NATURAL NUTRITION
My name is Ronnie and I have a marathon addiction. It started in 2009, when I got lucky in the ballot for the Flora London Marathon. I saw this as a sign to re-appraise my training and eating, so I joined a running club.
In the first stages of my addiction, I didn’t use energy gels, which I associated with elite athletes and ultrarunners. Gels entered my armoury after marathon number five, when I recognised a pattern of cramping, nausea and near blackouts at around mile 23. My marathon times were hovering just the wrong side of the fourhour mark. I needed something to push me through that final effort, something quickly and easily absorbed, and I was told gels could do that trick.
The main ingredient in a sports gel is maltodextrin, and fructose/ sucrose is also often present. The sweet gloop, easily swallowed, packs around 24g of carbohydrate in the form of concentrated starch and sugar.
I had always felt resistant to the artificiality of these magic sachets. I identified as an oldschool sort of runner, and wanted to get by on the natural foods: plain water, bananas, maybe a joyless oatcake. Cue much eye-rolling among my running buddies.
My first gel experiment was for the BMW Berlin Marathon in 2013, which was my seventh attempt to run under four hours. The gloop went down fine in training, so I consumed two on the big day, and ran it in 3hrs 56mins. The gut discomfort and diarrhoea suffered from mile 18 onward seemed a small price to pay for that exquisite sub-four hour finish (Good For Age, if you’re 50!).
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Jul 2018
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