Running blog series: Part 5: Nutrition for runners:
Here is the latest article in the running blog series. This particular article will focus on nutrition for runners. The average individual expends 1,800 to 3,000 calories per day but some athletes can use more than 10,000 calories depending on the sport (Wilmore & Costill 1994). So that’s quite a window (3,000 to 10,000) So that’s not overly helpful . What do the professional athletes eat? Men consumed 3,055 calories per day, while the women consumed 2,391. On average, they got 27% of their calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 55% from carbohydrate (Erdman et al 2013). However these athletes weren’t all endurance athletes but it gives us a good idea. So what do the elite Kenyan distance runners consume? Well it depends on the gender, the distance they run and the bodyweight that they are, but generally it’s around 5000 calories on average and this is broken down as follows: About 10.4 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight (Onywer