Years ago, I wrote an article about how many calories a person burns when they run. I used a 150-pound person as an example. It turns out that a person burns .09 calories per minute running at an 8-minute pace. If the person walks the calories burned per minute are .04 calories. At local races the usual refreshment table after the race includes doughnuts, bananas and orange quarters. The idea behind these refreshments is that after a hard 5K run you need to replace that energy the runner burned. A 5K race for a 150-pound runner who ran a 25-minute time burned 374 calories. After the race the runner heads to the refreshment table for those doughnuts and bananas to replace that energy lost during the race.
A glazed doughnut comes in at about 260 calories. The chocolate covered glazed doughnut equals the calories burned in the race. Add a banana for 105 calories and the runner comes out equal with calories out and calories returned. Oranges have very few calories but have some juice and taste that appeals to the taste buds. And a quarter cut orange won’t add enough calories to count.
The change in refreshment benefits starts to become more important as the distance increases. A 10K race is 6.2 miles. The 150-pound runner finishing in 52 minutes has now burned 702 calories. Maybe having two or three doughnuts will be necessary to replace that energy burned. Recalling race day rituals, the after-race routine was to grab a doughnut and head to a restaurant for a pancake breakfast. A four-inch pancake has 60 calories and a short stack only has three pancakes for 180 calories. Following this routine everything worked out great. Calories burned was 702 and calories replaced was 700 so a perfect ending to a race day.
The food replacement part of running is different for a marathon. The practice for a marathon is a ‘carbo-loading prerace meal. This is usually spaghetti or a pasta dish. The pre-race carbo-loading meal is usually not done correctly. The runner stays away from carbs for two or three days prior to the day before the race and the body is depleted in carbohydrates. Then when the runner eats a huge spaghetti meal the body stores extra carbohydrates to use in the marathon. Recalling a pre-race meal at the Houston Marathon we happened to be behind Patty Catalino, the favorite to win the women’s division. She loaded up a big plate of spaghetti and we followed the same practice. She went back for seconds, and maybe thirds. We could only manage one plate. How that small woman managed to eat that much spaghetti made me wonder if her frame was hollow. Of course, she set a record and we were many minutes behind her. It must have been that second plate of spaghetti we should have eaten.
Another practice for energy during a marathon is to eat during the race. We were a group of four runners enjoying an easy pace when we noticed this car pull off the road in front of us. The woman jumped out and gave her husband a candy bar. This happened about two more times and one of us asked her if she had a candy bar for us. About mile 20 she pulled up alongside us and handed us her last candy bar. We carefully splint it into four equal pieces and put it in our mouth. The sugar from that candy bar in a very dry mouth sucked our cheeks in and puckered our lips. We needed some water fast. The next aid station was out of water so the next two miles to the next aid station was a tough run.
Running is all about the practice of eating food at the correct time and amount. Fast runners stay skinny, the rest of us try to keep our waist size from expanding.
