Endurance events and calories

UltraRunnerGale

I am going on a 15 mile trail run today and possibly a 26 mile trail run tomorrow. When I do these longer endurance events (trail runs are more taxing than road runs and I will know exactly when my HRM comes in), I can't take in enough calories according to this site,:flowerforyou: It's just too many. What do you do in a case like that? Thanks in advance!

britachu

Try some calories dense foods like peanut butter, some nuts, or some flaxseed oil. Pasta is pretty high in calories too. Just make sure you're getting enough to keep your body fueled during the long run! If you can't eat back all of your exercise calories here and there, it's fine.

BerryH

Going by some of my ultrarunner friends, beer! :laugh:

I don't think you should or need to eat all those 4000 or so extra calories on the day, some will be carbo loading the day before, some energy drinks or gels during, some a lovely recovery meal and the rest during recovery over the next week to help your body repair.

All the staying under every day rules go out the window for the superhuman stuff you do!

Have lovely runs! :flowerforyou:

xraychick77

carbo load before the race..eat lots of pastas, rice, breads, cheeses etc.

bstamps12

Pretty sure you will just get to your 125 GW faster than expected. There is no way you could eat enough calories unless it was the worst possible foods for your body...and I'm pretty sure if you ate those you wouldn't be able to run 15 miles! Just eat until you are full and have fun!

RaeannePemberton

I always eat more the days leading up to an endurance event... that way it's not such a huge deficit.

running42km

For my heavy calorie burn days I think about adding high calorie junk foods that I'd normally avoid like pizza, ice cream, potato chips and chocolate brownies. But interestingly a fast 50 mile bike ride followed by an easy fairly quick ten mile run (7.5 min miles) tends to be an appetite suppressant for me and afterwards I'm happy with some fruit and tea with 1 % milk. But flick on a DVD and I'm back happily eating junk food. Bizarre. I have found though that I race best if I pig out the day before, so for my last marathon I purposely watched DVD's the evening (stuffing my face) before the race and ran an easy personal best the next morning, came second in my age group.