Where’s the peanut butter?!

Performance Nutrition for Runners is an awesome book. It’s incredibly dense with information on how to properly nourish your body before, during, and after running and towards understanding runner physiology and tailoring it to your individual situation. There are tons of useful guidelines and I haven’t gone through all of them yet but there are two that I’ve definitely incorporated into my post-run routine. Oh, and I’m certainly no nutritionist so take whatever you want from this but it’s certainly nothing like professional advice.

• Carbohydrate and electrolyte intake, post-run: while you’re running, your body is destroying tons of muscle tissue, oxidation levels are soaring, and you’re basically sucking all the glycogen (the available, carbohydrate-based, energy stores from in your body) out of your muscles. Recent research has revealed that your body is incredibly more effective at synthesizing glycogen from carbohydrates within the first 30 minutes after running. So it’s super important (if you want to replenish the available energy stores you just depleted) to get a bunch of carbohydrates after a run. I usually do this with some combination of a banana, sports drink (usually gatorade since the mix is pretty cheap and I’m pretty happy with it but recently I’ve tried nuun - more on that in a sec), or high-carb/low-fat trail bar or energy bar.
• The second part of this has to do with electrolyte intake which is closely related to hydration. As you run, you sweat, and your sweat is a combination of water and electrolytes (sodium, magnesium, potassium, and chloride). There has been a ton of attention to hyponatremia - the condition when blood sodium (Na) levels get dangerously low (hypo) - because people have died from it in marathons and trying to win Nintendo Wiis recently. Basically it becomes a risk if water intake levels get incredibly high without an associated elevated sodium increase. So during or after a run if you hydrate, it’s really important to use a sports drink because these replenish your electrolytes in addition to giving you water. Most also include carbohydrates, which is nice on the run because you’ve got an immediate source of energy and can somewhat start using that to help you on the next leg of your run. On the run this usually comes in the form of a sports drink (which can be a hassle to carry) or some energy goo (which are easier to carry and just need you to add some water after you take the goo to assist in absorbing the energy in the goo). There’s another interesting product called nuun which I’ve been using recently which is strictly focused on hydration. nuun doesn’t contain any carbohydrates so it’s basically 0 calories and lets you get your carbohydrate intake from whatever other source you want. There are tons of benefits to sports drinks outlined in the book but one I didn’t realize has to do with the chemical composition of sports drinks. This turns out to be very close to your blood and your body is able to absorb and synthesize this much more easily than water, which is another reason to avoid simply drinking water while running.
• Finally - one exercise the book recommends yielded a result that really surprised me. If you want to hydrate while running it’s important to have some sense of how much? This varies from person to person and based on factors like the terrain or weather, but you can calculate your sweat rate by weighing yourself in the buff before and after a 1 hour run. I just did this today and was amazed to learn I sweat 4.5 pounds in a 1 hour run! Today was pretty cool and my run included strides over 1 mile at a not too strenuous 7:50 pace over a pretty flat course. On a more hotter day, more strenuous course, or at a harder pace I’m sure it would go up.

It’s amazing how much there is to learn about running. And this is just some of the beginning of the nutrition side of things and doesn’t get into exercises, form, more of nutrition, or physiology. I definitely should have been doing more of this earlier in life, but I’m glad I’ve started!