In general, I’m obsessed with food so naturally, this obsession carries over into my running. Today was my long run and I did 15km. Yay! 😄 My goal for my long runs (in addition to building my distance) is to use them to try out new fueling options.

Since I signed up for the marathon, I’ve been reading a lot about marathon training and running in general. The consensus seems to be that for runs longer than 1 hour, our bodies need 30-60 grams of carbs for every 60 minutes and it’s a good idea to eat every 30-45 minutes to spread it out. So these long runs are a good opportunity to try out different fuel options and how to eat them because you don’t want to try anything new on race day.

My challenge is that I want to avoid eating gels and chews and anything packaged or artificial. I tried a chew a couple of weeks ago and found it to be way too chewy (my jaw was also getting a workout!) and my first and only experience with a gel was 13 years ago when I ran my first half. I was so traumatized by the experience that I swore that I would never take a gel again.

With that in mind, I’m super motivated to try fueling with real food. So far, I have tried the following:

• Maple syrup with sea salt – too sweet 😝
• Dates – good but not enough to feel satisfied and taking too many can cause GI issues 🙂
• Green tea with honey – good as an alternative to energy drinks but I think I made it too strong last time so it was a bit too bitter 😋
• Sesame Snaps – this is my favourite so far. Even though it is still a packaged food, it doesn’t feel as artificial as the gels or bars out there. It has a lot of crunch and mouth feel so feels like I’m eating something. It comes in a package of 4 so I eat 1 piece at every 5 km mark so I have something to look forward to every 30 minutes. It’s also cost effective: 36 packages for only $10 at Costco! 😍 The only problem is that the sesame snaps only gives me 10g of carbs every 60 minutes so I still need to supplement it with a lot more if I need to hit 30-60g of carbs every 60 minutes. I can do that through drinking the nuun which will be offered on my marathon course but I think I still need to supplement with something else.

Today, I tried a homemade 5-ingredient granola bar. I’ve made this before (a long time ago) and I remember it being really good so I quickly whipped it up last night before bed. The recipe says it’s 30g of carbs per bar so it has more carbs than a pack of sesame snaps. I used maple syrup and slightly toasted the oats and almonds. I don’t have a food processor so I used my Vitamix blender to blend the dates and maple syrup together and then, because I was lazy and didn’t follow the instructions, I also added the oats and almonds and then tried to incorporate the peanut butter into the Vitamix. The Vitamix is so powerful that most of the oatmeal became pulverized but the almonds didn’t blend at all. #VitamixFail. It all became one sticky mess and was really hard to get out of the Vitamix. In the end, I just mushed it all into a loaf pan and let it chill and then cut them into 9 bars and individually wrapped them in plastic wrap. It was still good it just didn’t look like the picture in the recipe.

I entered the whole recipe into My Fitness Pal so I could see how many carbs, protein, and fibre they would have. Since I made 9 bars, each bar ended up being 6.5g of protein, 38g of carbs, and 5g of fibre. I was happy about the amount of carbs but was a bit worried about the amount of fibre. Given the protein content, these would be good for a post-run snack too!

Here’s the nutritional information for the entire recipe (9 bars).

The verdict:

Because I was runchatting, I forgot to eat it until about 60 min into the run. I took one bite and then half of it fell to the ground. #failagain I guess it’s not sticky enough but other than that, it was good! It was easy to chew and swallow and only needed a bit of water to wash it down. I liked the balance between crunchy (from the whole almonds) and soft (from the dates and everything else). I ended up having another bar as a post-run fuel! 😄

Nutrition log:

• Pre-run – banana 🍌 45min before
• Mid-run – half of a homemade granola bar
• Post-run – one homemade granola bar and Milo with milk 🥛

Week 1 done! Thanks for reading! 😄