Marathon Fueling Fumbles from the Past
Some smart runners have eaten surprising snacks before and during marathons
By Roger Robinson
As featured in the April 2010 issue of Running Times Magazine
As featured in the April 2010 issue of Running Times Magazine
For your next marathon, try this: no water for 24 hours before or during the race. Oodles of apple butter the night before. One hour before, eat a fat 2-inch steak. If it's hot, drink champagne at mile 15. At 20 miles, eat a meal of fruit.
Or better, be thankful you are running in the first era to understand nutritional science.
Those aforementioned nutritional follies all affected marathon history. In the 1908 Olympic marathon in London, Canadian Tom Longboat, the 1907 Boston Marathon winner, was closing on the leaders, but at 15 miles was given champagne to quench his thirst and was out of the race two miles later. In the 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis, unknown Felix Carvajal (Cuba) looked a likely winner at 20 miles but stopped to eat a bowl of fresh fruit, and suffered convulsive stomach cramps. He finished fourth.
A victory at the Boston Marathon would have been the highlight of the life of Jock Semple, the impoverished Scot who loved that race with such passion. But in 1934, when he was one of the favorites, he followed the wisdom of the time, and ate a fat 2-inch steak an hour before the start, to "fortify" himself. By Commonwealth Avenue, he was crippled by nausea, his dream in tatters.
Amby Burfoot lost a first chance at victory in Boston in 1967 by succumbing to a craving for lashings of apple butter at dinner the night before. He spent much of the race making pit-stops. Unlike Semple, Burfoot won the following year.
But the most famous example of history being made by mistaken nutritional beliefs was the heart-rending collapse of England's Jim Peters in the hot-weather 1954 Commonwealth Games marathon in Vancouver, when the heat-exhausted world record-holder reeled and sagged helplessly halfway around the stadium, finally falling unconscious 200 yards from the tape. I learned recently from sources close to Peters at that time that he believed you should take in no water for 24 hours, and none during the race, and he aggravated that folly by chewing salt tablets. It was a common belief. When the Princeton Packet interviewed the great 1930s miler Bill Bonthron in 1982, he told them "fried foods were forbidden, as were bananas, and any water for 24 hours before a race." Amazing.
Lacking our knowledge, and our access to varied food sources, earlier ages took an approach to nutrition that was derived more from instinct than science. Water seems weakening, steak seems fortifying. The ancient Greeks used to award cattle as race prizes, a custom that lasted into England in the 1700s, when one rural games staged an annual women's race called "Lady of the Lamb." The earliest training manual of the modern era, Walter Thom's "Pedestrianism" (1813), again advocates "animal diet" but no vegetables, "as they are watery."
Now we know better. In the marathon, water is strength. Peters would almost certainly have capped his career with a gold medal in 1954 if he'd taken water. Instead, he never ran again, one of the last victims of primitive mistaken beliefs about nutrition.
Or better, be thankful you are running in the first era to understand nutritional science.
Those aforementioned nutritional follies all affected marathon history. In the 1908 Olympic marathon in London, Canadian Tom Longboat, the 1907 Boston Marathon winner, was closing on the leaders, but at 15 miles was given champagne to quench his thirst and was out of the race two miles later. In the 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis, unknown Felix Carvajal (Cuba) looked a likely winner at 20 miles but stopped to eat a bowl of fresh fruit, and suffered convulsive stomach cramps. He finished fourth.
A victory at the Boston Marathon would have been the highlight of the life of Jock Semple, the impoverished Scot who loved that race with such passion. But in 1934, when he was one of the favorites, he followed the wisdom of the time, and ate a fat 2-inch steak an hour before the start, to "fortify" himself. By Commonwealth Avenue, he was crippled by nausea, his dream in tatters.
Amby Burfoot lost a first chance at victory in Boston in 1967 by succumbing to a craving for lashings of apple butter at dinner the night before. He spent much of the race making pit-stops. Unlike Semple, Burfoot won the following year.
But the most famous example of history being made by mistaken nutritional beliefs was the heart-rending collapse of England's Jim Peters in the hot-weather 1954 Commonwealth Games marathon in Vancouver, when the heat-exhausted world record-holder reeled and sagged helplessly halfway around the stadium, finally falling unconscious 200 yards from the tape. I learned recently from sources close to Peters at that time that he believed you should take in no water for 24 hours, and none during the race, and he aggravated that folly by chewing salt tablets. It was a common belief. When the Princeton Packet interviewed the great 1930s miler Bill Bonthron in 1982, he told them "fried foods were forbidden, as were bananas, and any water for 24 hours before a race." Amazing.
Lacking our knowledge, and our access to varied food sources, earlier ages took an approach to nutrition that was derived more from instinct than science. Water seems weakening, steak seems fortifying. The ancient Greeks used to award cattle as race prizes, a custom that lasted into England in the 1700s, when one rural games staged an annual women's race called "Lady of the Lamb." The earliest training manual of the modern era, Walter Thom's "Pedestrianism" (1813), again advocates "animal diet" but no vegetables, "as they are watery."
Now we know better. In the marathon, water is strength. Peters would almost certainly have capped his career with a gold medal in 1954 if he'd taken water. Instead, he never ran again, one of the last victims of primitive mistaken beliefs about nutrition.
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