Top 10 foods for female runners

From ensuring you get the right amount of protein, carbohydrates and fats through to hydrating yourself before, during and after a run, there’s more to fuelling your running than you might think.
Here's our top 10 guide to the most useful foods for female runners including the vital elements such as pasta, protein, fluids and snacks.

The top 10 foods for runners...

•    Pasta.  Even a novice runner will likely be able to tell you that the best food to support your run training is pasta. Pasta is ideally suited to fuelling your training and racing, as it is easily digestible and provides slow-release energy, which is particularly suitable for endurance events. What’s great too is that that pasta is an excellent low-fat staple so shouldn’t add to those hips even if you don’t manage to run it all off.

•    Bananas.  Bananas are the healthy equivalent of fast food, requiring no preparation, and coming in its own bio-degradable wrapper. Bananas are great for rapid re-fuelling – the more ripe the banana the quicker the energy ‘hit’. If you’re looking for slower-release energy, choose greener fruit. Riper fruit has more fruit sugar – which makes it ideal for your post-run snack.

•    Water. Water is a key component for everyone, especially runners. Anyone running will lose an amount of fluid through sweating, so this means that even  in winter you will still have pay attention to hydrating properly. Runners should continually top up fluid levels - and drinking water is the cheapest and easiest way to do this. Two litres of water per day should be your basic target, but this will increase with your training and on hot days.

•    Glucose drinks. In addition to water, glucose drink should have a place in the runner’s nutrition plan. Energy drinks will support your running, especially on long distance races, but there are also of vital importance to women after a training session. The optimum period for refuelling is 15 minutes after a run. This is when the body is most receptive to restocking your fuel tanks. A glucose drink helps both re-fuel and re-hydrate at the same time!

•    Porridge. Porridge is a great start to your day, consisting of unprocessed oats – and little else. Being sure to make it with skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, as this will and it will provide the perfect combination of protein, fibre and slow-release energy. Porridge doesn’t have to be consumed at the start of your day, but can also be eaten pre-race, pre-training run. Beware of porridge look-alikes, such as instant varieties or oaty-type cereals, because they are sugar-filled and less suitable than simple porridge.

•    Other breakfast cereals. Not quite as ideal as porridge, but still excellent runner’s foods are breakfast cereals such as muesli and wheat biscuits. Avoid the high-sugar, high-fat options, and these will provide your with a great start to the day or as an superb pre-event running foods. The best advice is to avoid the cereals marketed towards children because nutritionally they are nutritionally poor will not ideally prepare you for a run.

•    Cereal bars. A cereal bar is extremely handy easy-to-pack option which you can consume before, during, or after a run. Having a long shelf life, unlike other foods such as bananas, they can even last a few weeks knocking around in your kit bag, so are excellent standbys. Beware of some cereal bars that have as much fat and sugar in them as a chocolate bars. Ladies, you have been warned! Make sure you read your labels and choose bars that have as few ingredients as possible.

•    Rice. Like pasta, rice is also a great energy provider for those long endurance runs. Best option is to go for boiled or steamed rice rather than fried rice, as frying add loads of unnecessary calories which you’re actually trying to burn off.  If you can, select wholegrain varieties such as brown rice which contain more fibre and help with the slow-release energy process.

•    Fruit and vegetables. We all know of the virtues of following a five-a-day strategy, but as a runner you should try and consume even more because overall nutrition requirements are greater. Choose darker varieties of vegetable, for example, broccoli which has far more iron in it than iceberg lettuce. Any fruit or vegetable darker in colour will generally contain more nutrients. Look for Edamame or soybeans in the freezer section of the supermarket and keep a bag in your freezer. These beans are brimming with protein, fibre, folate, magnesium, potassium, vitamin K and vitamin C. Plus, in just one cup there's 20 percent of the daily requirement for iron. Menstrual blood loss and insufficient intake causes many pre-menopausal women have depleted iron stores.

•    Lean meat and fish. Protein is one of the building blocks essential to repairing the small microscopic tears in the muscles caused by running, and one of the best sources of this is lean meat and fish. A runner in heavy training may need as much as 1.5g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day, which is a considerable amount to get through per day. Try to include protein with each meal, and focus on animal types over vegetable proteins, although vegetable proteins should not be neglected.

If you’re setting out on the road as runner, it’s worth bearing in mind that a diet of pasta alone doesn’t make for a balanced nutrition plan. If you want to really focus on your running then it makes sense to follow a healthy diet in general, and monitor how much fluid and protein you consume. By doing this you will be better prepared, recover quicker and avoid the risk of over-training, illness or injury.