Race week nutrition is where months of training either get supported or quietly undermined. You can run every session, hit every interval, and still arrive at the start line with flat legs and a stomach that turns at kilometre three, simply because the week leading up to the race was treated as an afterthought. The good news is that getting it right is not complicated. It requires a plan, some discipline with food choices you would not normally think twice about, and a clear understanding of what your body actually needs in the seven days before a race.
What Is Actually Happening in Your Body Before a Race
Your muscles store carbohydrate as glycogen, and glycogen is the primary fuel source for any race at half marathon pace or faster. A well-fuelled recreational runner can store somewhere between 500 and 700 grams of total glycogen across the liver and muscle tissue when fully loaded. The problem is that a normal training week, with its combination of hard sessions and moderate eating, rarely leaves you at that ceiling. Race week is your window to top the tank.
At the same time, your training volume drops significantly during the taper. That reduction in output means your muscles are primed to absorb and store carbohydrate more efficiently than usual. This is not an excuse to eat indiscriminately. It is a reason to shift the composition of your meals deliberately, increasing the proportion of carbohydrate while keeping fat and fibre intake lower in the final days. Getting this balance right makes the difference between legs that feel heavy and wooden on race morning and legs that feel genuinely ready.
The First Half of Race Week: Eat Normally, Eat Well
From seven to four days out, your focus is not carbohydrate loading. It is consistency. Continue eating balanced meals that include quality protein, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. Your training is tapering, but your nutrition should not become erratic. This is not the week to try a new diet, to restrict calories dramatically, or to experiment with foods you rarely eat.
One change worth making early in the week is increasing your overall fluid intake. Arriving at race day well-hydrated is harder to achieve than it sounds, particularly if your baseline drinking habits are inconsistent. Aim to drink enough that your urine is pale yellow throughout the day. If you struggle with plain water, Nuun Sport dissolved in a bottle provides electrolytes alongside hydration without the sugar load of a sports drink, making it easy to sustain through a full work day.
Protein remains important during this window. Your muscles are still adapting from the final hard sessions of your training block, and adequate protein supports that process. Aim for roughly 1.6 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. Lean sources such as chicken, fish, eggs, and Greek yoghurt fit easily into race week meals without adding unnecessary fat that would slow digestion later in the week.
Three Days Out: Shift to Carbohydrate Loading
From three days before race day, your carbohydrate intake should increase meaningfully. The target for effective loading is 8 to 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 70-kilogram runner, that is 560 to 700 grams of carbohydrate daily, spread across all meals and snacks. This is substantially more than most recreational athletes eat on a normal day, and it requires intentional food selection.
Practical carbohydrate sources that work well in this window include white rice, pasta, white bread, potatoes, oats, bananas, and fruit juice. The emphasis shifts to white or refined versions of starchy foods rather than wholegrain alternatives because they are easier to digest and carry less fibre. This is a temporary and deliberate choice, not a permanent nutritional downgrade.
Reduce dietary fat during these three days, not because fat is harmful but because fat slows gastric emptying and competes with carbohydrate for caloric space. Keep meals relatively simple. A bowl of pasta with a light tomato sauce, rice with grilled chicken and no heavy dressings, porridge with banana and honey, these are the kinds of meals that support loading without creating digestive complexity you do not need.
The Day Before: Protect Your Gut
The day before a race is not the time to load aggressively. Your muscles have been absorbing glycogen for two to three days already. What matters now is protecting your digestive system and arriving at the start line without any unnecessary drama in your stomach.
Continue eating meals that are carbohydrate-rich but low in fibre, fat, and anything that your gut finds difficult to process. Avoid high-fibre vegetables such as broccoli, lentils, and beans. Skip anything fried, heavily spiced, or unfamiliar. Caffeine is fine if you are accustomed to it, but this is not the day to drink three cups of coffee if your normal habit is one.
Sodium intake on the day before a race is worth considering. A slightly higher sodium intake helps your body retain fluid, which can support hydration status heading into race morning. This does not mean pouring salt over everything, but adding a pinch to meals or including salty snacks such as pretzels or crackers is a practical way to support fluid retention. A Nuun Sport tablet in your evening water achieves the same effect without any effort.
The classic pre-race dinner does not need to be elaborate. Pasta with a simple sauce, rice with chicken, jacket potato with a lean topping, all of these work well. Eat at a normal dinner time, not later than usual, so digestion is well underway before you sleep. Keep the portion size comfortable rather than enormous. Overeating the night before does not add glycogen; it just makes sleep harder.
Race Morning: The Final Meal
The pre-race meal deserves its own logic. It should be eaten two to three hours before the start, contain 1 to 4 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight, be low in fat and fibre, and consist of foods you have eaten before race-pace runs in training. Race morning is categorically not the time to try something new.
A bowl of porridge with honey and a banana is one of the most reliable pre-race meals for recreational runners. White toast with jam or peanut butter works for shorter races. Rice cakes with honey are popular among athletes who find porridge heavy on a nervous stomach. Whatever you choose, it should be something that has already proven itself on a hard training morning.
Coffee before a race is well-supported by sports science as a performance aid. Caffeine improves perceived effort and time to exhaustion at distances from 5k through to marathon. If caffeine is part of your normal routine, keep it in place. If it is not, do not introduce it on race morning.
Hydration in the two hours before the start should aim for 400 to 600 millilitres of fluid, sipped steadily rather than consumed all at once. Drinking a large volume immediately before the start does not meaningfully improve hydration status and may create discomfort during the early kilometres.
On-Course Fuelling: Know Your Plan Before the Start
Race week nutrition does not end at the start line. Having a clear fuelling plan for the race itself is part of the preparation, and it should be confirmed and practiced before race morning, not improvised on the course.
For half marathons and longer, carbohydrate intake during the race supports performance and reduces the risk of hitting a wall in the final kilometres. The general guidance is 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour for most recreational athletes, taken in the form of gels, chews, or sports drinks at regular intervals. Energy gels are the most practical format for runners because they are compact, easy to carry, and deliver a consistent carbohydrate hit. Maurten Gel 100 is formulated with a hydrogel technology that supports faster gastric emptying and tends to sit well for runners with sensitive stomachs. GU Energy Gel is a reliable and widely available option in a broad range of flavours, with amino acids included to support muscle function during longer efforts.
The full breakdown of on-course fuelling strategies by race distance, including timing, quantities, and what to carry, is in how to fuel a half marathon. If you are still deciding which gel suits your stomach and taste preferences, the best energy gels for runners compares the main options in detail. The broader principles connecting race week nutrition to your overall training nutrition are covered in the running nutrition guide.
What Not to Do: The Race Week Mistakes That Actually Cost Time
A few common errors are worth naming directly because they appear repeatedly in the week before races, even among experienced runners.
The first is eating unfamiliar foods. Restaurants, travel, post-race celebrations from a friend’s event, social dinners with unusual cuisines; any of these can introduce foods your gut is not prepared for. This is a week to be boring and deliberate about food choices.
The second is alcohol. Even moderate alcohol intake suppresses glycogen synthesis, impairs sleep quality, and increases dehydration. A glass of wine on Wednesday is unlikely to be catastrophic, but drinking through the weekend before a Sunday race is a genuine performance cost.
The third is skipping meals to compensate for reduced training volume. Some runners feel guilty about tapering and respond by eating less. This is the opposite of what is needed. The caloric reduction from lower training load is modest; the carbohydrate loading requirement in the final three days far outweighs any concern about surplus intake.
The fourth is overcomplicating the carbohydrate loading process with supplements, exotic foods, or elaborate protocols. Simple whole food sources of carbohydrate, eaten consistently across three days, achieve the same glycogen saturation as any commercially positioned loading product. The science is well-established, and the execution is straightforward.
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