Fitness Files: Take running advice with a grain of salt

“Are you running or walking?”

The voice came from behind me as I labored up Polaris Hill for the fifth time. Grinding though hill repeats, I toiled to toughen up for the LA Marathon — which I signed up for at the 11th hour.

Looking back, I saw a lady walking her dog.

“It might look like walking,” I notified her, “but I think I’m running.” I pushed for a bit more speed.

“Oh!” she called, “Walk-running, that’s the best!”

This conversation took place after I’d jogged 17 miles — on the way to 20.

In early February, I ran one quick, peppy 19-mile workout on a gray, slightly foggy day — my favorite running weather. That exhilarating experience convinced me I had a marathon in me. Since then, there’s been too much bright sun to repeat the performance.

After last week’s 20-mile run, I came home to my reward: a breakfast of oranges, oatmeal, nuts, raisins, an egg and two pieces of toast. As I ate, I digested articles describing nutrition for endurance athletes.

I love to eat. Could my research support eating as a way to make me faster at 20 miles?

RunnersWorld.com, in “The Best Foods for Runners,” says fill your shopping cart with oranges, salmon, almonds, eggs, sweet potatoes, whole grains, black beans, salad greens, berries and chicken. Besides chicken, that’s how I eat every week.

WebMD.com, in “5 Nutrition Tips for Athletes,” has good news for carb lovers like me. Load up for three or four days before a race to “top your glycogen stores,” dietitian Joy Dubost is quoted as saying.

That means 70% of calories from bread, cereal, pasta, fruit and vegetables “to achieve maximum carbohydrate storage.” Glycogen is stored in muscles as glucose to produce energy during a long race.

The WebMd article says a runner should eat a snack and drink fluids every 15 to 20 minutes on race day — a challenge for a marathon event. I find sports drinks vile, and eating while running strikes me as oxymoronic. However, I do chomp on gummy electrolyte replacements. These Shot Bloks didn’t provide enough salt replacement during last year’s hot LA Marathon to prevent crippling leg cramps.

So an article in Rice.edu, “Salt and the Ultraendurance Athlete,” beckoned me. I’ve run two marathons during temperatures around 90 degrees, and both times, leg cramps struck on the final stretches.

It says: “The rate of perspiration during a long, hot race can easily average one liter per hour … usually more than can be replaced by food or fluids, including sports drinks. This leads to an imbalance, which can result in nausea, cramps, disorientation and worse. Rice.edu recommends pretzels for salt replacement.”

Rice.edu prefers sports drinks and foods over salt tablets, since it’s possible to ingest too much salt with tablets. Each athlete should experiment to determine particular needs, but in hot weather, I deduce it is best to drink sports drinks and add a few pretzels every mile.

Disappointingly, my digging did not unearth magic foods to make me an elite runner, though my daily diet matches recommendations.

However, new race-day strategies include a trick taught me by a great runner, Judy, who dumps the (vile) sports drinks into cups of water and tolerates them diluted. I will try to drink more water and sports drinks every mile, especially if the weather’s hot.

I’ll also take along pretzels, although in past races, I’ve been offered pretzels by bystanders and the sight gagged me. Perhaps flashbacks of heat-induced leg cramps will make me a race-day pretzel eater.

Maybe I’ll toss in a chocolate bar at mile 20, although nobody recommends it. Wouldn’t if be wonderful of everyone observing my chocolate-fueled finish would see a runner cross the line — never considering pesky questions about whether I was walking?

Newport Beach resident CARRIE LUGER SLAYBACK is a retired teacher who ran the Los Angeles Marathon at age 70, winning first place in her age group. Her blog is lazyracer@blogspot.com.