On monday I will be running the mile in school. Normally I get, well last yr for instance, was 9min. ish (bad I know). That was when I was much heavier. I have biked all last summer, and lost about 25 pounds since.
Is there anything I can take prior to running that will help me with endurance? I just got back on the bike 2 days ago after taking about 3-4 weeks off from a messed up chain. Im still a big guy..6'3 225, but Im not a horrible runner. It's going to be 80 out, yikes.
I thought about liquid l-carnitine maybe 30 min before or right right before. Should I drink a lot of water? I get pretty thirsty running.

The mile run burns a lot of glycogen. The day before, drink two bottles of a sports drink like Poweraid or Cytomax. Have a high carb dinner, but don't eat too much. The next day have a high carb meal and 16 oz. of water about 3 hours before your run. Then don't eat anything more. You can have a coffee about an hour before the run if you like.

Good advice. The prehydration with sport drink instead of water is key. If you drink way too much water the day before you will washout minerals and end up retaining LESS water.

I would use a Redbull instead of the coffee.

Make sure you get a good warm up.

Ideally you'll start a short effort like the mile with your HR already up, and a sweat on.

- If you drink coffee, stop for a few days before the event. On the morning of the event, have some.

- Take a good dump right before the event. Don't eat anything after you do.

- As suggested, a good (thorough) warm-up. Easy jog for 15-30 minutes followed by some 10 second sprints. Not too hard though.

- Leave the HRM home; use perceived effort.

- If you are running with others, after about a lap, mentally hook yourself to someone directly in front of you. Watch their back. Focus on their back and how their jersey is moving and flowing with the wind. Think of nothing else but staying hooked to them.

- Don't start too fast.

- Use self-talk when it starts to get tough. Allow only positive thoughts. Tell the bad thoughts to "ef-off".

- Breath! Don't worry about how you sound. Get the air in.

Drinking 2 bottles of gatorade the day before is just going to convert and store the glycogen as fat. Pre-hydrate w/water until you pee clear and drink the gatorade the day of the run.

Like someone else said, caffeine and pace yourself. I'm sure they are going to make you wear the HR monitor, so ignore the numbers (running HR is almost always higher than riding). Remember, pain is temporary but pride is forever. If you cramp on the left (leg or side), breathe out when your left leg hits the ground, visa versa for a right side cramp.

Ahhh, I love the mile!

+ Drink all your water at least two hours before your race
+ Definitely take a dump.
+ Definitely don't eat a deep fried burrito prior to your race. Eat easily digested food that you can imagine dissolving quickly and completely in your stomach acid. Shakes and smoothies. Very low in fat.
+ Break your goal time down into lap times -- you might make 2:00 laps a goal. PACE YOURSELF!

+1

If you run an unsteady pace (slow down then pick it up) it becomes mentally challenging and more fatigueing. 2 min is a great goal, and will beat last years time by 1min.

Good luck.

I think the advice above is great. I want to echo and emphasize the importance of pacing yourself. For reference, my mile PR is 4:32 - though that wasn't recently. In the excitment of starting it is really easy to run the first lap too hard. I think shooting for 2:00 laps is a good goal. But don't go any faster than that. If you do you kind of think, "wow, I still feel good so now I have that extra time in bank". The reality is that you just spent on your credit card - and will pay for it at the end of the race. Start nice and easy and if you feel really good, kick it up about halfway through the third lap.

Wow you guys are great, thanks! I'll tell you how it all works out.

ONLY if his muscular glycogen levels are fully stocked up would the excess be converted to fat. Drinking 300 calories of Gatorade with dinner isn't going to be a problem, but it's not gonna be much help either. That mile will burn off 100-calories of glycogen regardless of speed, so there's really no need to carbo-load or even worry about energy levels.

If your stomach can handle it, drink 2-tablespoons of baking-soda in 8-oz. of water about 15-minutes before the run. It helps fight the lactic-acid burn. Although I've found this to be more helpful for short-sprints like 440s where 1-2 seconds makes a bigger difference than 5-seconds in a mile.

And a mile run is far from endurance. Your limiting factor in speed will be muscular-strength and aerobic-capacity anyway. I did 4:45 miles in HS as well as cross-country. What it takes to be the best at either one is very, very different. But you can however, be good at both.

Agreed, the reason for the sport drink is not to prevent bonking or dehydration as the mile is far too short to cause those. However, prehydration with an electrolyte & carb beverage is still important as this maximizes blood plasma volume with a nice electrolyte balance. The mile is a VO2 max type effort where a large blood plasma volume will really help.

The ‘lytes are important to prevent cramping when working at high intensities, which will surly slow you down.

The carbs still play are role too, even though the muscle glycogen stores will hardly be touched the athlete needs to prevent low blood sugar which will reduce muscle fiber activation due to a central governor mechanism.

As for the person who thinks that carbs the day before an event are only turned to fat consider this. If the 500kcal or so in two bottles of sport drinks were actually stored as fat the weight gain would be around 0.14 pounds (500/3500 = 0.14lb). Experimentally we find that people gain closer to 3-4lbs of body weight due to the fact that glycogen hydrates are considerably heavier on a caloric basis than fat.

Fascinating thread guys, thanks.

I'd be interested to know what Danno and Enthalpic in particular study(ied) in school. Sports med? Bio-chem? Art History?

MP3 player+Devil Driver's Swinging the Dead=7 min. mile

Now I'm confused.

Just “plain” chem… all this exercise physiology and nutrition gibberish is just a hobby of mine. That’s the beauty of chemistry; you can poke your finger into any of the sciences, even if they don’t want you there!

I now work as a custodian.

Microbiology with an emphasis in physiology and endocrinology. But it was really the 10-years of racing that taught me everything.

Should I prehydrate today and tomorrow on SmartWater w/ electrolytes, and have pasta tonight?

Bike riding during last summer and running the mile are much different, even if you lost 25 pounds since then. The weight loss will make you feel much lighter and will help if you have good running form.

Your specific question about how to gain endurance thru nutrition by Monday?

Just run.

Well I would like to avoid cramping and know when and what to eay, and to have a decent performance.

I was a miler in H.S. (4:28 PR), and from my experience you need not get too torqued up about hydration and carbo-loading. As someone else mentioned, it's not an endurance event, although you probably wont believe it during your last 200 meters. Filling your legs chock full of glycogen could actually make you feel sluggish-- and given so much of all this is psychological, you really don't need that. As as far as hydration goes: most of the sweating you do will be done after the race.

Most of the advice so far in this thread has been spot on. Just don't get too carried away. Eat sensibly the two days prior to the event and eat very light on the day of.

Hopefully I didn't confuse you. My point was that mostly my ability to sprint (I'm a marathoner) a mile would be based off something motivating me, aka some serious hard, fast music.

I played Devil Driver's Swinging the Dead on repeat during my most recent 5k and ran it in 26 without actually breaking a sweet or getting burned.


Nutritionally, think of food as fuel, give yourself what you need and nothing more and you'll do fine in any race when it comes to running. If you underfeed the machine, you will bonk. That simple. I wouldn't take on any voodoo this close to a run like that though, pills and **** tend to react differently with people, and the last thing you want is some gastric issue just before a run like that.

/shrug - run well

Well it wasn't today but I went ahead and ran it for kicks, and after getting sick in the bathroom 20min before running (from taking 2g liquid l-carnitine, and a starbucks espresso) I felt ok to run. I managed to get 2 full laps and a fairly quick speed without stopping, and usually I could only make about a lap and a half so that helped. I think it took about 8.25min. Right now I feel great.

hey, nice work, man!

...I bet if you don't puke next time you may hit 8 min! Or better yet, don't drink anything unusual prior to the run that way you will absorb the liquids and energy rather then puking it up...

When I was just a freshmen in H.S. there was an all-american runner in my area named Joe Thedford. He ran the 3,200 meter (2 mile) in something like 9:15 (amazing). He used to puke before every race.

A lot of people do. Nerves, ya know? You are in good company!