Today’s question on Ask Coach Parry was submitted by Hein Gerike. He says he is a first time Comrades Marathon runner in 2015 and would like some advice on snacks and eats on race day.

He is not a big fan of gels, he therefore prefers water and coke for his liquid intake. During marathons ener-jelly sweets and small potatoes.

As the Comrades Marathon is not doable with limited food intake, he needs some advice and ideas on what he needs to practice on his long runs.

Brad Brown: Today’s question on Ask Coach Parry was submitted by Hein Gerike. He says he is a first time Comrades Marathon runner in 2015 and would like some advice on snacks and eats on race day.

He is not a big fan of gels, he therefore prefers water and coke for his liquid intake. During marathons ener-jelly sweets and small potatoes.

As the Comrades Marathon is not doable with limited food intake, he needs some advice and ideas on what he needs to practice on his long runs.

There is variety

Lindsey Parry: On the Comrades Marathon route, there are a lot of options. Fortunately for him they will have coke and they will have water. Then they will also have potato chips, salted potatoes, bananas, oranges, they will probably have ener-jellies as well as other little sweets.

Some of the water stations will have chocolates. So there is a wide variety of things that he could use. I would now – because there is plenty of time – start experimenting with things that he can also carry. He doesn’t like gels, but there are other products on the market.

Gu has ‘gumshots’, Powerbar also has a jelly type of thing and 32GI has those squares that you can eat and they are easy to carry. 32GI also has chewable tablets. There are a couple of brands that have also brought out these chewable sweets and tablets.

Go and buy a whole lot of those, try them and see which flavours you like, and see which ones agree with you to use. That and the combination of all the eats that are available along the way at the Comrades Marathon should see you with plenty of energy.

On your long runs, so runs longer than 25km’s, your marathon training runs, your long training runs – it is very important that you just get used to eating that stuff and figuring how much you can handle. So, can you handle 2 or 3 chips, can you handle a mouthful of chips.

Can you eat half a potato, or must you just have a bite every 3 km’s? Figure out what goes down and digests easily and works for you.