Yes, you should fuel during your half marathon!

The half marathon is a fun race distance. Not as all-consuming as a full marathon, not as painful as a 5k; it’s a fantastic challenge at just the right distance to be a bit confusing. One big question is whether you should be fueling during the race. In general, a half marathon may take recreational runners anywhere from an hour and fifteen minutes to two and a half hours.

On average, a runner who has fully carb loaded and topped off their glycogen stores completely can support about 90 minutes worth of activity before those stores are depleted. For many runners, their half marathon will last well beyond this time frame. Taking in fuel during the race will ensure that you have adequate carbohydrates to keep pushing through without either hitting the wall or experiencing reduced energy.

For those fast runners that are running your races in a shorter time, you can still benefit from fueling during the race. The high, sustained level of effort at that pace burns more carbohydrates per mile and research has shown that intake of carbohydrate can increase performance.

During periods of exercise, your body wants to burn the easily accessible carbohydrates in simple sugars. It requires less energy to process and is more readily available.

Your body has other mechanisms to fuel activity if you do run out of glycogen, namely fat burning (and even protein), but this is much less efficient and doesn’t support the level of performance that you are trying to achieve in a race.

Ultimately, even if you can race a half marathon without taking fuel, you won’t be optimizing your performance on race day should you decide to do so.

Ideally, for your half marathon, you want to be fueling with 30-60g of carbs per hour. This would look like taking a gel, carbohydrate drink, or chews in approximately 2 servings of 20g of carbs during (example: a gel at mile 4 and mile 8 during). For racers that anticipate being out on course over 2 hours, aiming for 60-80g per hour.

You’ve trained for this race, take every opportunity to capitalize on all of the hard work you put in. Don’t leave performance on the table; fuel your half marathon!