How I Fueled for a St. Jude Marathon PR!

On Saturday, I ran my sixth marathon (or ninth if you count 50Ks and virtuals) at the St. Jude Memphis Marathon! Though I've run several marathons now, it had been over a year since I'd done a 26.2, and my PR was set in March 2020 (right before the pandemic hit). But I knew I wanted to try and PR every distance in 2022, so I worked hard all year with an end goal of PRs in my 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon. And guess what? I did it! I got new PRs in all of them this year, ending with a successful marathon on Saturday.

I finished St. Jude in 5:17:23, which is 10 minutes faster than that March 2020 PR. I wrote a race recap for The Daily Memphian (the newspaper I work for), so I'll just link that here and won't go into too many race details in this post. 

But I wanted to focus on what I ate the day before and right after. Of course, I can attribute my getting faster to the months of training ahead of the race, not what I ate the day before. But I do believe carb-loading is important. And it's even more important on the day before to make sure you don't eat something your stomach won't agree with on race morning. So here we go. On Friday morning, I had a bowl of Oats with Berries and Walnuts, sweetened with maple syrup and beefed up with some almond butter.

Morning snack was a smoothie with banana, frozen mixed fruit, and hemp seeds.

Lunch was a Burrito Bowl with quinoa, black beans, roasted corn, bell pepper, avocado, and Kite Hill sour cream. I try to avoid processed foods the day before because I just figure I'll get more benefit from whole foods. This recipe was a pre-race recommendation from the No Meat Athlete website.

Dinner was pasta! Of course! I had Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Marinara and Chickpeas and Homemade Sourdough Garlic Toast. I typically add in greens, like kale. But on the day before a race, I actively try to limit fiber (even though all plants have fiber, so that's a little hard on a whole foods meal plan). Fiber is awesome 99% of the time, but for a race, you kind of want to limit bathroom business. 

On the morning of the race, I had my usual white bagel with vegan cream cheese and jam (pumpkin butter is my current obsession). No picture of that. And I had a banana about an hour before race start. During the race, I fueled with Plant Bites, Huma and Spring gels, pickles, Fireball, and a few pretzels.

Now for the grand finale! Paul also ran on Saturday (the 5K), and we planned to go out for pizza after. He ended up getting hungry before dinner and had something at home, but he took me to get a pizza — the Ain't Nothing But V Thing vegan pizza — from Slim & Husky's. I added extra vegan pepperoni and got some vegan garlic butter on the side. 

Slim & Husky's doesn't serve beer, and I needed a post-race beer with my pizza. So we took my food next door to High Cotton Brewing Co., where I enjoyed a Xmas Stout. What a perfect day!