Off-Season Nutrition for Runners: How to Fuel Base Building, the Holidays, and Your Next Build

Episode: S6E34 | Guest: Claire Shorenstein, MS, RD, CSSD, board certified sports dietitian and owner of Eat for Endurance | Aired November 4, 2026 | 68 min

Author: Nick Klastava

Podcast Hosts: Nick Klastava & Amanda Katz

Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Off-season nutrition is where a lot of runners fall apart, and most of them do not even know it. Your fall marathon is done, the medal is on the hook, and suddenly fueling feels optional because you are "not really training." Board certified sports dietitian Claire Shorenstein joined Coach Amanda and me (fresh off New York City Marathon weekend, where Amanda was everywhere) to take that idea apart. We covered what the off season actually means from a fueling standpoint, why 25 miles a week is still a lot of running, how to spot underfueling when your training is lighter, why this is the best window of the year to train your gut, how to think about body composition goals without wrecking your next build, and how to get through Thanksgiving, holiday parties, and travel without the guilt spiral.

Key Takeaways

• You do not stop being an athlete when you stop training for a race. Off-season nutrition still has to match what you are actually doing, including cross training, strength work, and extra walking.

• Think in absolute terms, not relative ones. A 10 mile run is still a long run even if you just finished a block full of 20 milers.

• The core principles stay the same year round: eat every two to four hours, get carbs in every meal and snack, fuel before runs, fuel during anything longer than 60 to 75 minutes, and keep hydrating when it gets cold.

• Signs of underfueling include burnout, poor sleep, mood changes, fatigue, frequent injuries, irregular or absent periods, low libido, low appetite, and GI issues.

• Most runners eat less than they think. Claire's CIM client was stunned that 6 grams of carbs per kilogram was way more than her normal day.

• The off season is the lowest stakes time of year to test gels, raise your carbs per hour, and dial in race morning breakfast.

• If you want to change body composition, start with why, never skimp on workout fueling, keep any deficit small and short, and save it for the off season.

• The holidays do not need a different nutrition plan. They need more planning and flexibility. Skip the "earn it or burn it" mindset and do not skip meals to save up for the big one.

  
  

Who Is Claire Shorenstein?

Claire Shorenstein, MS, RD, CSSD is a board certified sports dietitian with more than twelve years in the field and the owner of Eat for Endurance, her virtual private practice and the name of her long running podcast. She works with athletes of every age (her youngest client has been 12 and her oldest 90), with a heavy focus on endurance athletes, and a large share of her clients are runners. Lately she has had a wave of midlife marathoners, and she was getting messages from clients who had just run New York and Chicago and were gearing up for Philly.

She is a longtime distance runner herself. She spent many years on road marathons and now spends most of her time on trails and ultras. She lives in Aptos, California, where she grew up, after 15 years in New York City plus stints in London and up and down the East Coast. She still strongly identifies as a New Yorker. The upgrade from looking at dumpsters to looking at the ocean out her window seems to be working for her, though. She is also a mom of two young girls, which Amanda and I can confirm is the secret to the sauce.

What Off-Season Nutrition Actually Means

Is the off season a break from structure or just a different kind of structure? Claire split it into two phases. Right after your race, your body is in true recovery mode. In the weeks and months after that, you are still recovering mentally and physically from a hard cycle. Through all of it, her core point holds: you do not stop being an athlete just because you are not training for a race.

That is why the first thing she asks every client is simple. What are you actually doing right now? Some runners are still running most days. Some are cross training or lifting more. Some have cut way back. Off-season nutrition has to be matched to that activity level, because the whole game is matching your fuel to your work.

She sees this with injured runners all the time. They tell her they are not running, and then it turns out they are biking just as many hours as they used to run. If your volume is close to what it was before, even if it is not running, you still need to fuel it with carbohydrates and you still need your sports nutrition. Her goal for this period is to have you arrive at your next build feeling strong, ready, and excited, not dreading doing it all again. Her words for how to get there: fuel the crap out of you, and be smart about how you train.

Recovery Week, Off Season, and Base Building Are Not the Same Thing

I jumped in here because I hear runners blur these together constantly. "I'm not really training right now," they say, while running five days a week.

Here is how we define them at Running Explained. Recovery is the window right after a race where your body is still in shambles. For a marathon, that is usually one to two weeks. For a half, maybe a week. For a 5K, a couple of days. We covered that window in our marathon recovery episode.

The off season is different. You are still training. You are doing something specific to help yourself and your fitness. That might be a lot of easy aerobic running with long runs that build and regular down weeks. It might be a speed base, where you do some workouts that are not stacking up so much cumulative fatigue that you are training on tired legs. Either way, you are preparing yourself for your next training block. That is the period this whole episode is about.

One more thing. When you figure out your base mileage, do not base it on your peak. If you peaked at 50 or 60 miles a week for your marathon, that is not your normal. That is why we use numbers like 25 to 30 or 35 to 40 for a base period. And base is not a throwaway phase. It is where nutrition tends to fall off and the little things get hand waved. Have a reason for your base (strength focus, a bit more mileage than usual, a speed base) and fuel it like it matters, because it does. And do not overdo it either. Your base should prime you for the build, not push you over the edge before the build even starts.

If You Are Still Playing, You Better Be Paying

Amanda added a piece I love. For most of her athletes, this is not really an off season at all. It is a different stimulus. She likes to add one to two heavy strength sessions a week in this phase. Some runners add cycling, swimming, or another cardio modality. All of that takes energy. Her line: even when you are not running, you are still playing, so you better be paying.

Then she asked the question a lot of you are living right now. You raced Berlin in September or a race in October, and now you are back to base mileage. If you go from 50 or 60 miles a week down to 25 or 30, does your intake really change? Or is it more complicated than that straight conversion?

Claire said this is exactly where people get confused, and exactly why it has to be individualized. Are you just running less, or are you adding strength, cross training, more walks, more time in the garden, more physical activity in general because you suddenly have the time? She wants runners to think globally about all forms of energy expenditure, not just running miles. Carb needs rise with volume, intensity, and duration. If you truly dropped your volume and intensity and did not add much else, your carb needs may have come down. If you backfilled that time with other training, maybe not.

Stop Thinking in Relative Terms

This might be the most useful idea in the whole episode. Claire talked about how marathon training desensitizes you. At the start of a block, 10 miles feels huge. By the time you hit your 20 miler, a 10 mile run feels like nothing.

But your body does not grade on a curve. It is absolute, not relative. If your long run got shorter and you are still out there for two hours, you still need to fuel that. The trap is thinking, "I'm not training as much, so I don't really need to fuel," and then skipping the snack before, the gel during, or the meal after because the run is not as long as it used to be.

She also framed the off season as an opportunity, not a time to see what you can get away with. A 50 or 60 mile marathon cycle is depleting. If you crushed your nutrition during the block, awesome. A lot of people did not. Now is the time to replenish, nourish your body, and eat the foods you did not have room for during peak training.

The Core Principles of Off-Season Nutrition

Claire walked through the fundamentals she uses with athletes during the off season. None of these are new. That is the point. Off-season nutrition runs on the same framework as in season fueling, just scaled to what you are doing.

Do not delay eating too long after you wake up. Your workout schedule will shape when and what you eat, whether you train in the morning or later in the day, but you want to eat consistently throughout the day. Aim for a meal or snack every two to four hours.

Fuel before your runs, even if it is just a carb rich snack, and eat something afterward. If a run lasts longer than 60 to 75 minutes, you are taking in nutrition during it. And to quote Claire directly: carbs do not go away. You always need to worry about carbs. Sorry.

Keep hydrating as it gets cold. Fluids are not just about replacing sweat. They carry nutrients to your cells and move waste products out. If you are nursing an injury coming out of your fall season, hydration matters even more.

Build balanced meals and snacks. Anyone who is active should get carbs in every meal and snack. Meals get a good protein source and a fat source on top of that. Snacks pair a carbohydrate with protein, fat, or fiber. And her favorite part of this season: if you were relying on easy to digest carbs during your block and struggling to get fiber in, now is the time to add more color. More plant foods, more fruits and vegetables, all the things.

How to Spot Underfueling When Training Is Lighter

I asked Claire what she looks for when training is lighter and the usual cues look different. Her first point was blunt. A lot of runners are already underfueling during their main training cycles, so they carry that habit into the off season and assume it is normal.

Burnout is a big one. Mental and physical burnout can come from underfueling, overtraining, or both. Chronic underfueling can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other mood disturbances, it can disrupt sleep, and it affects basically every organ system in the body. If you feel fried, something is off somewhere, whether it is your training, your life load, your nutrition, or all three.

Then there is the longer list of red flags for low energy availability. For women, irregular or absent menstrual cycles. For men, off testosterone in your labs, low libido, or changes in morning erections. Fatigue, poor recovery, sleep issues, getting injured over and over, and nutrient deficiencies all belong on that list too.

And then there are the behavioral signs. Are you fueling longer runs? Are you eating before runs? Are you going long stretches without eating? Is your lunch a bar that is not worthy of being called lunch, followed by being starving and eating a ton at night? Do you have no appetite at all and feel apathetic about food? Do you have a lot of GI issues?

Claire was honest that this gets tangled. Are you tired because your kid woke you up, because you are perimenopausal, or because your iron is low? Life is lifing. So she starts with what you actually eat across the day. If two eggs and a single piece of toast is your breakfast after a hefty run, her verdict was simple. Sorry, that is not okay.

You Probably Eat Less Than You Think

Claire shared a story from the day before we recorded. She was practicing a mini carb load with a client running CIM. She showed her what a day at only 6 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram looks like, which worked out to about 384 grams. Not even where they ultimately wanted to be for the load. The client's reaction: "My God, that's so much." When they went through what she normally ate, she was nowhere close. She thought she was eating way more than she was.

Claire stressed that nobody jumps from point A to point B overnight. You work toward these targets gradually. But you cannot close a gap you do not know exists. She suggested a simple self assessment: figure out a rough carb target based on your weight, track a single day, and see whether you are falling short. Or work with a sports dietitian.

Amanda added how she handles this with athletes. Nick and I do not give specific nutrition prescriptions, but we can absolutely notice patterns. If an athlete does long runs on Saturday and consistently feels like trash, even though their paces match their fitness and everything else in training looks good, she asks them to take note of Friday. Not count anything. Just notice. What have you eaten by noon on the day before your big session? The answer usually explains Saturday. We don't know what we don't know, which is exactly why people like Claire have jobs.

Hitting Your Numbers Without Counting Everything

Before answering the next question, Claire made a point I want every reader to hear. If numbers overwhelm you or trigger you, you do not have to track. Whenever she talks numbers with clients, she translates them right back into food, because "you need 400 grams of carbs" means nothing on its own.

A few of her ballpark tricks: a fist sized portion of cooked rice, oats, or grains is about 45 grams of carbs. A bagel is 50 to 60 grams (a real New York City bagel is around 60). A banana is about 20 to 30 grams. So instead of counting, you can know that breakfast needs to look a certain way and lunch needs two fists of rice, and you are there.

Off-Season Nutrition Is the Best Time to Train Your Gut

Amanda asked whether now is the time to train your gut, practice with gels you have never used, and figure out race morning breakfast before the next build ramps up. Claire's answer: absolutely, because the stakes are so low.

Nobody wants to sprint for a bathroom or choke down a flavor they hate. But it is much better to learn that on an easy long run in December than during a key workout in March. And it is easier than ever, because you can now buy single gels in one flavor at a running store or from tons of sites online instead of committing to a full box.

The market is saturated, which is great once you know what you like and overwhelming if you do not. Claire narrows it down by asking clients about flavor and texture (thin or thick, fruity, chocolatey, or no flavor), sodium needs, and whether they want carbs in a sports drink or just plain water. Then she gives them five or fewer products to try.

Start slow. If you are brand new to fueling, do not suddenly slam 100 grams an hour. That probably will not end well. Something like 30 to 45 or 50 grams of carbs per hour is a better starting point, and most gels land in the 20 to 30 gram range, with some in the 40 to 50 gram range. If you already have a strategy that works, this is still a good time to try the product everyone keeps talking about. Maybe you like it better. Maybe you go back to what you had. And if you were only getting 30 to 45 grams per hour during your last cycle when you should be closer to 60, the off season is the time to practice increasing it. For the deep dive on that, our carbs per hour episode has you covered.

My one caution: your training load is lower right now. Something that worked perfectly on an easy off season long run may behave differently at peak volume. Keep testing as the build ramps up. I have tried plenty of new gels in the off season that I never would have touched before a peak 20 miler.

Wanting to Get Leaner Before Your Next Build

Her first question is always why. She also looks closely at history, because some people are not good candidates for this at all: anyone with a history of an eating disorder or disordered eating, anyone she has already identified as underfueling, anyone injured, or anyone with other clinical issues going on.

If the answer is performance, she wants them to see the full picture. Lots of things drive performance. Are you getting enough carbs? Is your hydration dialed? What else could we improve first? If it is aesthetics or a health reason, that is a different conversation. Sometimes body image is part of it. She shared a conversation with a client she had asked, "If you lost 20 pounds right now, would you still struggle with your body?" The client admitted she probably would, and that she would still pick herself apart. There is nothing wrong with having a weight or body composition goal. Just be honest with yourself if you think it will solve everything, because it will not.

When it is an appropriate goal, Claire focuses on diet quality. Intra workout fueling is never on the table to cut. Athletes still eat before workouts, fuel during when appropriate, and recover after. Then she looks at everything else: enough plant foods, slightly higher protein, adequate fiber, good hydration. Any deficit is small, the change is slow, and it runs over a set period. You never stay in a deficit for long, because that is how runners get into trouble.

She was open that she has mixed feelings about this work, and she prefers to keep it to the off season. Some dietitians do it during training cycles, and she had a great conversation about it with her friend and fellow dietitian Alex Larson on the Eat for Endurance podcast. But the last thing she wants is an injured athlete or one in low energy availability. It can be done, with lots of asterisks.

Off-Season Nutrition Through Thanksgiving and the Holidays

Here in the US of A, Thanksgiving is coming, followed by the 37 holidays between now and New Year's. Parties, travel, and routines out the window. Amanda asked how Claire helps clients navigate this stretch, whether they are in the off season or training for a January or February race.

Claire acknowledged it is tricky. Travel and events mean less control over what food is available, and if your relationship with food or your body is shaky, the heightened emotions and family stress make it harder.

Her key point: the holidays do not require a different nutrition approach. They require more flexibility and more planning. The core principles of off-season nutrition do not change. Cut yourself some slack, accept that none of it will be perfect (it never is), and plan a little further ahead than usual.

Practically, that means looking at your week and asking what is on the schedule and how you will take care of yourself. Pack snacks or a sandwich. Do not pack snacks for your kids and forget about yourself. If you are driving, load the car with food. If you are flying, Claire has a free travel nutrition guide plus a podcast episode and blog post on what will get through TSA, including tricks like freezing things.

Prioritize Your Fuel Like You Prioritize Your Runs

This was my favorite rant of the episode. Claire calls clients out all the time for the same pattern: when life gets crazy, their runs stay on the schedule and their nutrition goes out the window.

She told a story about a client who found four hours a week for two weeks to get every run in but could not manage to order groceries online. Her response, more or less: what? That is a mindset priority problem. If you prioritize your workouts, you prioritize your nutrition. They are on the same plane. Actually, nutrition is on a higher plane, since you will survive if you do not run and you will not survive if you do not eat.

The patterns she sees most over the holidays are delayed or skipped meals, people eating light or skipping meals to save up for a big dinner, and extra running to compensate for what they plan to eat later. She hates the "turkey burn" language and the whole earn it or burn it concept, either before or after. Enjoy the food at Thanksgiving. If you overeat, it is not the end of the world. Unbutton your pants. It is fine.

She also flagged the Last Supper mentality: never letting yourself have certain foods, then going overboard when they show up. Restriction usually backfires. If you let yourself enjoy foods year round, having some pie is not a big deal. The swing between all or nothing creates energy crashes, more food stress, digestive upset when you go from almost nothing to a ton, and a higher chance of overeating.

Her fix is simple. Eat your normal breakfast and lunch. Have a solid snack with some protein and fiber before the event, so you do not show up starving. There will almost certainly be carbs there. And if some of your carbs come from cookies or pie instead of lentils and bananas, cool. Enjoy it.

This made me think of the Fishes episode of The Bear, where the whole family goes off the rails at holiday dinner. Pretty sure nobody in that house had eaten all day. Plan ahead so that is not you.

Post Holiday Guilt and the "It's Just One Day" Problem

I hear athletes say their nutrition was "poor" over the holidays because they had too many cookies. My follow up is always: but you ate other food too, right? So was it really poor? I asked Claire how she helps athletes get out of that guilt mindset.

Guilt tells her someone is assigning moral value to food. Good foods, bad foods, foods they should not be allowed to have, foods that will wreck their health or goals. For most people she talks to, fear of weight gain is at the root of it. So she zooms out. Are cookies your main carb source all the time? What else did you eat? Sometimes people catastrophize a few treats when the rest of their intake is solid. It is a drop in the bucket.

Then she said something I have not heard many dietitians admit. A lot of professionals (she has said it herself) tell people around Halloween or Thanksgiving, "It's just one day, don't worry about it." But it is not one day. It is weeks of Halloween candy at the doctor's office and every event your kids go to. It is Friendsgiving, family dinner, multiple holiday parties. So she wanted to validate that concern. It is real.

The intention behind "it's just one day" still holds if you zoom out. You are not surviving off Haribo and pumpkin pie. One fried meal with no fruits or vegetables will not ruin everything. It was probably delicious and probably left you feeling not so hot. That is the connection she wants people to make: how does this food make you feel physically? Same with alcohol, which is a big part of the holiday conversation. How do you feel the next day after one drink versus two? Does it affect your work? Is it worth it to you?

She wants people to be more intentional without becoming obsessive. Are you eating this because you want it, or because it is in front of you, you are bored, or you do not want to be rude? You can say no. Not wanting a third cookie does not mean you have disordered eating. It means you do not want a third cookie.

If the guilt runs deep, she digs deeper, often with a food rules and beliefs worksheet she uses with clients. If the rule is "I can only eat a bagel when I have a long run," or "I can only have dessert if I exercise," they work through what is underneath it. Usually, fear of weight gain. A bagel is not a bad food. Breaking those rules down takes time, but noticing the guilt is the first flag.

Amanda's takeaway hit home. This has very little to do with one holiday season. How you treat that cookie the other 50 weeks of the year is why it feels scary for these two. Practice flexibility all year, and the holidays stop being a big deal.

Scaling Off-Season Nutrition Back Up for Spring

Last question from Amanda: what should runners gearing up for spring think about as they come out of the holidays? Claire's answer was straightforward. As your volume and intensity climb, your carb needs climb too. Start bringing things back up.

For people who like visuals, she points to the Athlete Performance Plate. As training volume or intensity rises, more of your plate shifts toward carbohydrates and a little away from non starchy vegetables and, to an extent, fruit. Protein stays about the same. Fat increases a bit to meet higher energy needs.

For people who like numbers (always translated into food), here are the carb ranges she shared. For 60 minutes or less of easy effort per day, about 3 to 4 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight. Some of her off season athletes land there. Once you are averaging one to two hours of easy training a day, or less than 60 minutes of more intense work, you are in moderate training at about 5 to 7 grams per kilogram. Higher volume and intensity go up from there. With her endurance athletes she aims for at least 5 grams per kilogram, and most of them sit in the 5 to 8 range once they are in a cycle or doing a lot of other activity. Plenty of her off season runners and triathletes are still in that range because they are putting in 10 to 12 hours a week.

Protein needs are slightly elevated for active people and shift with life stage and strength training. A good general range is 1.4 to 1.8 grams per kilogram, with about 1.6 as a solid middle. Fat starts at a minimum of 1 gram per kilogram and goes up to meet energy needs.

Split Your Day Into Three Fueling Buckets

To make those numbers usable, Claire divides the day into three fueling windows: morning, midday, and evening. Each one usually includes a meal plus a snack, sometimes two. Divide your daily target by three, and you have a goal for each window.

Say you need at least 100 grams of carbs per window. A New York City bagel is about 60 grams. Add a glass of juice and part of a banana, and you are there. Two cups of cooked pasta is about 90 grams. Or have a cup and a half with some fruit and pretzels. Layer it across a meal and a snack and you hit it without stress.

Protein works the same way. If you need around 30 grams per window, three eggs give you about 21 grams. Add a couple slices of whole grain bread and you are close to 30. Then layer in more carbs and some fat.

The point is avoiding big nutrition gaps. You do not want to be playing catch up at 5 p.m. after shopping for a holiday party, skipping lunch, forgetting a snack, and realizing you have had 40 grams of carbs all day. That matters even more as you head into winter and spring training. Your volume is going up, your margin for error is smaller, and you have performance goals. Setting small goals for each part of your day and planning ahead is how you stay out of low energy availability.

The Secret Questions

Every guest gets three secret questions. They are pass fail, and only I know the right answers.

Best piece of advice she has ever received: Claire blanked at first (we have all been there), then landed on a great one. She is type A, an overachiever, hard on herself, with an inner critic that never takes a day off. It is easy to be supportive for your friends, family, and clients and much harder to give yourself that same love. So the advice is to take your own advice and be to yourself the person you are to others. That includes nutrition. Even a sports dietitian does not always follow her own nutrition advice.

What surprises people about her: she has a master's degree in oboe performance. Amanda is already working on getting her into the oboe corner of TikTok.

What she wishes more people understood about the nutrition industry: what a dietitian actually is. Some people still do not know, or they call it a nutritionalist, and there is a lot of misunderstanding about who dietitians are and who supports them. No, they are not being paid by Big Sugar. Beyond that, she wishes people understood how nuanced nutrition is. People love extremes and black and white answers, but nutrition lives in the gray. That does not mean dietitians cannot give concrete recommendations. It means that if someone is always talking in extremes, that is a red flag, and you may want to talk to someone else.

Three for three. And for the record, this episode was not sponsored by Big Sugar, no matter what I said on air. Claire would like Haribo to know she is available, though.

Guest Bio

Claire Shorenstein, MS, RD, CSSD is a board certified sports dietitian and the owner of Eat for Endurance, a virtual private practice serving endurance athletes from teenagers to adults, with a focus on runners. She has more than twelve years of experience and hosts the Eat for Endurance podcast, which has more than seven years of evergreen episodes. A longtime marathoner turned trail and ultra runner, Claire lives in Aptos, California, with her two daughters. She offers one to one coaching and runs the Fuel for Life Crew membership, which includes her master classes, mini guides, and a supportive Slack community. Find her free resources at eatforendurance.com, follow her on Instagram at @eatforendurance, or email claire@eatforendurance.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is off-season nutrition for runners?

Off-season nutrition is how you fuel the period between race specific training blocks, when you are base building, cross training, or strength training. The principles do not change from in season fueling. Your intake simply has to match what you are actually doing, including activity beyond running.

Should I eat less in the off season?

Maybe, but not automatically. If your total volume and intensity truly dropped and you did not add other training, your carb needs may come down. If you added strength work, cross training, or more walking, your needs may be close to what they were. Look at all of your energy expenditure, not just running miles.

Do I need to fuel during runs in the off season?

Yes. Claire recommends taking in nutrition during any run longer than 60 to 75 minutes, no matter the time of year. A two hour run is a two hour run, even if it feels short compared to your marathon peak.

What are the signs of underfueling in runners?

Common signs include burnout, poor sleep, mood changes, ongoing fatigue, poor recovery, frequent injuries, nutrient deficiencies, irregular or absent periods in women, low testosterone or libido in men, low appetite, and GI issues.

How many carbs do runners need per day?

It depends on training load. Claire uses about 3 to 4 grams per kilogram of body weight for 60 minutes or less of easy activity, 5 to 7 grams per kilogram for moderate training of one to two hours of easy running a day, and higher amounts for higher volume or intensity. Most endurance athletes she works with land between 5 and 8 grams per kilogram.

How do I handle Thanksgiving as a runner?

Keep your normal meals, have a solid snack before the event, and do not skip meals or add extra miles to save up or burn it off. Enjoy the food. The holidays need more planning and flexibility, not a different nutrition plan.