Hi! I am Richard Francis. We're doing a video on how to run a marathon. We just covered proper stretching techniques. We're going to cover proper nutrition to get you to the finish line.
Now the best thing to remember when you're training for a marathon, is you got to eat in order to recover and get the calories in from your workouts. Most people will have a problem doing that. It's a problem limiting your calories. But remember, calories in, calories out, it's that balance that help you maintain weight. If you get too many calories in, you're going to gain weight. If you get more calories out, if you're expending more calories than you're eating, then you're going to lose weight. It's just simple as that.
Nutrition wise training for a marathon, the best way to eat throughout the day is to eat small meals through the day, not just a large meal for lunch, a large meal for dinner; the best way is to just graze throughout the day. So take some dried fruits, dried nuts. That's the way to get your calories in. Good protein, good carbohydrate, and a right amount of fat from the berries and the nuts.
Now your meal should be pretty lean, and not heavy with sausages or fats like that. So hopefully you try to get a balanced diet. It's just like with anything, you want the right balance, lots of fruits, lots of nuts, lots of vegetables. Nutrition is an area where a lot of people have a hard time with, especially when they are starting an exercise program; they usually want to eat anything, as if they're starving.
During the run, you really just need to carry some good hydration, especially when you're going for your long run. You want to carry -- depending on how long your run is, water or sports drink that has enough electrolytes in it that you are replacing, if it's a hot day outside especially.
Now if you're getting to run anywhere from an hour to 3 hours or longer, you're going to definitely want to carry a sports drink with you, especially if it's hot outside. Anything under an hour, you don't necessarily need a sports drink, water is fine.
Now another thing to remember is not to over-hydrate. A lot of people really worry about getting the right amount of liquids in, and they end up drinking too much. For an hour workout, if it's not any hotter than 70°-75° outside, one bottle of water should last you the full hour without a problem. You shouldn't be drinking really more than one bottle of water if you have a less than an hour workout. And if it's not hot outside, you don't really need a bottle of water, a lot of people over hydrate.
For nutrition, in terms of getting a solid energy bar or something like that in, on a run, if you're getting a run and that's over an hour-and-a-half to two hours, you're going to probably want to carry a little bit of nutrition with you, other than a sports drink. You probably want to carry an energy bar or a gel. There are lots of sports gels out there that work really well. You don't have to chew them, just swallow them down. It gets absorbed by your body very quickly.
Those you usually take once in every 45 minutes, there's a little gel packet, nutrition bars like these, little bit harder to carry around than the gels, and they are a lot harder to eat, you really do have to stop and eat these. But these are really good too, if you're getting long, long runs. These are also good to supplement your diet throughout the day after a workout. Just get a one or two of these bars, and they are really nutritious.
So like I said, get the proper fruit, nuts, vegetables in your diet, little bit of protein with fish, meat, if you're a meat eater, but balance is the main thing.
The next section we're going to cover is what to do on race day?
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