You can't outrun a bad diet

Not just running but weight loss. Diet (calories in) is the most important factor. Exercising (calories out) only burns so many calories.

im pretty sure that saying is referring to overall health and well being and not race times.

you can eat like crap and run fast but you're still increasing the risk of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and a whole bunch of other stuff caused by bad diet.

Many top runners can eat crap in their teens and twenties, but after 30 insulin resistance kicks in (for most) and the decline begins unless the clean things up.

Sounds exactly like Rono. I read his book Olympic Dream. The truth however is it eventually caught up to him and affected his running career.

Even if you could run well while eating like sh*t, why would you want to? It's easy to eat good food, and it tastes better anyway unless you have the palate of a 5-year-old. A well-adjusted adult should not aspire to eat a "non-diet of meat pies, coca-cola, and mars bars."

Bill Rodgers was known to eat all sorts of crap.

We sat down for the day's first meal at about 1 p.m. Rodgers poured himself a huge bowl of Corn Pops; in his youth, they were more accurately called Sugar Pops, and while eating the renamed teeth rotters, Rodgers continually sang an old jingle, "Sugar Pops is tops." After a few bites, he sprang up, fetched a jar of peanut butter and slathered a hefty amount of it on the rim of his cereal bowl. Then every five bites or so, he'd line the spoon with peanut butter before plunging it into the Corn Pops. At the same time, he drank from a mug. The first few go-rounds, it contained ice cubes and a reconstituted sports drink. Then Rodgers heated up a can of tomato soup, offered me some -- "It's good fluid replacement, you know" -- and when I declined, filled the mug with it. When soup time was over, he poured Diet Pepsi into the same mug. By this time, what little appetite I had after running 18 miles on a hot day disappeared as I envisioned sports drink, tomato soup and Diet Pepsi molecules battling for space on the slivers of ice that I could hear sliding around in the mug. Rodgers stayed the course. He refilled the mug with the sports drink, downed it in one gulp and then exclaimed with the satisfaction of Michael Jackson obtaining a preteen's phone number, "HmmmH! Good!"

I've also read that he would wake up in the middle of the night and open a jar of mayonnaise and shovel spoonfuls down.

lollerama wrote:

We sat down for the day's first meal at about 1 p.m. .

Clearly Rodgers was ahead of his time with intermittent fasting.

lollerama wrote:

Rodgers continually sang an old jingle, "Sugar Pops is tops."

Trep wrote:

Even if you could run well while eating like sh*t, why would you want to? It's easy to eat good food, and it tastes better anyway unless you have the palate of a 5-year-old. A well-adjusted adult should not aspire to eat a "non-diet of meat pies, coca-cola, and mars bars."

A "well adjusted adult" should be able to decide what s/he wants to eat and not to worry about what other people eat.

I very nearly ran under 1:30 in a half marathon where I was 100% wasted at the start. That's including the time I took to drop a deuce in the porta potty. During the race I was extremely thirsty but I didn't truly feel the effects until after as it took me all day to recover from the dehydration and I needed a ton of sleep. Had my last drink about 1.5 hours before start time. 3/10 Would not recommend having a six pack and half a handle (possibly more) the night before.

Thanks for all the replies so far.

At this stage, I'm more interested in your/your friend's/teammate's/another runner's experiences (such as the Steve Jones, Bill Rogers and Takinadump examples above) of running well while eating/drinking sub-optimally(?) so keep the anecdotal stories coming.

If you train intensely, the bigger problem is not ingesting enough calories. There are foods that seem to lead to long-term problems, but then again, living leads to long-term problems.

be water my friend wrote:

im pretty sure that saying is referring to overall health and well being and not race times.

you can eat like crap and run fast but you're still increasing the risk of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and a whole bunch of other stuff caused by bad diet.

Just maybe these guys ran fast BECAUSE of their diets.

How the heck did I miss this?

YMMV wrote:

lollerama wrote:

We sat down for the day's first meal at about 1 p.m. .

Clearly Rodgers was ahead of his time with intermittent fasting.

If you’re fit it doesn’t really matter what you do the night before within reason. If you’re no longer inebriated and reasonably hydrated then you’re going to run close to your potential. I often run better the day after drinking as I’m more relaxed. Don’t over think it. Run dumb.

Trep wrote:

Even if you could run well while eating like sh*t, why would you want to? It's easy to eat good food, and it tastes better anyway unless you have the palate of a 5-year-old. A well-adjusted adult should not aspire to eat a "non-diet of meat pies, coca-cola, and mars bars."

why not? They should eat what they like, not what you think they should like. get over yourself.

This reminds me of my friend last year who drank 3 bottles of chocolate milk, ate 5 slices of cake, and ate 3 plate fulls of pasta the night before his last race and he got a pr by almost 10 seconds.

Anecdote wrote:

This reminds me of my friend last year who drank 3 bottles of chocolate milk, ate 5 slices of cake, and ate 3 plate fulls of pasta the night before his last race and he got a pr by almost 10 seconds.

Ok but some peoples' definition of a "slice" of cake or a "plate full" of pasta is pathetic. This guy is probably one of them. Probably raised in a super restrictive depressing vegetarian household as well where his parents measured out portion sizes.

This is the funniest damn thing I've read all week!