There is a conversation doing the rounds this week about a competitor whose race ended in the kind of physical humiliation most of us have quietly feared since our first school sports day. I am not going to dwell on it, because the interesting part is not the incident — it is how many people replied with some version of "this is why I have never signed up for anything". Fear of your own digestive system should not be the thing standing between you and a start line. And the good news is that, for most healthy amateurs, race-day gut trouble is largely a fuelling and pacing problem, not a personal failing.
The week before: eat like you already trained for this
The single most common mistake is treating race week as a nutritional fresh start. People who have eaten porridge every morning for three months suddenly buy a pouch of gels they have never tried, a new electrolyte powder in an exciting flavour, and a big celebratory dinner the night before at a restaurant they have never been to. Your gut is trainable, but it is not adventurous under stress. Whatever you plan to eat on race morning should have been rehearsed at least twice during hard training sessions.
Through the week, keep carbohydrate on the plate at every meal — rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, oats — and let the portions of very high-fibre and very high-fat foods drift down a little as the day approaches. This is not a diet, and it is not an excuse to under-eat. Under-fuelling in race week is its own problem: it leaves you flat, irritable and far more likely to over-compensate with a panic breakfast.
