The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition Quotes

“you should put as much thought and discipline into your diet and fueling practices as you put into your training,”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Within the past couple of years I’ve switched from water to beet juice for prerace hydration. I know it sounds weird, but it has a benefit that is lacking in any other hydration choice and I encourage all runners to try it. Beet juice is rich in dietary nitrates, which are precursors for nitric oxide, a chemical that the body uses to cause blood vessels to dilate. Consuming beet juice before exercise increases vasodilatation and blood flow and reduces the oxygen cost of exercise. These effects translate directly into better race performance, even in highly trained endurance athletes. A 2011 study conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter found that consuming half a liter of beet juice 2.5 hours before cycling time trials of 4 km and 16.1 km improved performance by 2.8 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively, in club-level cyclists.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Interestingly, slushie ingestion not only delayed the point at which the subjects reached a critically high core body temperature, but also allowed a higher tolerable core body temperature before exhaustion was reached. In other words, the slushie let them start colder and get hotter.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Beet juice is rich in dietary nitrates, which are precursors for nitric oxide, a chemical that the body uses to cause blood vessels to dilate. Consuming beet juice before exercise increases vasodilatation and blood flow and reduces the oxygen cost of exercise. These”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Habitual caffeine use such as drinking coffee every day causes the brain to “upregulate” its adenosine receptors. This adaptation makes the brain more sensitive to the action of adenosine so that fewer adenosine molecules must attach themselves to receptors to cause sleepiness and brain slowing. Habituation also makes the brain less sensitive to the actions of caffeine. For runners, caffeine habituation has the important implication that it reduces the drug’s benefit of performance enhancement.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“effects of a ten-day high-fat diet followed by three days of carbohydrate loading on the fat-burning capacity and performance of trained cyclists. Her hypothesis was that fat loading would increase reliance on fat and decrease reliance on glycogen as exercise fuel, while subsequent carbo loading would maximize glycogen stores without negating the effect of fat loading. With more glycogen available and less glycogen being used, the cyclists would be less likely to hit the wall and their performance would improve.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“runners throughout the first half of the twentieth century generally avoided drinking anything during long races because they believed that submitting to their thirst would cause them to become “waterlogged” and slow down. One expert of the time wrote, “Don’t get in the habit of drinking and eating in a Marathon race; some prominent runners do, but it is not beneficial.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“There are two types of nutrition that have the potential to significantly enhance performance when consumed during running: water and carbohydrate. It is no accident that these are the two main ingredients in almost all sports drinks intended for use during exercise. Most”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Refined grains (regular old spaghetti being an example), fatty meats (hard salami), sweets (blueberry pie), and fried foods (bacon) are not poisonous. They are foods that just happen to be less wholesome than some other foods. There”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“What’s more, your body also must be accelerated forward with every stride because it loses momentum upon each foot landing. The”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“Body weight is the enemy of running performance. Running is, after all, a continuous fight against gravity. With every stride you take your body must be lifted completely off the ground, because all of the progress you make when running is made while your body is airborne. What’s”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“runners with very heavy training loads need more carbohydrate than runners with more moderate training loads. The more you train, the more carbs your body uses, and the more carbohydrate your body uses, the more carbs you need to eat to maintain adequate muscle glycogen stores.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“eating enough carbohydrate every day will allow you to train harder, better absorb the stress of your training, and perform better in important workouts than you would without adequate carbohydrate intake.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“For every runner who hits the wall because of his or her failure to consume enough carbohydrate during the race, there are several who hit the wall because of their failure to consume enough carbs in their everyday training diet. To”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"

“There’s a difference between nutrition knowledge and food knowledge.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, The New Rules of Marathon and Half-Marathon Nutrition: A Cutting-Edge Plan to Fuel Your Body Beyond "the Wall"