Juneathon Day 24: Practically A Rest Day And A Question About Nutrition
My marathon training schedule said, Bike: 30 minutes. It hardly seemed worth getting my bike out of the garage just to go on a 30 minute ride, then I thought but what about people without bikes? Surely most runners aren’t cyclists too? Perhaps it meant 30 minutes on a stationary bike but I didn’t want to go to the gym just to do 30 minutes on a stationary bike (if you want to know my thoughts on stationary bikes, you can read my stationary bike haiku here), so I decided to ponce about the countryside for half an hour on my pretty Lady of the Manor Bike.
My beautiful Lady of the Manor bike
Before I ponced about the countryside (where I saw a crow peck at the remains of a squished pigeon, ick), I’d been to Tesco to buy a Trek Bar for Sunday’s Great Kent Bike Ride; not that a leisurely 30 mile bike ride needs any particular fuelling but because I don’t usually (for ‘usually’, read ‘ever’) have breakfast and so I knew I’d be starving well before lunchtime and, anyway, Trek Bars are yum.
This got me thinking about sports nutrition and supplements in general, especially as I’m *cough* marathon training (this is only the second week, the novelty will soon wear off, I promise) and nutrition will have to play a part in that somewhere.
I took running really seriously when I first started. I read all the books and even before I’d run my first 5k, I’d started looking at gels and protein shakes. I know, I know… stop laughing… I was an enthusiastic beginner, all excited about my new hobby. I’ve still never had a gel, but when I started running home from work, I fuelled up beforehand with a Trek Bar (like I said, any excuse) and then I discovered MaxiNutrition vanilla protein shakes in Holland & Barrett, which tasted like ice cream, so I decided I needed one of those on completion of each running commute.
Because I’ve barely ran over the last few years, I haven’t taken any notice of what I’ve eaten afterwards but, I suppose with my mileage hopefully increasing over the next few weeks, I’m going to have to start thinking about pre-, during- and post-run nutrition. Any tips? What do you eat and drink when you’re marathon training?
Stats
Cycling: 30-ish minutes / 6-ish miles