Eilish McColgan has ‘rebound hypoglycaemia’ and won't run London Marathon until 2023 as a result. How can she treat it?

Just because it worked for you doesn't mean it works for Eilish McColgan or anyone else. It's like saying "Covid vaccines are unnecessary because I didn't get one and haven't had Covid"

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying - that it works for SOME people... it worked for me specifically... that's all I'm saying, that I don't think fueling makes a huge difference for me and some others.

Totally understand what you're saying. I haven't worded my responses correctly I guess. But I agree with you 100%.

And, yes, probably doesn't work well when you're running at an elite level.

Or she could race any distance except the full marathon distance.

Shes doing "the big half" this weekend.

Should be an indicator

Bingo!!!

Hmm, as the track season wound on I was wondering how and when she was doing the marathon specific stuff needed for London on 2 Oct. I think she was targeting the World/Comms/Euros at 5k/10k by doing suitable sessions for those two distances and you have to be very very smart indeed to be doing this simultaneously (or almost so) with the marathon specifics. Call me cynical.....

It's actually not. There is no evidence that carb intake during a marathon improves performance for people who are already carboloaded. Either is likely sufficient.

Incidentally, I ran a marathon at approximately 84% of my VO2max without taking any carbs. Obviously I wasn't measuring my RER during the race, but at such a high relative intensity, I would necessarily have been relying on mainly carbs.

Eilish needs to get a continuous glucose monitor and do some experimenting, under expert guidance. She should be able to do a marathon without taking carbs, if necessary, but it may be as simple as smoothing out her intake by taking more frequent, 5-10 mg hits of carbs instead of 25 mg.

Suffered from this on and off for 10+ years, ruining many of my track seasons. Only fully understood what the problem was until recently, which allowed me to find a solution and work through it.

Hope Eilish feels her normal self soon. She'll be raising the profile of this condition, which is going to help people suffering and not understanding what's going on.

Saying "there is no evidence that carb intake [helps marathoners]..." is stretching things a bit...unless you're going to get bogged down in semantics about what truly constitutes "evidence".

Here's a link to an article noting that Eliud Kipchoge took in around 100g of carbs per hour during his 2018 Berlin Marathon WR:

runningmagazine.ca

Kipchoge's Berlin nutrition plan - Canadian Running Magazine

Madeleine Kelly

Kipchoge took in over 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour during his race

Open link

It's difficult to reconcile that fact with your claim that there is no evidence that taking in carbs is helpful. Wouldn't the fact that one of the most acclaimed running world records was set by someone taking in a remarkably large amount of carbs count as evidence in favor of carb intake? Of course, one could claim that it doesn't "prove" anything; theoretically, it might even have been hindering Kipchoge. Or you might suggest that he could have gotten the same benefit by carb-loading properly beforehand. However, when you get to that point in the debate, you might as well just give up.

mostly just surprised we haven't had any "keto, bro" commenters

Things with no evidence in endurance sports: CGM

Things that will do nothing for anyone: milligrams of carbs

There is evidence accumulating that more carbs maybe up to 120g/hr are beneficial. In fact, one of the major things they did with the sub 2 project was increase the carb intake as much as possible (in addition to the shoes).

Obviously someone can finish and even run a “fast” marathon without carbs. But to suggest that fueling is not necessary to run your fastest is just silly.

But the solution of small frequent hits could work. I’m just jumping on the typo

That’s between her and her doctor. Embarrassed for the OP.

Does she have a liver?

Try fueling with coconut oil before and during.

But did you ever shuffle along for 4-5 hours, stopping only for selfies?

I'm an Eilish super fan but I've got to say I'm not surprised about her withdrawal (although couldn't predict the exact reason).

With all her AMAZING champ performances, no way her training could have done her debut marathon performance justice due to not having trained a marathon block. We know she's got speed in spades and I think a long block of slogging out high mileage, learning to fuel ect without races is what she'd need to get endurance and smash a sub 2:20.

I speak as a male with just a 2:27 so probably what I say is loads of tosh but from my Uber limited knowledge I'm more excited to see her in London 23 then worrying in 4 weeks she'll just blow up at 20 miles.

Eilish so goat. WC in Oregon made a fan out of me and this is interesting. Seemed when I read her old interviews, she was bugged about her diet years ago for unrelated reasons. This may help someone somewhere for this news to be out there.