Optimal marathon nutrition

I'm now in the final 3 weeks of training or, more officially, tapering. Yes, the final sheet of A4 now graces the training programme spot on the fridge door.

I've decided that I need to treat my body as a temple for the final 3 weeks and live solely on healthy home-cooked food and healthy snacks. However, given that endurance training gives you massive sugar and salt cravings, this might be the hardest part of the whole programme.

This is just a selection of what I have craved mid-run over the last 12 weeks:

Beer
Magnum ice cream
Coca-cola
Shandy
Arctic roll
Battenberg cake
baked potato with lots of salt
miso soup
Birds Eye potato waffles
yoghurt
Natillas
Heinz baked beans and sausages
Skips
Bacon sandwich
Curry

It's a bit like reverting to childhood (apart from the miso soup) - in two languages. Obviously that's all I ate as a kid, sugar or salt. Often, I can get a craving for something just seeing a discarded wrapper in the street. Running makes you a proper tramp.

Needless to say, I haven't eaten these things (well, maybe I did drink one or two of them and I did succumb once to the beans and sausages but was sick later that day!) because when I stop running and eat something the craving goes. But it's been an interesting voyage of eating nostalgia.

I'm already dreaming of burritos, bagels and Junior mints for my runs on the other side. There's just no chance of me being a size 0, is there?

LON