Don't You Get Hungry?

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about getting hungry when I run.  The answer, nope.  I usually am not even ravenous until the day after a long run.  Here's my little stash of running goodies.  I have everything from gels to my PowerBar Recovery bars and Nuuns tabs for my water.

This is what I take on runs that are longer than 8 miles or so.  I take my fuel belt which holds 18-20 ounces of water.  I fill them to about 9 ounces and add half a Nuuns tab to each little bottle.  Nuuns is an electrolyte replacement tab.  Slightly fizzy and fairly tasteless.  Josh likes to use them now after a night of drinking to prevent hangovers.

Moving on, we have gels.  Gels are not my favorite but they are a necessary evil.  On a run under 11 miles, I usually only take one. There are only four flavors that my stomach can handle: Lime Sublime, Strawberry Banana, Tri-Berry and Blueberry Pomegranite.  After some unfortunate DGF aka gel digestive failure incidents, I realized I had to stick with GU brand and only those flavors.  Occasionally I'll throw in a GU Chomp or ShotBloks but that usually just because they taste good and I need something to do when I'm running for 3 plus hours.  These little gels really do give me a boost of energy. Yesterday I took my gel about about mile 6.7. Once it kicked in about about mile 7.25, I definitely speed up.  It may have been the gels or it may have been that we were no longer running on uneven, hilly, sometimes icy terrain. 

Even though I'm not usually hungry right after runs I know that I'm supposed to eat something within a half hour for my poor little abused muscles.  I usually eat a PowerBar Recovery Bar (only after double digit runs) because for one, it tastes like a candy bar and two it has just about the right balance of carbs, protein and fat to help my muscles begin the recovery process.

So there you have it.  Do I get hungry on runs, nope.  Do I eat, of course.  I mean really who can run for hours on end without eat something?  For my 16 mile run next weekend I'll probably have three gels (miles 5, 10, 14ish) plus my Nuuns.