nutrition

[Donna2023]

what do you eat before a run to give you the most energy ? I do my running at night time and make sure I drink 2 litre of water through the day so that I’m we’ll hydrated

[MissUnderstanding Administrator Graduate]

Are you finding you are lacking in energy for your runs? For my couch to 5k runs, I wouldn’t eat anything special. Longer runs, l like the little packs of fruit and seed oatcakes, or dried dates, or a banana, or a piece of toast-that sort of thing. If I was going in the evening, I’d try to make sure I left a good amount of time after eating a full meal, and I’d avoid things like curry etc because of indigestion issues! Pasta is what works best for me. Lentil bolognese is my favourite. A lot of nutrition for running is quite personal to what you like and how your body reacts. Trial and error!

[Instructor57 Graduate]

For me it doesn't really come into it as I usually run in the morning so usually I would not eat anything.During C25k most of my runs were like this .

Occasionally if I went out out a little later, say 10 or 10:30 then I would usually have a bowl of porridge around 08:30 and leave at least 1.5 hours before my run .

But more often it would be on an empty stomach or half a banana.

Even for 5k, 10k, I wouldn't usually eat anything.

As to what to eat I think MissUnderstanding has given you some good choices as to what to eat and maybe what to avoid .

And even after a light/medium meal I would certainly wait a couple of hours before running.

[Mummycav Administrator Graduate]

a banana…plenty of water too 😊

[John_W Graduate Ambassador]

If you've eaten and drunken normally throughout the day, then for C25K there really is no need for anything extra. You'd be surprised at how few calories (energy) are burnt during C25K.

We're all different and for many people running in the evening works out best for lots of reasons. But ... the life stress that builds up from the moment you wake up can carry over to the evening and can make running (JOGGING I hope!) feel more difficult. Just something to think about and be wary of.

[RollingPea Graduate]

Like Instructor57, I prefer to run before breakfast in the morning. Human bodies have plenty of energy stored in fat reserves ready to be released for running (that applies to lean people as well) so there's no need to eat anything special or extra beforehand. Even if it sounds scarey, it's not. You could try a few test runs to see if you actually run better on an empty stomach. Trial and error has taught me that empty bowels also help. I do take care with pre-run hydration by drinking a few glasses of water in the 30 minutes before a run. Wishing you lots of happy running 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️.