A training plan for your stomach
Tired of races ruined by stomach trouble or hitting the wall even though you took your gels?
CarbRate creates a week-by-week fueling practice schedule based on your fueling plan, scheduled workouts and long runs, and your current stomach tolerances.
Each week tells you which run to practice on, what to take, and how and what to adjust to make your gut and fueling plan stronger.
Why gels cause stomach issues and you still hit the wall despite fueling correctly
Running hard pulls blood away from your stomach and redirects it to your working muscles. In fact, that blood flow to the stomach can diminish by as much as 80%.
This results in the stomach not being able to efficiently digest the fuel you take in when racing hard.
When that happens, the gels and fluids you consume during the race sit in your stomach waiting to be absorbed.
Whatever your gut can't absorb quickly sits in your intestine and pulls in water. This is what causes the bloating, the sloshing, and the porta-potty line late in the race.
That's why that 20 to 57% of marathoners report at least one GI symptom during a race.
Even worse, that glycogen never gets delivered to your brain and legs, where it's needed to keep you running strong.
That's why you hit the wall, even if you're fueling the entire race.
Luckily, teaching your gut to be more efficient at absorbing fuel on the run is a skill your body builds over weeks of practice, the same way it builds endurance. CarbRate is here to help make practice easy.
Your gut is a muscle you can train
that 2 weeks of repeated fueling practice raised carbohydrate absorption by 45 to 54%, while upset stomach symptoms fell 26 to 47%.
And that's just the change that happens after 2 weeks of structured practice.
In the same research, runners who practiced their fueling plan over a full training block absorbed about 90 grams of carbohydrate an hour, roughly double what an untrained stomach manages.
That extra fuel is what keeps your stomach feeling strong and prevents your pace from fading in the last miles.
The runners in these studies followed a structured practice plan with specific protocols to ensure gradual, scheduled increases in fuel.
Doing that yourself takes knowing which runs to practice on, how to gradually up your fueling intake, and a record of what you took and how it sat.
That's why CarbRate creates a specific practice schedule for you to target all three.
Your CarbRate practice schedule is based on a carb target that starts where your stomach is today and climbs toward your race-day number, so the adaptation happens on autopilot instead of by guesswork.
CarbRate tells you exactly which runs to practice on based on your training
The mistake many runners make is thinking executing their fueling plan on easy long runs will train their gut.
It won't…
Taking your gels on an easy run trains your gut to absorb fuel with its stomach and blood flow functioning at mostly normal levels. Race day cuts that supply by up to 80%, which is why you still blow up on race day, despite practicing.
CarbRate schedules your fueling practice onto race-pace segments, tempo runs, and the last third of your long runs.
Those are the efforts where your body works as hard as it will in the last hour of your race.
You tell CarbRate your training plan (or you import it as a GPX file) and each week it tells you which run to fuel on and what carb rate to target, so you practice on the runs that count instead of the easy days that don't help you on race day.
Never guess how hard to push your gut
Jump from 30 to 75 grams an hour in one week and you'll spend the last miles of your long run bloated, and probably cut the workout short. Inch up too slowly and race week arrives before your stomach is ready.
Your practice plan starts at what your stomach handles today, taken from the gut-tolerance questions you answer when you build your plan.
Then the CarbRate practice schedule raises the target week by week toward the rate your race-day fueling plan calls for.
This step-by-step protocol is how runners in raised carbohydrate absorption by 54%, while reducing stomach issues by 47% on race day.
You always know how hard to push your fueling plan, and no long run gets wasted on a guess.
Know exactly what to change or tweak with your fueling plan each week
After a rough 18-miler, what matters is what to change next. That's where CarbRate comes in.
You log each practice run in a 30-second review: the carbs and fluid you took, any caffeine, how your stomach handled it, even the weather.
Then CarbRate prescribes the one, most optimal change for your next run, based on your actual data.
One variable at a time the way a coach would and so you know whether it actually worked or not.
CarbRate tracks every change and how your body responded so a bad run teaches you something specific, instead of leaving you guessing for a week.
CarbRate helps you test the whole plan before race day
Practicing gels on a long run tests how your stomach handles them in that isolated setting, but race day introduces variables most runners never practice together.
Race morning breakfast, waking up early, the pre-race gel, caffeine on a nervous stomach, carrying your own fluid versus taking what the aid station hands you.
Few runners ever test the whole chain, because there's exactly one run in a training block where you can (the last big long run before the taper) and if you miss it, there's no do-over.
CarbRate puts this critical practice run on your calendar weeks ahead.
It creates the rehearsal run from your logged data rather than your memory, and it schedules it early enough that you have time to fix if something doesn't work.
The result is you hit the starting line with every variable tested and fully confident in your fueling plan.
Six weeks out? Gels already a problem?
Train the part of race prep almost everyone skips: your stomach
You'll spend 16 weeks and a few hundred miles training your legs. One untrained stomach can undo all of it in a single race.
The free plan tells you what to take on race day. Full access trains your gut to handle it.
- Fueling plan built on your exact course
- Personalized to your sweat rate, weight, and goal
- Adjusts when the race-day forecast moves
- Week-by-week gut-training practice schedule
- One prescribed change after every rough run
- The dress-rehearsal run, scheduled early
- Live guidance through every gel and drink
- All 163 gels, chews, and mixes built in
See how CarbRate handles the rest of your race
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