Fuel's Gold

Follow these golden rules to fuel your runs and put PBs on the menu.

- By Renee Mcgregor

When Eliud Kipchoge achieved what many had dismissed as impossible and achieved the two-hour marathon, his carbon-plated footwear got a lot of attention - but without the right fuelling, he may as well have stayed in his slippers back at the hotel. Technology has very visibly influenced sports apparel and footwear in recent years, but there have also been major advances in (and a real focus on) sports nutrition, and just how integral it is to good performance.

Whether you're gunning for a sub-two marathon or something a little less game-changing, nutrition can make or break a race, especially when you hit bigger distances. But while most of us are well aware of the role nutrition plays in pre-run fuelling and post-run recovery, we're not always so clued up on how central what we consume on the run is to how we perform.

Ensuring that you make the right nutritional choices - not just around your training, but also during long and/or hard runs - will not only help you maintain your training effort day after day, thus resulting in progression; it will also sustain motivation and boost adaptation from your training. In addition, studies have shown that the timing of nutrition has a key role to play in hormonal balance, bone health and maintaining your immune system. So a well-fuelled runner is a healthy, happy runner.

Filling your tank

First, a recap on how your body gets its fuel: carbohydrate is the key source for exercise and gets broken down into glucose (the body's preferred currency), which is then used to provide energy.