What to Eat During Your Taper

Audio Transcript

Coach Tony: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast. I hope your day is going well and thanks for tuning into the show.

I’m here to answer your running and training question so you can train smarter, stay healthy, and achieve your goals.

Today, we have a great question from Sarah.

Sarah: I’m running my first marathon this November and I’ve been wondering how to approach the taper phase as far as diet goes.

I’ve been told it is normal to gain a couple of pounds. Is that true?

Is there any way to reduce chances of weight gain during taper and how should you eat the week before the marathon? How important is carb intake during these days?

Tony: Sarah, that is a fantastic question and one that many people are going to be interested in. Even if you’ve done countless taper, you’re still struggling with that.

I think first listen to your body.

Let’s start with one thing – weight gain. You’re not going to gain five or three pounds. Maybe you gain one pound.

If you think about it, especially people who carry water and things with them during a race, one pound is not a lot.

A gallon of water is eight pounds.

You’re talking maybe 20 ounces of water; less than that is a pound. You’re not talking a whole lot.

I think the notion of weight gain is something that we need to ignore. Unless you get something planned and you’re going to start eating like crazy and put 10 pounds on, which I don’t think is the case.

I really wouldn’t worry too much about weight gain.

Listen to your body.

We talked about this the concept of training effect and taper is all about that. Work that you do today may not be seen within 10 days or so.

When you get into taper, it’s more transitioning to rest.

Also, what comes with that is during that period of getting the benefits of that workout, is your body building muscle and so forth.

It needs proteins and certain things to build that. Say you start taper and your mileage is backing off but you find yourself hungrier.

Your body wants that because your body is still building and strengthening. You need to fuel that and listen to your body. It’s important.

Stay with what works in training. You train for your 20 or 80 mile runs or whatever your long runs are.

In the week leading up to that you did stuff and you know what you eat the night before.

Whatever works for you in training, that’s what you want to do in taper and especially as you come into the week of the races.

Taper is not about learning new things from a hydration, nutrition, and gel standpoint.

All that stuff is known. If you still have some time and you haven’t entered taper yet and you’re still training, and you’re not quite sure of your food schedule, your nutrition, your water – how frequent, how much, practice that on your long runs and then come taper time, everything you know and the plan is already in place.

Then there’ll be no thinking on race day and it’s training is when you do that. Use training as a time to learn more specifics, so when you get into taper, you know your nutritional needs and so forth.

Let’s talk hydration because I know you didn’t specifically ask that but it’s important. When you get into a couple of days before you race, don’t overly hydrate, and don’t drink excessive water.

Drink enough water that you don’t remain dehydrated but you don’t want to over hydrate. Whatever’s worked in your training leading up to long runs, do the same type of thing.

You see a lot of first timers start drinking Gator, especially Gatorade of all things. I don’t think that’s necessarily the best thing to be drinking so much of.

They’ll start drinking Gatorade like crazy.

I remember some of my first Boston Marathons riding up on the bus and seeing first timers or people that hadn’t done their homework first, huge bottles of Gatorade and that wasn’t even when G2 was around.

It’s this heavy, high calorie type of stuff drinking it.

You should wonder why they are doing that. They’re going to really hurt themselves instead of helping themselves.

A couple of things to point out. Complex carbohydrates are important versus empty calories, if you will.

As much as I love my potato chips, which I do, that would be more like an empty carbohydrate versus a complex carbohydrate; more like a neutral grain bar or some type of energy bar or just something that’s with oats and fiber and so forth.

Something like that verses those empty calories. As much I love my chips before a race, I’m trying to stay away from that stuff a little bit, and I want to have a little bit better quality food in me.

I think the most important thing is that you don’t mix it up too much.

For example, maybe you like to have a glass of wine every night and you’ve had a glass of wine every night for your life, for the last 20 years.

In the week of the marathon, don’t stop having that glass of wine. Maybe have a smaller glass of wine if it’s part of your routine and I’m not advocating drinking the week of the race by any means. I am using an example.

Maybe you have certain things that aren’t ideal like drinking a glass of wine every night. If you’ve done it for so long and it is part of your routine, then still do that.

You can do that in moderation.

A couple of days before the race, I’m going to skip the chips and still have a sandwich and maybe with the sandwich, I’ll still take mayonnaise. I’m going to scale that back a little bit.

I’m just talking a couple of days before but I’m not going to eliminate it completely because I love it. I love to have a cup of coffee every day. A cup of coffee the day before the race and the day of the race.

It just comes down to whatever’s worked.

Continue with that. If there’s some vices you have, like me and my chips, you can still do those – just don’t go crazy with them.

Try moderation but don’t eliminate things that you’ve done for a long period of time.

The most important thing is just consistency which works in training and taper. Early on in taper, you’re going to find you probably are hungry even though you’re not running.

Your common sense will be like well, “I’m not running much. I’m going to limit food intake, because I don’t want to gain weight” but you’re really hurting your body.

Your body wants that food and it’s telling you what it wants. Give it that food. You’re not going to gain and if you do, it will be just a pound which is not a lot; that is 126 ounces, 1 gallon and a gallon is 8 pounds.

If it’s 15 ounces of something, that’s a pound; that’s not a lot.

If you’re worried that maybe you gained a pound, look at the stuff that you’re going to carry with you on race day.

Whether it’s an iPod, iPhone, fluids, all these different things, you can probably find a pound that you can take off right there.

Great question, I wish you best of luck in your first marathon in November, and they’re very addictive, so something tells me this will be your first of many.

Enjoy yourself and thanks for the question.

That’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, please consider heading to iTunes or your favorite time cash directory and subscribing or leaving a review.

It will help us to reach more runners like you. Thank you for tuning in and I hope you have a great day. I will see you on the roads.