Nutrition is a key element for endurance athletes, and even the most optimized training plan isn’t complete without a nutrition strategy to support it. Learn how to use food to improve your training, racing and recovery!
The concept of food as fuel is a simple one, but fad diets and misconceptions about fueling have made nutrition seem overwhelmingly complex. When did eating well become so hard?
For endurance athletes, understanding how to fuel appropriately is essential to success. Learning how to eat for training (and life!) can improve how you feel, how you train and race, and how you recover. Restricted eating puts athletes at risk for RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), which can lead to a myriad of health concerns and injuries.
With so much conflicting advice online, it can be challenging to figure out the best way to fuel your body. Add in the gastrointestinal distress that is common among distance runners, and it gets even more difficult.
Fortunately, a quality sports dietitian can help! There are simple, evidenced-based concepts that form the framework of fueling for athletes.
Diet Tips for Runners with Kylee Van Horn
On the Strength Running Podcast I have sports dietitian Kylee Van Horn. As the founder of Fly Nutrition, Kylee offers nutrition services to endurance athletes and works with many elite trail and road runners. She is also a runner and a coach, and writes a featured bi-monthly column for Trail Runner Magazine.
Kylee’s love for running started early in life, with her dad setting an example of dedication to the sport as an Olympic marathon trials qualifier. After running competitively through college and in a post-collegiate training group, Kylee made the move from road to trails and fell in love with trail running. Living in the mountains of Colorado has cemented that love, as well as providing the opportunity to experience nordic skiing and ski mountaineering in the winter months.
When it comes to nutrition, misunderstandings abound among athletes. My conversation with Kylee covers a broad range of topics to help you better understand both the basics and nuances of fueling, avoid common mistakes, and provide a variety of diet tips for runners.
Some of our discussion topics include:
- Common diet mistakes in endurance athletes
- Understanding what it means to eat enough
- Diet tips for runners and habit changes
- Learning to eat intuitively AND intentionally
- How to incorporate more protein throughout your day
- The role of nutrition in reducing muscle soreness
Kylee simplifies the complexities of nutrition and can help you create a strategy to improve your own fueling. Enjoy our conversation!
Subscribe to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, or Google Play
Links & Resources from the Show:
Thank You AG1!
We’re also supported by AG1, the greens superfood mix. This is a category-leading greens mix that has 75 vitamins and minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, antioxidants, and adaptogens. It’s recommended by professional athletes and has over 7,000 positive reviews.
One scoop per day is what I’ve been doing to help me fill in any nutrition gaps in my diet. It also provide a nice boost of energy and focus throughout the day. With all 3 of my kids in school, I know I need to support my immune system or else I’m getting sick and can’t train.
I also love that AG1 has changed over the last decade. They’ve made 53 improvements to the formula based on the latest research to make these nutrients more absorbable and rigorous with the 3rd party testing that they do.
For our listeners, they are offering a year’s worth of free Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs of AG1 with your first purchase. You can sign up for single shipment or for a monthly drop – the choice is yours. Check out AG1 to redeem your offer today.
Thank you to our Performance Training Journal!
We’re also brought to you by our very own Performance Training Journal, which is now available on Amazon and debuted as the #4 new release in the running category. Since I started running in 1998, I’ve kept a hardcopy training journal. Holding a tangible log, writing in it daily, and reflecting on the ups and downs of running is a surefire way to improve.
This hardcopy training journal helps you focus on the training metrics that matter, prioritizes a long-term outlook so you don’t take any shortcuts, and maintains your motivation with strategic self-praise. With a no-frills, functional design, the Performance Training Journal includes coaching advice on racing, injury prevention, strength training, and more. It will guide you through race scheduling, how to plan your race morning, the best workouts for endurance runners, and encourage you to track your personal bests over time.
You have the space to make this journal your own whether you’re a new runner or a professional, a trail or road runner, or a mid-distance specialist or ultra marathoner. So don’t just track your running, learn from it with the Performance Training Journal! Check it out today on Amazon.