Q&A: How I Fuel My Training
Fasted morning runs, afternoon doubles, gels, and the post-workout nutrition study that changed what I do.
Greetings!
Today’s Q&A is basically four versions of the same question:
What do you eat before really early runs?
What about when you train in the afternoon?
What do you eat during your runs?
And what do you eat afterward?
So, really, this is just a post about how I think about fueling before, during, and after exercise.
I like talking about this stuff because sports nutrition is one of those areas where I enjoy reading the research, but I also really enjoy experimenting on myself (usually as a result of research I read).
And I should say right up front that this is what I do. It is not necessarily what I think everyone should do… although I hope there’s some utility in the information I provide.
In fact, in at least one case, what I do probably isn’t what I’d call “optimal.”
Anyway. Let’s start with the most common question.
“What do you eat before those 5:30 a.m. runs?”
Nothing.
That’s the short answer.
Basically every day of the week, my primary workout happens very early in the morning. I’m usually starting around 5:30 a.m., sometimes a little earlier if I’m riding. And I pretty consistently do those workouts without eating beforehand.
Part of this is purely logistical. I already wake up around 4:30 (I hate waking up and immediately rushing into a workout). I want an hour to drink some coffee, listen to a podcast, walk around the house, loosen up a little bit, and generally become a functioning human being before heading out the door.
Could I eat a banana or a granola bar during that hour? Sure. I have a pretty strong stomach, so I suspect I’d tolerate it just fine. I just… don’t really want to.
There’s something liberating about not having another thing to think about at 4:45 in the morning. I don’t have to worry about digestion, whether something is going to sit weird in my stomach, whether I’m going to need to use the bathroom again, etc.
What do I do? I wake up. I have espresso. I drink maybe 8–12 ounces of an electrolyte drink. And then I run or ride. For most of my normal morning sessions—say, 90 minutes and sometimes approaching two hours—that works perfectly well for me.
Now, do I think that’s necessarily optimal? Probably not. If you can comfortably eat before an early-morning workout, particularly before harder or longer training, I think there’s a very good argument for doing it. But there’s also a difference between “optimal” and something I’m willing to consistently do at 5 a.m. So this is just one of those trade-offs I’ve made. I’ve been running early in the morning without breakfast for most of my running life. I tolerate it well. I generally feel good doing it. And I haven’t felt a compelling reason to completely abandon it.
What I have changed is what happens afterward (more on that in a minute).
“What about when you run in the afternoon?”
This is almost the complete opposite.
A few times per week, I’ll train twice in a day. I’ll do the main run or ride in the morning and then another run or ride in the afternoon. Those afternoon workouts are definitely fueled, but I don’t have some elaborate pre-workout protocol. I’ve simply eaten normally.
I’ll have breakfast after my morning session.
I’ll eat lunch around noon or 1 p.m.
Then I’ll usually do the second workout somewhere around 3:30 or 4.
Depending on how I’m feeling and how long it’s been since lunch, I might have something small before heading out (e.g., an energy gel, a banana, a few dates, an energy bar, something like that). Basically just enough carbohydrate that I’m not starting the workout hungry. But most of the fueling has already happened during the day, and it’s usually plenty to get me through the second workout.
So there’s a funny contrast between my morning and afternoon sessions:
Morning: basically nothing.
Afternoon: two meals and possibly a snack.
Very scientific(?)
“What do you eat during your runs?”
This technically wasn’t one of the questions, but it feels impossible to talk about pre- and post-workout nutrition without talking about what happens in the middle.
This is also an area where I’ve admittedly been inconsistent.
My natural tendency has always been something like: “If I feel fine without fueling, do I really need to?”
I’ve gotten better about this. For me, 90 minutes is roughly where I start thinking about bringing carbohydrates into the picture. If I’m going out for around 90 minutes, I’ll usually bring a gel. I might take it somewhere around halfway through the run or 45–60 minutes in.
Once the run gets longer than that, fueling becomes more deliberate. My long run is the one session each week where I really try to make this a priority, not just because I want to feel better during the run, but because I’ve noticed that I recover better and I’m much less likely to spend the rest of the day feeling like a zombie. For a normal long run where I’m not preparing for a race or doing some particularly demanding workout, I’ll usually shoot for somewhere around 40–60 grams of carbohydrate per hour.
On a two-hour run, for example, that might mean three gels spread across the run, plus some carbohydrate in my hydration.
I’ve also been carrying a lot more fluid lately (it’s hot in Texas), so I’ll often use a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink in addition to gels.
Could I fuel more aggressively? Yep.
And if I were training specifically for a race where I planned to consume a lot of carbohydrate, I’d want to practice that in training. But for normal everyday long runs, I don’t feel the need to turn every session into an eating contest (the kids these days call it “carbmaxxing”).
I’m trying to take in enough that the workout stays productive and I recover well afterward. That’s the goal.
“What do you eat after your workouts?”
This is probably the part of my nutrition routine that has changed the most.
Let’s start with the normal scenario.
I’ve just finished an early-morning workout. I haven’t eaten breakfast. I’ve probably been exercising for 90 minutes or longer.
I’m hungry. So I eat breakfast. Nothing revolutionary here.
My go-to is usually a Greek yogurt and granola bowl: Greek yogurt, a few servings of granola, banana, dates, maybe some blueberries. And quite often I’ll eat two of them.
Alternatively, I’ll have one yogurt-and-granola bowl along with avocado toast and a couple of eggs. It really depends whether I’m in more of a sweet-breakfast or hearty-breakfast mood, to be honest.
That’s basically my “recovery meal.” If I’m home and I can eat actual food, I’d rather just eat actual food instead of a protein shake, energy bar, or sports nutrition product.
But what if I can’t eat breakfast right away? This happens pretty frequently on weekends.
Maybe I finish my workout, and my wife, son, and I are going somewhere for breakfast, which means maybe there’s going to be an hour or 90 minutes between finishing the run and actually sitting down for a meal.
This is where I use what I think of as a nutrition bridge. I might have a carbohydrate-heavy bar with 40–50 grams of carbohydrate and pair that with another bar containing a decent amount of protein and some carbohydrates.
That’s not my ideal post-workout breakfast, but it gets a few hundred calories and some carbohydrate and protein into me immediately, and then I can eat an actual meal later. I’ve become much more intentional about doing this because of one particular study.
I wrote about this back in 2024, and it’s one of those studies that genuinely changed something I was doing.
In the study, the participants performed a hard interval cycling session—10 × 2-minute intervals at around 94% of peak power—and then recovered under two different conditions.
In one condition, they started consuming carbohydrate immediately after exercise, getting 2.4 grams per kilogram of body weight during the first three hours.
In the other condition, they consumed only water for those first three hours and delayed the carbohydrate until later.
Total carbohydrate intake across the entire 24-hour recovery period was the same.
The next day, they repeated high-intensity interval exercise. And the people who had delayed their post-workout carbohydrates performed worse. The delayed-carbohydrate condition resulted in about five fewer intervals completed, on average, along with ratings of perceived exertion roughly two points higher. Yet by 24 hours, muscle glycogen and the molecular responses the researchers measured were similar between conditions.
My old thinking was basically: “Who cares if I don’t eat for a couple of hours? As long as I eventually replace the calories and carbohydrates, my glycogen will be back tomorrow.”
And, at least in this study, the glycogen part wasn’t entirely wrong, but performance was still worse!
When the goal is maximizing next-day high-intensity exercise capacity and your recovery window is 24 hours or less, there appears to be an advantage to beginning carbohydrate refueling promptly rather than waiting several hours.
It’s a tiny study, but it changed my behavior. I no longer think, I’ll eat eventually, so it doesn’t matter.
Now I think: Can I get some carbohydrate into my body reasonably soon after this workout, even if it’s not a perfect meal?
If all I can get is an energy bar within 30 minutes, great. Then I’ll eat breakfast later. And I think this matters especially for me because I’m often doing another session later that day or training again the following morning. And maybe you are too.
And yes, I’m experimenting with post-workout ketones.
I’ve been taking a shot of Ketone-IQ after exercise most days, usually alongside my post-workout meal. I’m still treating this very much as an experiment rather than something I think everyone needs to be doing. And disclosure: I do receive some product from the company, which makes experimenting with it considerably easier because ketones are not exactly a cheap supplement.
I’ve posted separately about some of the emerging research on post-exercise ketones, and I’ll probably have more to say about my experience with them eventually.
My overall nutrition philosophy
If there’s one theme here, it’s probably that I don’t think every workout needs to be maximally fueled to be useful.
At the same time, I’ve moved pretty decisively away from the idea that fueling doesn’t matter as long as you eventually “make up the calories.”
Most of the time, I want to fuel the work.
Long runs get carbohydrates.
Hard sessions get carbohydrates.
Afternoon workouts happen after I’ve eaten.
After training, I want to start the recovery process relatively quickly (especially if the workout was done sans fueling).
But am I still going to head out the door at 5:30 tomorrow morning with nothing but coffee and electrolytes in me?
Almost certainly.
That’s the part of sports nutrition that I think gets lost sometimes. There are general principles. There is good research. There are practices that are probably more or less optimal. And then there is you and me—our schedule, our stomach, our preferences, and our unique training and life context.
Figuring out how all of those things fit together is half the fun!
So I’m curious…
What’s one nutrition change you’ve made that gave you a surprisingly big payoff?
And, because I know this one will generate opinions:
Fasted training—useful tool or something you avoid entirely?
Thanks for the questions. I’m having fun with these shorter Q&A posts, so keep them coming.
Thanks for reading.
~Brady~
I live in Ohio, very humid in the summer, a big change I have made this year when cycling or running is trying to get down at least 16oz or 500mL of fluid per hour, usually a carb / electrolyte drink. I have felt much better during and recovered better. I have not changed how many carbs per hour, but this alone I think has helped a lot especially on 90+ minute sessions.