Most Comrades fuelling guides cover race day. But the race is decided before you toe the line. The 12 weeks of build-up training is when you teach your body to burn fuel efficiently, train your gut to handle race-day intake, and lay down the glycogen base that gets you up Polly Shortts. Here's how to eat through the Comrades buildup so race day is the easy part.
Why Pre-Race Nutrition Matters As Much As Race Day
Comrades is decided in two places: the long Saturday training runs and the back half of the race. Both are nutrition events as much as they are running events.
Three things training nutrition does that race-day nutrition can't:
Train your gut. Race day is the worst possible time to discover that 60g of carbs per hour gives you stomach cramps. The 12-week buildup is when you train your stomach to handle higher carb intake without GI distress.
Build aerobic capacity. Properly fuelled long runs build the mitochondria and capillary networks that determine how fast you can run on race day. Under-fuelled long runs produce slower adaptations and a higher injury rate.
Test your race-day kit. Every gel you'll take on race day should have been tested at least 5 times in training. Same goes for hydration tabs, recovery drinks, salt capsules, real food.
If your race-day fuelling plan starts on race day, you've already lost.
Weeks 12 to 9: The Foundation Phase
This is the highest-mileage block in most Comrades plans. Long runs of 35 to 45km, plenty of mid-week work, and gradually increasing volume. Your nutrition priorities:
Eat enough. Most runners under-fuel during peak training. A 12-hour-a-week training load needs 2,500 to 3,500 calories per day for most adults. If you're constantly tired, sleeping poorly, or losing weight unintentionally, you're under-eating.
Carbs at every meal. Rice, pasta, potato, oats, bread. Half your plate at lunch and dinner should be carbohydrate. Low-carb diets and Comrades training don't mix.
Practise long-run fuelling. On every long run from week 12 onwards, take gels and hydration exactly as you'd plan to on race day. Use this time to figure out what works.
Drink more than you think. SA winter buildup conditions can be deceiving. Cool air, but you're still sweating. Aim for 3 litres of fluid per day, more on long-run days.
What we use during this phase:
Daily: 32Gi Hydrate tab in the morning bottle, 32Gi Sports Gel on long runs.
Long-run testing: rotate SIS Beta Fuel, High5, and Tailwind Endurance Fuel through different sessions.
Recovery: Tailwind Recovery Mix within 30 minutes of finishing every session over 90 minutes.
Weeks 8 to 5: The Specific Phase
This is where you lock in the race-day plan. Long runs are at race-pace effort, often with race-day kit, on terrain that mimics Comrades. Your nutrition has three jobs:
Lock in the gel rotation. By week 8 you should know which 2 to 3 gels work for you. Stop experimenting. Use those exact gels in those exact intervals on every long run.
Practise the carb-per-hour target. Sub-10-hour Comrades runners should target 60 to 90g of carbs per hour. Slower runners should target 40 to 60g. Practise this on long runs. If you've never run with 80g per hour going into your stomach, race day is a bad time to start.
Train the cramp-prevention protocol. If you're cramp-prone, this is the phase to test 32Gi Cramp Assalt proactively. Take one 30 minutes before a long run, then one every couple of hours through the run. See whether it works for you specifically.
Test your real-food backup. Boiled potatoes wrapped in foil, salted. Bananas. Half a sandwich. Whatever you'll eat at the back end of the race, eat it during a long run first. Race-day stomach reactions can be unpredictable.
Detail to lock in by week 5:
- Exact gels and exact timing
- Exact hydration tablet schedule
- Exact pre-race meal (down to the timing)
- Exact recovery routine after long runs
- Cramp prevention protocol if applicable
If anything is still uncertain by week 5, you're behind. Use the next two weeks to finalise.
Weeks 4 to 2: The Sharpening Phase
Volume drops. Intensity stays sharp. Your nutrition goal: stay healthy and avoid stupid mistakes.
Don't change anything. Whatever's been working in weeks 12 to 5, keep doing. Trying new foods or supplements in the final month is the most common pre-race mistake we see.
Maintain weight. Don't try to lose weight in the final taper. Your body needs the glycogen-storage capacity. Even a 2 to 3kg deficit in this period can hurt race-day performance.
Stay hydrated. SA late-May / early-June weather can be cold-and-dry, which fools runners into drinking less. Keep the daily 3-litre target. Train with hydration tabs in your daily bottle.
Avoid GI experiments. No new restaurants you haven't been to. No new energy drinks. No supplements you haven't tested. The wrong gut reaction in week 3 can derail race readiness.
Race Week: The Tightening
The seven days before Comrades:
Monday and Tuesday: normal eating. Don't change anything yet.
Wednesday and Thursday: increase carbs slightly. Pasta, rice, bread, potato in larger portions. Keep fat moderate, protein normal. The goal is topping up muscle glycogen, not weight gain.
Friday: heavier breakfast and lunch focused on carbs. Lighter dinner. Hydrate well throughout the day. Drink 500ml of fluid with electrolytes around 2pm.
Saturday (race eve): normal breakfast. Carb-focused lunch by 1pm. Light early dinner by 6pm. No alcohol. Bed early. Drink another 500ml of fluid with electrolytes before bed.
Sunday morning: 3 hours before the gun, eat the breakfast you've practised. Oats with honey and a banana. A bagel with peanut butter. Whatever's worked in your longest training runs. Sip 500ml of fluid with a 32Gi Hydrate tab in the 90 minutes before the start.
The DripDrop trick: for the toughest hour of the race (whether that's km 50 to 60 on an Up Run or km 70 to 80 on a Down Run), carry one DripDrop ORS sachet in your race belt. Drop it into a water bottle at the right point. The doctor-developed rehydration formula absorbs faster than any sports drink and can genuinely change the back half of your race.
Common Comrades Nutrition Mistakes
Patterns we've seen ruin race days for runners:
Carb-loading wrong. Stuffing pasta on Saturday night does nothing useful. The glycogen-loading window is Wednesday through Friday. Race-eve meal should be modest, not massive.
Trying new gels in the final month. Heard about a friend's brand that worked for them? Brilliant. Test it after Comrades, not before.
Skipping recovery nutrition during taper. Volume is lower, so recovery feels less urgent. But your body is still adapting. Tailwind Recovery Mix or chocolate milk after every quality session through the taper.
Going low-carb "to lean out". The week before Comrades is the worst possible week to attempt body composition changes. Eat normally and trust the buildup.
Coffee on race morning that you don't drink in training. If you don't normally have a strong coffee 90 minutes before training, don't have one before Comrades. The GI surprise will land at km 5.
Taking too few gels. Most slower finishers we've spoken to at the finish line under-fuelled by 200 to 400 calories. That's a marathon-and-a-half pace difference. Our energy gel timing guide has the per-hour breakdown.
The Build-Up Nutrition Kit We Recommend
For a 12-week Comrades buildup, the kit we use ourselves:
Daily training: 2 tubes of 32Gi Hydrate tabs (one in the morning bottle, one for long-run bottle prep).
Long runs: a mix of 32Gi Sports Gel, High5, and SIS Beta Fuel for testing. Plus Tailwind Endurance Fuel for liquid-fuel sessions.
Cramp prevention (if applicable): 32Gi Cramp Assalt.
Recovery: Tailwind Recovery Mix for hard sessions.
Race-day rescue: DripDrop ORS for the toughest hour.
Total cost across 12 weeks: roughly R1,200 to R1,800 for a sub-10 runner doing 5 to 6 days of training a week. That works out to about R15 per training day. The price of the right fuelling protocol is far smaller than the cost of a bad race day.
For race-day specifics, see our Comrades race-day nutrition plan. For the broader pillar of race-day fuelling, our best energy gels for running in South Africa guide compares every option we stock.
Hand-selected, tested on our own families and our own race kits. Browse the competition day range to build out your buildup kit.