how to build a weekly meal plan for a 2:33 marathon runner

It’s funny how far fewer people can run a 2:33 marathon than those who want to know what a 2:33 marathoner eats (and how they train, and whether they’re human or not). Lucky for you, and for me, I have the joy each week of feeding both a 2:33 marathoner (David) and a solid middle of the pack marathoner (me.) If you are a 2:33 marathoner or slower, or anyone who has things to do with your life besides cook and eat, these guidelines for meal planning may be helpful for you, like they have for David and me.

Even though I love taking the time to plan and cook and shop and prep, I don’t have time every single week to reinvent the wheel when it comes to meal planning, and I don’t have the mental space to optimize every meal for maximal nutrition or aesthetic or whatever. This is where having some routine and rhythm to the week really helps me out. Your week may look a little different than ours does, you may hate cooking or you may not eat red meat, or you may want to do more take out or convenience foods. If you just hate having a plan and like to wing it- you go girl! I can only dream of being so free spirited.

Our week is mostly planned around a list of constraints:

We eat red meat on Mondays
We eat no dairy, and nothing super spicy on Tuesdays
We eat big on Wednesdays.
Thursdays have historically been busy days and late nights.
We try to practice mini carb loads on Fridays.
My husband is sensitive to dairy, and I don’t do well with legumes or spicy food before a harder effort run.

The why behind this list of constraints is probably more helpful than just the list of rules:

Red Meat Mondays: Mondays are a rest day in our house. We don’t run, and outside of maybe taking our toddler to school on the bike and walking our dog, there’s not a lot of activity. A bunch of other far more qualified people have written about the importance of having a dedicated rest day– most popularly in my circles, David Roche. One thing that I learned working with Stevie Lyn Smith is that your body absorbs iron a little better on a rest day. We rest on Mondays, so we eat red meat on Mondays. I try to also toss in extra dark leafy greens on Mondays, and eat some citrus fruit or have a glass of OJ.

Tuesday nights are to get ready for Wednesday mornings. We do workouts on Wednesdays, these are just harder runs, where my stomach may be a little more sensitive. This means that on Tuesday nights, we don’t do a ton of fiber- though we still eat vegetables! No lentils on Tuesdays is probably the clearest example of an adjustment I try to make for fiber here. We also don’t do any dairy to meet my husband’s lactose intolerant needs. A good rice bowl usually fits the bill here, and the ability to riff on a rice bowl is endless.

On Wednesday nights, we eat big. You should be eating enough every day of the week, but Wednesday is the day where if I want to make something heartier, something with a bunch of cheese, something a little richer, I go for it. Our Thursday runs are easy so we have more flexibility there, and the most important thing is to refuel after the big Wednesday workouts we’ve done.

Historically Thursdays were a long and busy work day for me, so it was a great day to eat leftovers, or throw something in the crockpot. One downside of leftovers, is they may not be enough food! This is when I love a convenience food add on- microwaveable bags of rice, a frozen pizza, a box of mac and cheese, they all get the job done. Thursday meals are often not very aesthetic, they may be mismatched, and they often include something someone else might point to as overly processed. This is a great practice for me, and likely for most people to remember the concept of a “business feeding” (Another freebie from my time working with Stevie for all of you!) sometimes, you have to just eat. Your job is to fuel your body, so do the business, eat the food. I heard this referred to as an “eat to live” meal recently as well. You have to eat, you probably want to eat something that makes you feel pretty good, and it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Leftovers, crockpot meals, microwaveable, pre packaged, there’s room for it, even in a nicely planned week.

Fridays, like Tuesdays, are about setting us up for the next day. We do long runs on Saturdays, so we usually do a carb heavy meal on Fridays, and if needed, go light on the dairy again. Practicing a bit of carb loading is a great way to make sure that come race day, you aren’t feeling constipated and bloated and are actually ready to race. It helps you dial in how to get something delicious in, and something that will actually fuel your Saturday long run. Really figuring out a carb load takes time and effort and I recommend checking out a sports dietitian’s recommendations, and trying it a couple times before your race.

For us, weekends are for fun- we eat out, I might try a complicated new recipe, or make a bigger batch of something we like to have in the freezer for a future busy Thursday.¹

It’s helpful that we have so much weekend cooking flexibility, and that my husband and I are on the same running schedule. We have refined these constraints over time, with the partnership and support of a great dietitian. Your running schedule might be different, and you will have to refine your constraints by learning to listen to your body and recognizing the existing rhythms in your life too. As usual, if you can work with a dietitian to get the most out of your “constraint discovery process,” I strongly recommend it!

A few months ago I tried to build a weekly meal planner around this concept of constraints on the week- you can check it out here. It’s okay with me if your favorite feature is when you drop a recipe link, all of the commentary about the food bloggers Great Aunt Pearl who taught them to add a dash of Tabasco to their waffles is easily removed, and you only get the recipe. AI for good, am I right? If you love or hate anything else about it, please let me know!

1.This is a huge privilege, to be able to eat out a couple times a week, and keep our freezer stocked. If you also have that privilege during the weekends, consider checking out Lasagna Love, where you can either donate funds, or your skills and time to bake a lasagna (or something similar) and drop it off to a family in your local community: https://lasagnalove.org/volunteer