As someone who started running last year and is working towards running marathons this year, I'd love to hear any tips you have for plant-based nutrition specifically for long-distance running! I have lots of friends who are vegans and lots who are runners but there isn't much overlap...
Well part of turning towards a more vegetarian/vegan diet came with running for me in fact, if you try to take it more seriously then healthy lifestyle is part of of it, and your diet is one of the most important part of your lifestyle.
If long running efforts is your thing (I'm thinking of marathon really there, 10k is too short, half it depends of your speed but it's too short for most too) then a big part of diet change was switching to eating much more fat based foods, I'm eating nuts daily (almonds, cashew, pistacho, wallnuts...), much increased veggies/fruits intake both in quantity and variety like crazy, eat more carbs (if possible "whole" rice/pasta/breadà almost entirely cut sugary/salty preprocessed foods etc.
Basically my diet looks like something like this (running 5/week with 2 more intense workout and a week-end long run, ~70k and in the process of increasing)
Breakfast : Plain oats with almond milk sugar free and some freshed slice fruits on top of it (raspberry, pear, apple, pineapple... whatever I have on that day), half a glass of orange juice with a bit of spirulina powder. The week-end I change oats to something akin to
Smacks but organic and with 0 added sugar still with same almond milk, I eat half of what I eat oats during the week in quantity, still with freshed slice fruits and then eat 3-4-5
wasa toasts with nuts butter on it (I have like 5-6 different types, mixing different kinds of nuts/seeds).
Recovery drink post hard workout (Tuesday-Thursday) : I use an organic whey powder, like 10-15g mixed with 40cl of water, I have bought a plant based equivalent recently and the plan is to switch to that gradually
Lunch : Whatever is available at work, always take a big chunk of vegetables, carbs quantity I adjust depending on how I feel and this is where I might take fish/chicken once in a while because the choices available are dreadful at time..., desert is what the sliced fruit is available, it's often melon/pineapple/mango
At home I have a variety of plants based potein dishes available so it's more convenient, fruits are also of course magnitudes better
4PM snack : One banana, 30-40g of nuts, on workout days I also have
4 cookies rich with nutrients/vitamins and much less added sugar than usual (it took me months and carefully looking at info in supermarkets to finally settle for that one), sometimes I have my own made energy balls (this is
where I started from, medjoul dattes are some kind of sorcery for real) as well instead
Dinner : Nothing special, same as if lunch was at home, I try to make it a bit lighter though and often finish with a small chocolate hovering in the 80-90% cacao range (it's hard for me to eat something which has less than 70% recently, the taste of sugar just overflows in the mouth and it's really unpleasant). I take some
Skyr occasionally if I feel like I might be lacking in protein, or some
alpro yogurt (apparently they've made a plant based skyr recently, it's not available where I live but I'll check it when it is)
If possible I would like to avoid preprocessed food whatsoever, including the plant based of course, but it's more of a very long term goal.
As an asides, I never drank coffee (never liked the taste), never smoke (what's the point ?), barely drink alcohool (never really liked the taste, and god knows I tried a lot of things and also in quantity over time, beer juste never ever sat with me, and ironically it takes a lot for me to get drunk), sleep an healthy amount (think 8h minimum, and 8h45 on average)
If you have anything more specific to ask feel free to do so.
