2006 - January

[marathondan]

Andy, I experimented with a few foods during my FLM training last year. All of the following can be accommodated in a bum bag, or of course hidden in a hedge etc if you are doing laps:

- Bananas - good for medium runs, but tend to liquefy after an hour or so of vigorous shaking. Also not compact; you wouldn't want to carry more than a couple. Obviously well-known for isotonic properties as well.

- Crackers (recommend Hovis or digestive, not cream) - again, after an hour or so you will just find a bum bag full of crumbs, but good for medium runs. Obviously you need a bit of water with them. The savoury ones also give you a salt hit.

- Figs - my personal favourite. Compact, resilient, the only downside being chewiness. I think I used to do two 2-3 per 2.5 mile lap, and my diary says that for my 15 miler I got through about half a pound. Again, water required. Alternative is raisins, but more fiddly.

For race day I did revert to gels because there was no way I wanted to race with a bum bag. What's a little extra unpleasantness when you're running a marathon?

My diary also yielded this article, which was helpful: http://www.nyrrc.org/nyrrc/mar01/training/septip.html

Impressive weight loss by the way, well done.

Finally, the RSS feed still isn't updating regularly. The last entry is from before Christmas. I'll revert to browsing you manually for the time being.