Category: Running

NYC Marathon 2024 – Better performance through electrolytes

The 2024 NYC marathon was my fourth marathon, where I effectively dropped ten minutes off my personal best. And the reason is simple – I finally realized I needed electrolytes! I’m writing this to share what I’ve learned to help anyone else in the same situation.

Quick background

In my previous three marathons, I ran into the same problem – around mile 20/21, I hit the wall and had to start walking periodically for the rest of the race. It just felt like my body fell apart, and I always chalked it up to “that’s what hitting the wall feels like.” This got increasingly frustrating – even when I really controlled my pace in the first part of the race on a particularly easy (downhill!) course, this still happened.

Luckily, I’d been working online with a coach (HUGE shout out to Matt Day from McMillan) and he pointed out that I needed to think about electrolytes!

(This is where I should point out that I’d only ever drunk water on long runs & races – I avoided any electrolytes because I never wanted to drink something that I hadn’t used in training. Nothing new on race day!)

Fueling with carbs – what I was already doing

In the course of training for previous races, I’d already figured out how to get the carbs I needed. I learned to properly eat / carb load in the day or two before long runs (say over ten miles). I also learned about running gels and got into the habit of ingesting a gel about every 30 minutes in a long run or race (starting about an hour in). This approach worked. [Runner’s World article detailing this]

Fueling with electrolytes – the missing piece of the puzzle

My coach Matt pointed me in the direction of a free online calculator to help me understand what I needed – check it out here. My results:

With my existing gels, I was 44g of carbs per hour already – a good chunk of what I needed. And I had been fine with overall fluid intake – that 15 oz/hour was probably what I was getting at the water stations.

HOWEVER! The gels I had been were only giving me ~100 mg of sodium per hour – just 20% of what I needed. (1000mg/32oz = 500mg/16oz, so ~500mg/hour)

The NYC Marathon offers Gatorade Endurance Formula Lemon Lime drinks at aid stations. When I looked up the key stats, I saw that this provides (per 12 oz):

  • 300mg of sodium
  • 22g of carbs

Additionally, I found alternate gels – Gu Roctane Energy gels – that would provide 250 mg/hour of sodium (versus the 100 mg/hour from my previous gets).

Putting this together, if I drank about the same amount (roughly 12-15 oz of fluids per hour spread across various aid stations) and used the Roctane Energy gels, I would be taking in:

  • 66 g of carbs per hour (44 from gels, 22 from Gatorade)
  • 550 mg of sodium per hour (250 from gels, 300 from Gatorade)

Results – the 2024 NYC Marathon

For the first time ever, I ran an entire marathon without needing to walk a step!

I’ll confess as I got to miles 20 and 21 in the Bronx, I was pretty anxious – this was the point in my previous marathons (and training runs!) where I had previously hit that wall. But as I got through those miles and crossed into Manhattan I got increasingly confident that I’d solved this problem and was ready to go. (Seeing my family cheer me on around mile 22 was also a huge mood lift!)

Instead of falling apart on Fifth Avenue as the hill rises along Central Park, I felt strong! I was energized as I passed loads of people, including those other runners that were forced to walk. Those final miles in Central Park to the finish were electric – I felt strong and the race photos with some of my biggest smiles are along this stretch of the course.

Instead of my body feeling like I was on the ragged edge (despite my legs feeling fine), I ended the race feeling strong… but with very tired legs!

Going forward from here

I’m honestly much more excited to run more marathons in the future – being able to crack this bonking problem is incredibly motivating! Now that I know I can finish strong, I can train with a new purpose. And I know I’m absolutely capable of dropping a lot more time off my new marathon PB/PR.

I’m definitely going to tinker with the specific gels and electrolytes I use, when I take them, etc. Toward the end of the race I was getting annoyed by always taking electrolyte, and could/should have taken water once or twice instead. But I’ve found a solid platform of an approach that will serve me well.

I’m writing this because there are a bunch of resources about getting carbs during the race, I haven’t seen the same about electrolytes. If you feel like you’re fit enough to run a full marathon but have had problems “hitting the wall” harder than you like, I strongly encourage you to use a calculator like I did and figure out if you need to change your approach to electrolytes in your racing.

I’m running the Marine Corps Marathon for SemperK9

The pandemic has been a primary cause for major life shifts for many friends and family. For me, going from an hour commute to work (each way) and back home to just working from home freed up a lot of time. It also made me more than a bit stir-crazy… so I got into running.

While I ran cross-country in high school, I was — to put it bluntly — not fast. But in the pandemic I really grew to like running (thanks to Coach Bennett and the guided runs with Nike Run Club!) and really loved getting my fitness back. I eventually signed up to run the virtual UMich Big House 5k, and then ran two half-marathons in 2021. And I’ve already signed up to run many more 5k to half-marathon distance races in 2022. But…

Me – after finishing the San Francisco Half-Marathon in 2021

2022 is going to be the year where I finally run my first full marathon. And I’m happy to say that I found a great opportunity – I’ll be running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC for a fantastic charity – SemperK9!

SemperK9 is one of the most heart-warming charities I’ve ever come across. They rescue dogs from shelters (and take donated dogs), train them to be service dogs – both for psychiatric alert and mobility challenges, and provide them free of charge to military veterans. (The cost of training a service dog can reach up to $20,000) The organization was founded by Christopher Baity, who was a Military Working Dog handler in the Marine Corps and who had numerous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He himself struggled with PTSD but founded SemperK9 with his wife in 2014 to use his unique dog training/handling skills and train service dogs for veterans.

(Side note – there’s a great video featuring SemperK9 with Mike Rowe in his series “Returning the Favor” on Facebook.)

I would appreciate your sponsorship and support in this goal of running the Marine Corps Marathon. Head to http://bit.ly/JedMCM22 and donate whatever you’re comfortable donating. My goal is to raise $1000 or more – all of which will go to training shelter dogs into service dogs for military veterans.

One final note – there are a bunch of reasons I wanted to run the Marine Corps Marathon. It’s in Washington, DC and runs through Georgetown, the National Mall, the monuments, etc. It’s run by the Marine Corps, so it’s got a reputation for impeccable organization. But it also ends at the legendary Marine Corps Monument in Arlington, Virginia, which is a statue of the iconic WWII photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima”.

I was lucky enough to have been acquainted with one of the men from that Marine Corps company: Sgt Joe Rodriguez. When I was in the Navy ROTC unit at the University of Michigan Sgt Rodriguez was a frequent honored (and treasured) guest of our unit at various events – he lived for many years in the Ann Arbor area. While he wasn’t in the famed photo himself, he was there when it happened. (Specifically, there are multiple “takes” of the photo – he was part of a group trying to gather rocks to better anchor the flagpole when the final photo was taken.) He can be found in other photographs in front of the flag that day.

While Sgt Rodriguez has long since passed, it’s special to me that I’ll finish my first marathon at a world-famous monument to a group of Marines – one of whom I was fortunate enough to know.