my gosh, something's wrong, something's not right. And then sometimes just mentally that can cause an issue with performance. So we want to make sure we're knowing what that's gonna feel like. And then just um remembering that the carb load doesn't replace the morning race fuel. So you still need to fuel before your event. You still want to, you know, two to four hours before have some carb, have like a meal with some carbs, a little bit of low fat, moderate protein. If the sooner you get to the race, the little more you just want to kind of have some of those easy to digest carbs. And, you know, again, you want that breakfast to be lower in fat and fiber. We don't want to have a bunch of fiber right before our race. And so if you're combining the carb loading with a good re pre-race morning fueling plan in carbs during your event, like we've just talked about in our previous episode. So if you haven't heard that one on fueling during an event and gut training, then you'll probably want to check that out because that's also gonna help. You can't just do the carb load and then not fuel for the race because you're going to inevitably still run out of glycogen. This carb loading is just helping you be able to push that off a little bit longer to that when your glycogen starts to deplete, kind of push the timing out a little bit on that. But that doesn't mean we're that's replacing the carbs that you're taking in during. It's just all of these things put together, the carb loading, the pre-race meal, and the carbs during are all going to enhance your performance when done altogether. So it's important that we do all of this and practice all of this, at least once, or at least the carb loading once prior to race, and then kind of having all of those other things dialed in as well. That's all going to help improve performance. So just something to remember. So it's all important. Um, but hopefully that gives you some ideas of how to carb load, what the amounts are, some ideas for things that you can try to eat, um, and maybe just uh I think just sitting down and calculating your needs. Remember it's eight to ten grams per kilogram, and maybe adjust it a little bit if you're a heavier athlete. Um and if the longer you do it, so if you're really feeling like that's gonna be a a challenge, you know, maybe consider doing it a lower, like six or eight grams per kilogram for more days, or um kind of changing it a little bit so that you're uh maybe not feeling like you have to take so much in in those few days ahead of time. There's some ways you can kind of manipulate it a little bit but still get the benefit. Um, but really the research is suggesting that the eight to ten grams per kilogram is where what within the few days, two, three days ahead is really where the benefit is. Um but you know, just remembering that and then you're calculating that out for yourself and then maybe sitting down and kind of planning out what you're gonna need to eat to meet that goal. Because if you just sort of rely on eating carbs, you might be surprised that you aren't even able to meet that goal just by trying to eat more carbs. It really does take uh some work to get that amount in. Um, so that's my suggestion for you if you are wanting to do this and wanting to give it a try. So I hope that's all very helpful and thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks for listening. This is Katie from Fuel to Run, and I'll see you all next time. My next one more grandma's marathon episode coming up next week. So we'll see you all next time. Thanks a lot. Bye.

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That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run.com and Coach Justin at taboularasta racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, and remember to find joy in the journey.