We spoke with the performance nutritionists behind three of Queensland's top endurance athletes — a sub-2:30 marathoner, an Ironman podium finisher and a Pan Pacific Masters Games multi-medallist — to find out what the evidence says about race-day nutrition, and what popular advice is little more than athlete folklore.
The science of pre-race nutrition has shifted considerably in the past decade. The traditional carbohydrate-loading protocols developed in the 1960s — three days of depletion followed by three days of aggressive loading — have been largely superseded by more conservative approaches that emphasise consistency over the final 24–48 hours rather than dramatic manipulation of glycogen stores.
"For most recreational and masters athletes racing marathons and halves, the loading phase is less important than simply not doing anything dramatically different in the 48 hours before the gun," says accredited sports dietitian Dr Megan Hoult, who works with several Queensland Athletics high-performance athletes. "The bigger risk is the athlete who decides race week is the time to experiment."