Spaghetti for Dinner Again?

But I also told you that there’s nothing you can eat to make you a better runner. Confession time: That’s not entirely true. In the few days before a marathon, you can help to push The Wall a few more miles back by carboloading. Carboloading is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean looking at the last three days before a marathon as an excuse to hit every all-you-can-eat buffet in town. You’re running less; you don’t need to eat much more than you usually do. What matters is increasing the percentage of your calories that come from carbohydrates to more than 65 percent, not just chowing down on everything in sight.
Carboloading works for the same reason that tapering works. Your muscles have become trained to store more glycogen. You’re tapering, so you’re not running much. Good—you’re barely dipping into your fuel stores. Simultaneously, you’re eating more carbohydrates than usual. Your muscles love it! They soak up the stuff. Do it right, and you can store an additional few hundred calories. That’s worth an extra three miles of running!
The key to carboloading is to emphasize the right foods. Concentrate on basing all of your meals in the three days before a marathon on high-carb foods, especially the complex ones. Most runners eat pasta when they’re carboloading, but rice and other grains are good, too. Fettucini alfredo is pasta, but it’s pasta in a heavy cream sauce. If you’re going to eat pasta, go with the light red sauces.