Practicing Race Day Nutrition

With 5 months to go until Tarawera, now is a great time to practice race day nutrition in your long runs and Super Sundays. 

Nutrition is an area people often struggle with on race day because it is something that they forget to train.

When planning race day nutrition consider what might be available to you on course at aid stations and try fueling with this on your long runs. 

Foods provided at the aid stations are covered on the Tarawera website:

Aid Stations are generously stocked with:

  • Lollies (jetplanes, sours, jelly beans)
  • Potato chips (chicken, salt & vinegar, ready salted)
  • Peanuts
  • Sandwiches (peanut butter, honey, Marmite, jam and Nutella)
  • Fruit (bananas, oranges, watermelon)
  • Ice
  • Water
  • PURE Sports Nutrition electrolyte drink
  • Fizzy: Coke, Mountain Dew, and ginger beer.

We recommend training in various states of ‘fullness’ because on race day you will run the full gambit, from rolling into an aid station on fumes, to burping your way out of there filled with sandwiches and jet planes. 

When we train with calorie availability we give the body the energy and nutrients it needs to benefit from the training stimulus and sometimes when we train in a glycogen depleted state we stress the bodies ability to metabolise stored energy as a fuel substrate so mix it up. 

So what are you waiting for?

Let your weekend run be the testing grounds for race day fueling.