RP Reviews: Practical Fueling for Endurance Athletes

The nutrition guide you’ve been waiting for

As a general rule, it’s extremely difficult to find practical nutrition advice for runners. Most of what you might come across from respectable medical journals is geared toward ordinary average humans, not those of us who run several times a week, burning thousands of calories in the process.

As runners, we’re simply operating under a different nutritional paradigm than the majority of the population. As endurance athletes, we not only can eat a lot more than the average person, we should eat a lot more to properly fuel our training. That doesn’t mean we can eat anything we want regardless of nutritional value. Especially in middle age, to be an endurance athlete is to be international about the food we put in our bodies.

Unfortunately, most of what you find online is inherently trash, whether it’s crash diets, weird gimmicks, or wacky supplements. Whatever utility may be gained from such approaches (say, intermittent fasting as a precursor to fat adaptation) gets washed away in a torrent of marketing bullshit selling quick fixes and one-size fits all novelties.

So, it was with great delight that I happened upon Kylee Van Horn’s, “Practical Fueling for Endurance Athletes” at my local bookstore. With informative chapters on supplements, specialized diets, and what Van Horn calls, “Considerations for the Female Athlete,” her book checks a lot of necessary boxes.

And by providing practical guidance on meeting nutritional needs during all phases of training including performance and recovery, Van Horn accomplishes her mission of separating facts from fads. As an added bonus, there’s also dozens of recipes ranging from apple cinnamon smoothies to spiced sweet potato muffins.

Our review continues for paid subscribers behind the paywall.