Guess How Much a Pro Hobbyjogger "Dietician" Ate During Grandma's Marathon

Which had more to do with "avoiding hitting the wall", the 4-hour time, or "fueling"? She should have added a nap just to be sure.

It's spelled "dietitian," dear.

She said she still "didn't take in as many salt tabs as I had planned to during and I cramped hard in the last 0.75 mile" so all that nutritional and water still didn't work, resulting in her slow time

I'm known for what my body can do, not what my brain can spell

She had 6 gels, water, and electrolytes. That’s about as standard as it gets.

If you think otherwise, maybe you should DM her for advice.

I assume you know this is "standard" to carry that much food and water in a marathon because you are also a hobbyjogger like she is

I normally don’t comment on post like these but OP you’re honestly despicable. This women worked hard as did any other person running that marathon and took 6 gels. That’s less than one every half hour and just about one every 45 minutes. She’s following the general nutritional guidelines for in-race caloric intake for a marathon and you have the audacity to try and blast her on an anonymous message board? How low do you really have to be to do crap like this?

If she didn't carry so much weight from all that water and food on her back and used the water tables, she would have ran faster. A 4 hour time for someone like her is extremely slow.

My running speed has nothing to do with optimal ingestion of carbs, water, and electrolytes for the average marathoner.

She’s a dietician, so I’m more focused on the contents of what she’s ingesting vs how she Carries it. The gels are easy with flip belts. I wouldn’t personally run with an hydration pack- but having water equally distributed on the back is probably better than having bottles at the end of the lever arm (your hand) which results in more effort needed due to physics (if the weight on your back doesn’t affect your posture).

Breaking 4 hours is quite a solid time for a normal person. Not everyone was blessed with talent like many of the tools here - whether you want to believe it or not.

A gel every 40ish minutes also seems extremely normal - whether you're running 2:30 or 5:30.

Yeah this. Extremely normal feeding for a marathon. The pros do something similar but maybe a little less bc they spend less time on the course.
Most people don’t eat properly during longer endurance events.

Agreed. 60-90 grams of carbohydrate per hour is a standard recommendation, and it's what a lot of pros aim for. The thread title had me expecting something absurd.

Now, it's probably true that at 4+ hour paces, you don't need as much because you're able to rely more heavily on fat stores when the intensity is lower (even relative to a person's VO2max), but that's quibbling.

If you ran faster, you wouldn't have to run so long and eat and drink so much. Leave your backpack and trucker hat for the ultras.

Well, for a 31 year old professional dietician, I found her full effort 3:59:32 marathon time to be absurdly slow.....because she carried so much food and water on her

I agree the water hydration backpack is not what a runner does who wants to run his/her best race.

But the amount of gels is pretty standard.

Perhaps she has a high sweat rate? Why does her fluid plan impact your life so much?

For eating- that’s the exact opposite of correct. A 2 hour marathoner covers the same distance which requires the same amount of ‘work’ to be done (more or less). But they are running at their 2 hour pace rather than their 4 hour pace meaning it’s a higher intensity. So they’re probably burning a higher percentage of carbs and therefore need even more carbs than a 4 hour person. Elite Tour de France guys can ingest up to 100-120 grams of carbs per hour!! (There’s a bunch of other variables I’m not going to get into).

For water, sure, being out in the sun for 4 hours will require more total fluids even if the relative running intensity is slightly less. But where is the point where extra weight slows you down more than the benefits of optimal hydration?? Well, that depends. I’m any case, your original post was dumb and you should probably just admit you’re mostly wrong. You are correct in that, all else being equal, carrying unneeded weight would slow you down. But what she was carrying was very consistent with sports nutrition recommendations.

op is that dude who gives their girl an eating disorder

How much water was she carrying? The gels are light, but a couple of pounds or more of water would be a lot of unnecessary weight in a race.