marathon fueling part 2

Hi everyone,

Following on from a posting yesterday I am doing 22m run at the weekend in prep for flm at the end of April. As one reply rightly said I need to sort this fueling strategy out asap so do I:

A/ Take 1st gel at 10 miles then every 3 miles

B/ Take gel every 5 miles

I'm thinking of going for A as the body should be able to store enough energy for 10 miles. I would really appreciate what fueling others fo for a marathon though as it is my 1st flm 

Thanks in advance!

Pete. 

Peter - I would start early.  It's not about letting yourself get run down and topping up, it's about reducing the rate of exhaustion. 

I'm going to go for a 1 every 4 strategy.  If I were running 10 miles on it's own, or a few more even, I wouldn't bother.  But running a marathon is a battle of attrition and topping up as you go will help you avoid hitting the wall.  

My last 2 long runs of 20 miles, I've been taking a gel every 5 and felt good.  In the past I've had them further apart and gone through peaks and troughs which is why I'm going to try having them a bit closer together this time around.

You may as well start taking gels sooner, because you will be burning calories from the start, so personally I would (and do) go with plan B.  If I've got this right, the sugary energy you take in from gels becomes available reasonably quickly for fuel, which therefore spares you having to deplete your glycogen stores so quickly.  Also since the race is not that far away now it's worth using the long run as a genuine dress rehearsal for everything including taking gels.

Tbh if you've trained properly up to now, have a good taper and pace yourself correctly, you shouldn't have problems with energy depletion with either strategy.

Peter

to say to you

i cannot answer your question fully really as i never use them, ( i have tried in the past ) and they do not agree with me

i only drink water, diluted squash, and occasionally glucose powder

but i stand by what i said earlier

what ever experimenting  you do- get it done with 14 - 21 days to settle your system, as if something doesnt suit you, all the prep could be for nothing

i would also advise, with all the excitement of the day - if anyone says, here try this, to be polite say ok thanks

i do wish you luck and a happy run

But do NOT consume it

Many thanks all!  So it looks like every 5 miles   Alan f I will look when I get home where I bought my last lot from & let you know!

Thanks again for all the sound advice!! 

I've seen the lucozade gels in Tescos & Morrisons as well as Sainsburys.  You do need to take a drink of water with the lucozade gels... I use the High 5 ones.

I use a mixture of lucozade jelly beans, gels & nuun sports drink... My running belt has 2 300ml (I think) water bottles...I put water in one and dissolve a nuun tablet in the other... I then pick & mix what I fancy as I'm running.  I can't stomach too many gels so would only use 2 at the most on a 20mile run...but I will start off with 3 or 4 jelly beans at about 6miles and then top up every 4 miles or so.

ASDA sell the lucozade gels for 79p as well, they keep them with the vitamins etc in my local one.

I haven't got as far as a full marathon in my training yet, building there slowly, but for what it's worth I've found I enjoy the strategy of taking a bottle of lucozade sport and 2 or 3 gels on my long runs, I start out  sipping the lucozade sport, that gets me to about 10 miles, then I spread the gels over the final miles. I feel like early on when I'm not at all tired being able to sip a drink is nicer than the sudden shot of sickly gel but later on I'm a bit more tired and appreciate the shot of energy.

I've just been searching for lucozade gels high and low and failed! I've been using lucozade gels with no problems, and got them from Boots. However in the past 2 weeks, they've run out of stock. I've just been to my local sainsbury's, superdrug, up and running, local tesco - and non of them stock lucozade. Out of desperation, I ended up at a cycling shop, and got a couple of shot bloks and SIS GO and SIS SMART gels - all of which I haven't tried! I need to try them for my last LSR this weekend before tapering, and wonder if anyone has any advice as to how to take them. I mean, do people have the Bloks as well as the gel, and when would they take them? If you take both, the bloks suggest 3-6 bloks every hour, can you take the gels on top of that? Could we actually take too much of anything? Would drinking sports drink be then too much and should I therefore stick to water???

 Thanks!

Oh, and apart from the mode of ingestion, is there any benefit of one over the other (shot bloks vs gels)? Also should I just stick to the SIS SMART with caffeine with all my gels, or is there disadvantage to that? Thanks

Sticky88 - i find the shotbloks really chunky and not easy to eat on the go, jelly babies are my fave as they are super soft and easy to chew, i did try for a while to get on with shot bloks though. I use jelly babies and gels rather then sweets or gels. I have been using sis for a bit and tried torq gels (rhubarb and custard mmmmmm) on my 20 miler last sunday, as they were recommnded to me by an endurance nut friend, the difference is amazing. fairly instant boost and a prolonged effect too! i rang torq and they sent me a box of 10 for £14.50 (free p&p and i got them the next day). I use high5 tablets in my camelbak on the long runs, i dont mind gels and sweets, but i cant handle sickly sports drinks for the hydration.  

As previously mentioned on here, give things a while to to see if your system does like them. The torq gels are the first gel i have ever used that havent disagreed with me later on in the day after the first trial. I got free samples of the zipvit ones and my stomach was so unhappy that evening.

Everyone is different and i guess its a bit of playing round with the refuel on the go to see what works best for you

Paid 16.99 for 24 lucozade gels but they are probobably the astra deisel of gels compared to torq which are the rolls royce