Your long run isn’t just about training your legs. It’s your opportunity to practise your entire race day strategy, hydration, carbohydrate, caffeine, timing, all of it and yet it’s one of the most commonly skipped parts of training.
Here’s what we’d want every runner to know before their next big race.
Why your long run is your rehearsal, not just your fitness session
It’s tempting to think of long runs purely as a fitness test, more miles, more time on feet, more endurance but your long run is also the only real opportunity you get to rehearse everything you’ll do on race day itself, under genuinely similar conditions.
That means testing:
- What gels, chews, or drinks you’ll actually carry and use
- How much carbohydrate your body can comfortably handle per hour
- Whether caffeine helps you or just makes you jittery
- How your stomach responds to fuel at different points in a long effort
- Your hydration and electrolyte needs across varying paces and temperatures
None of this is guesswork if you treat your long runs as practice, not just training.
Top tips for testing your race-day fuelling
- Test early, not just in your final few long runs. Give yourself several long runs across your training block to experiment, not just your last one or two before the taper. You want time to adjust if something doesn’t sit right.
- Change one variable at a time. If you introduce a new gel, a new hydration mix, and caffeine all on the same run, you won’t know which one caused which reaction. Isolate variables where you can.
- Pay attention, not just consume. Taking fuel isn’t the same as testing it. Actually notice how your stomach feels, how your energy holds up, and whether you’d want to repeat that exact fuelling plan on race day itself.
- Practise your actual race day timing. If your race has aid stations at specific intervals, try to mimic that spacing in training rather than fuelling whenever it’s convenient.
- Test caffeine specifically, and carefully. Caffeine affects everyone differently, some runners find it sharpens focus and energy, others find it unsettles their stomach or overstimulates them. Never trial caffeine for the first time on race morning.
Common race-day fuelling mistakes to avoid
- Trying a brand new gel or chew on race day because it was in your race pack or handed out at an expo
- Not practising drinking while moving at race pace, which feels different to sipping on an easy run
- Assuming more carbohydrate is always better, without testing what your gut can actually tolerate
- Ignoring how heat or humidity changes your hydration needs compared to your usual training conditions
- Skipping a fuelling plan altogether and just “seeing how it goes,” which usually goes fine, until it doesn’t
The bigger picture: this is what good fuelling coaching looks like
There’s no single fuelling plan that works for every runner. Your ideal race day strategy depends on your training, your goals, your gut tolerance, and how your body responds to different fuel sources, which is exactly why generic advice like “just take a gel every 45 minutes” often falls short.
This is the thinking behind our Fuel to Thrive and Fuel to Perform coaching support: understanding your training, your goals, your body, and your fuelling, then building a strategy you can actually trust on race day, not guess at.
If you’re heading into a big race and you’re still not sure your fuelling plan will hold up, we’d love to help you test, adjust, and build a strategy that’s actually yours.
Want support building your race-day fuelling strategy? Book a free chat HERE – we would love to help.