Food for thought while pounding the paths
Food is the one topic that will send the running world to war. If you ask 10 runners what the best approach to eating for running is, you’ll get 10 different answers.
Actually, maybe more, since plenty of runners (ahem, me included) have varying, often conflicting, theories and practices.
It’s a battleground you simply do not want to wander into, a sphere where sports science meets social media fads, where individual tastes clash with group-think and where last week’s latest thing is this week’s ‘‘what the…’’
So, yes, of course it’s a topic co-host Matt Rayment and I stumbled into on this week’s episode of Dirt Church Radio.
Although, in a way we cheated because we talked to a chef – and a Swedish one at that (by way of Yorkshire in Britain).
Billy White grew up in York in the north-east of England, and moved to Sweden a decade ago. There, he discovered running. He started with a half-marathon in Stockholm in 2011, then ran a coast-to-coast path ultramarathon over seven days across England two years later.
Talk about jumping straight into the deep end. But it was something he quickly realised he loved and he found that it went hand-in-hand with his love of food.
He started writing recipes for a trail-running website in Sweden, which spawned the book Eat, Run, Enjoy.
In it, he talks to elite runners, who share their own philosophies and favourite recipes. And he found that, just like us ordinary runners, the elites are a broad church when it comes to the topic of food.
Three champion Swedish ultrarunners, Emelie Forsberg, Ida Nilsson and Mimmi Kotka (who is also a nutritionist), had a dedicated approach to food.
‘‘They were really into cooking and baked everything from scratch – and it was a lifestyle. Listening to the three of them talking about food, I
couldn’t get a word in.’’
Other athletes, like American Courtney Dauwalter, loved food, but were not so purist.
‘‘Courtney was furthest away on the spectrum, where she liked to eat, but she wasn’t really bothered what it was,’’ White told us. Dauwalter ate well, but her house also had bowls of candy and a well-stocked beer fridge.
White can appreciate the philosophy. ‘‘Food should be more than just a fuel. It’s really important and you need to sustain yourself in the best possible way, especially if you are out on the trails for a long day, or a couple of days back-toback.
‘‘But there’s also an element of enjoyment – instead of having two heaped spoonfuls of green powder mixed with a raw egg, or potions and supplements, try to get genuinely good nutrition in through real ingredients and really tasty, delicious food.’’
Trying to be conscious of what you eat can be a nightmare. I just know that the more I train, the more hungry I am. I’ve trained for marathons before and ended up eating too much, thanks in part to mid-afternoon cravings – and I know I’m not the only one. One runner who had stepped up his training asked me on the sly one day if it was normal to become addicted to cream doughnuts.
As White says, the problem is there is too much advice around.
‘‘Everybody gets so worked up about it and people get passionate. Ketogenic works extremely well for some athletes, but then carb-heavy works well for some athletes, so especially when you’re just a middle-of-thepack runner, it’s difficult to know where to begin.’’
His advice is to figure out what works for you, eat a lot of fresh, seasonal vegetables and, if you do eat meat, don’t eat too much that has been processed.
‘‘If you cook food that you recognise as food, generally you can’t go wrong.’’ Who’s hungry?
Eugene Bingham and Matt Rayment are hosts of a trail running podcast Dirt Church Radio. Learn more at dirtchurch radio.com or get in touch via email dirtchurchradio@gmail. com