Meal plans for runners

Running a marathon is a great time to improve your overall nutrition to support your training and race performance. By applying some performance nutrition principles to your daily meals, you can fuel your body correctly in order to help you get fitter, and perhaps, also reduce your body fat along the way.

Eating properly around your training can be daunting, so we’ve included some tips and meal plans below for guidance. Like training, good nutrition is also about building confidence – both in preparing different meals each week and seeing how food can affect your training. 

Our recipes provide a ‘food-first’ approach to meet your daily nutrient targets. Sports nutrition products (such as drinks or gels) can help support your preparations towards the race itself. 

Many of these recipes are nutrient-dense (meaning they provide a range of nutrients, including important vitamins and minerals) to keep the body healthy as your training increases. 

There are several key elements of performance nutrition that are important to consider to maximise your performance. The main focus with endurance training is to match your daily fuel intake to the volume of training – this is known as 'periodised' nutrition.

This means that what you eat should be different depending on your training demands for that particular day – there will be some trial and error to learn what feels right for you. 

Getting your fuelling right on different days means that you can have sufficient energy during training, whilst also reducing body fat (if that is your goal) over the course of your training programme.

Plan 1: What should I eat on rest and easy training days?

From BBC Good Food - READ FULL ARTICLE  [Click here]