Food Has Never Required So Much Thought

The ABCs of carboloading.

From The Washington Post, October 22, 1999

The night before the 1982 Beijing Marathon, running legend Bill Rodgers was invited by the race organizers to a lavish Chinese buffet. As a veteran of international events, the four-time winner of the Boston and New York City Marathons was accustomed to pre-race meals besides the traditional pasta dinner. Still, he probably wasn’t expecting the delicacy that was presented to him as the guest of honor: a 100-year-old bird egg that had been soaked in pig urine. "It didn’t taste bad," Rodgers politely offers, but you sense he wouldn’t have minded a lowly bowl of rice instead.

"The marathon is all about energy management," says Keith Brantly, who ran the event at the 1996 Olympics. In other words, it doesn’t matter how well you’re trained or how motivated you are if you run out of gas en route. Good nutrition is more important in the marathon than in any other popular distance. It’s common sense on the morning of a 5K not to fry up some eggs (or to soak them in pig urine, for that matter). But if you do, it’s not as if you’re going to crash and burn at the 2-mile mark; you’re just going to have an unpleasant gastrointestinal experience.

Because the marathon is so far, however, it almost never allows for such mistakes. Even the best marathoners in the world simply worry that their muscles will run too low on fuel before the finish to keep running quickly. That’s why "carboloading" is as integral to marathoning lingo as "long run," and that’s why, except when without a choice in the matter, Rodgers’ pre-marathon meals were more akin to dining scenes from "The Godfather" than the egg-eating contest in "Cool Hand Luke."