I didn't grow up thinking about marathon nutrition. I grew up running because the hills were there.
Our farm in Tasmania was surrounded by terrain that demanded something from you — steep, uneven, exposed. I ran those hills as a kid without any plan or protocol. Just movement for the sake of it, in a landscape that pushed back. That's where I first understood what it felt like to run until your legs had nothing left — and then find out they actually did.
I had no idea at the time that twenty years later I'd be crossing finish lines in Melbourne, London, and Barcelona. Or that the relationship with food I developed on that farm would become the nutritional backbone of a performance bar company.
The Tasmanian Foundation
Growing up on a farm means growing up with a specific relationship to food. You don't abstract it. You see where it comes from — the chickens, the vegetable garden, the fruit trees, the animals raised and processed for meat. Food is concrete and seasonal and real.
We didn't eat much that came from a packet. Meals were built from what was available, which meant they were almost always nutrient-dense by default. Protein from animals we raised. Vegetables from soil we tended. Fruit we picked ourselves.
I didn't have the language for it then, but I was eating the way sports nutritionists now spend careers trying to get athletes back to. Whole food. Minimal processing. Seasonal variety. High micronutrient density. Nothing engineered for shelf life or palatability at the expense of nutrition.
That baseline — established before I ever thought of myself as an athlete — turned out to be the most important training advantage I had.
The First Marathon — Melbourne
My first marathon was Melbourne. I'd been running consistently for years by that point — daily training had become a non-negotiable part of how I lived, not a discipline I imposed on myself. But the marathon was a different kind of commitment. 42.2 kilometres requires a relationship with your body that shorter distances don't demand.
I approached nutrition the same way I approached everything: from first principles, not from convention. I wasn't interested in the standard marathon nutrition advice — carb loading on pasta the night before, gels every 45 minutes during the race, recovery shakes with 30 ingredients afterward. That approach treats the body as a machine to be fuelled with whatever is most convenient. I'd grown up understanding food differently.
My pre-race nutrition in the weeks leading up to Melbourne was built around the same whole food principles I'd eaten since childhood — high protein from multiple real sources, slow-release carbohydrates from oats and root vegetables, plenty of iron and B12 from organ meats, healthy fats for sustained energy. No synthetic supplements except creatine, which the research had long since convinced me was non-negotiable.
Melbourne taught me that the training and the nutrition are the same problem. You can't separate them. What you eat in the six weeks before the race determines what your body has available on the day — and no amount of last-minute carb loading compensates for months of under-nourishment.
London — The Race That Raised the Standard
London is one of the great marathons. The crowd, the course, the scale of it — there's an energy that carries you through sections where your body wants to stop. But energy from a crowd only takes you so far. The last ten kilometres of any marathon is a conversation between you and your preparation.
By London I had refined my approach considerably. I'd learned from Melbourne what my body responded to and what it didn't. I'd experimented with training nutrition across different load phases — high intensity weeks, recovery weeks, long run days — and developed a clear picture of what supported my output and what didn't.
Iron was the variable I hadn't fully understood in Melbourne. Haem iron from organ meats — absorbed at up to 30% efficiency compared to 2–10% from plant sources — was making a measurable difference to my endurance. The oxygen delivery to working muscle during sustained effort is directly dependent on iron status. When mine was optimised, the difference in how I felt at kilometre 35 was not subtle.
Maca had become a consistent part of my routine by this point too. The cortisol management during high training loads is something most recreational athletes don't pay enough attention to. When you're running high weekly mileage, stress hormones accumulate. Maca's adaptogenic properties — supported by clinical evidence for cortisol reduction and VO2 max improvement — were part of how I managed that load without breaking down.
London confirmed what Melbourne had suggested: the nutritional approach I'd built around whole food, organ meats, and evidence-based functional ingredients worked at the elite end of recreational performance.
Barcelona — Sub-3
Barcelona was where everything came together. 2 hours 59 minutes. The sub-3 marathon is a threshold that means something to distance runners — not because the difference between 2:59 and 3:01 is physically enormous, but because it represents a level of preparation, discipline, and execution that very few recreational athletes achieve.
My training block for Barcelona was the most structured I'd done. I was running six days a week across a range of sessions — long runs, tempo efforts, intervals, recovery runs — with daily calisthenics on top. The total training load was significant. The nutritional demands were commensurately high.
What I'd learned across Melbourne and London was that the micronutrients matter as much as the macros — often more. You can hit your protein target every day and still perform below your potential if you're deficient in B12, iron, choline, or zinc. These are the nutrients that underpin the biological processes that convert training into adaptation: oxygen delivery, neurotransmitter synthesis, muscle repair, immune function.
The foods I relied on most heavily in the Barcelona training block were the same foods that ended up in every Wildfang bar. Organ meats for iron, B12, CoQ10, choline, and vitamin A. Creatine for phosphocreatine replenishment and cognitive performance. Maca for cortisol management and endocrine support. Spirulina for antioxidant protection against the oxidative stress of high training loads. Oats and dates for slow-release carbohydrate fuel. Collagen for joint and connective tissue support through a block that was placing significant mechanical stress on my body every single day.
None of these were exotic choices. They were the logical conclusions of two decades of experimentation with what genuinely made a difference versus what made a difference on paper.
I crossed the line in Barcelona in 2:59. The preparation had worked.
What Real Food Marathon Nutrition Actually Looks Like
Every runner's nutritional needs are individual — but the principles that work are universal. Here is what I learned across three marathons and twenty-plus years of daily training.
In the Training Block — Months Before Race Day
This is where the race is won or lost. Most recreational marathon runners focus on the week before the race. The runners who go sub-3 understand that the nutritional foundation is built over months, not days.
Protein: 1.6–2.2g per kilogram of bodyweight daily, from multiple real sources. Muscle repair, connective tissue maintenance, and immune function all depend on consistent protein intake throughout the training block — not just around workouts.
Iron: haem iron from organ meats, red meat, and other animal sources, consumed consistently throughout the block. Iron deficiency is one of the most common performance limiters in endurance athletes — particularly women — and its effects are cumulative and slow to correct. Don't wait until you're symptomatic.
Creatine: 3–5g daily, consistently. The cognitive and physical performance benefits of creatine are well-established and compound over time. It is the most evidence-backed performance supplement available and the most commonly under-dosed.
Slow-release carbohydrates: oats, sweet potato, dates, legumes — real food sources that provide sustained energy without the blood sugar volatility of processed carbohydrates. The sustained energy output required for high-mileage training weeks demands a stable glycaemic baseline.
Micronutrients: B12, zinc, selenium, choline, vitamin A, CoQ10 — the nutrients most commonly deficient in athletes eating a conventional diet. These underpin oxygen delivery, immune function, hormonal balance, and mitochondrial energy production. Organ meats address most of them simultaneously, in their most bioavailable forms.
Race Week — The Final Preparation
Carbohydrate loading in the final two to three days before the race is well-supported by evidence. The goal is to maximise glycogen stores in muscle and liver — the primary fuel source for marathon-pace effort. But carb loading on top of a poor nutritional foundation doesn't work. It only has the intended effect when the underlying micronutrient status is already optimised.
Keep protein intake consistent through race week — this is not the time to make significant dietary changes. Stay well hydrated. Keep fat intake moderate. Avoid anything new or experimental in the 48 hours before the race.
Race Day Fuelling
For a sub-3 marathon effort, exogenous carbohydrate intake during the race is important — glycogen stores alone won't carry most runners to the finish at that pace. I used real food sources where possible: dates, banana, and small amounts of easily digestible carbohydrate at regular intervals.
The pre-race meal two to three hours before the start should be familiar and well-tolerated — slow-release carbohydrates, moderate protein, low fibre. Nothing experimental. Nothing that hasn't been tested in training.
Recovery — Where the Adaptation Happens
The training stimulus creates the potential for adaptation. Recovery is where that potential is realised. Most recreational runners underinvest significantly in recovery nutrition.
Within thirty to sixty minutes of finishing a long training run or the race itself, the priority is protein for muscle repair and carbohydrates to begin glycogen replenishment. The protein source matters — a full amino acid spectrum from multiple sources will outperform a single isolate.
In the days following a marathon, micronutrient intake becomes particularly important. The oxidative stress of sustained high-intensity effort creates an elevated demand for antioxidants, B vitamins, iron, and zinc. Spirulina, organ meats, and whole food sources of these nutrients support the recovery process more effectively than synthetic supplements.
Collagen — with its unique amino acid profile supporting connective tissue repair — is particularly valuable in the post-marathon recovery window. Tendons, ligaments, and cartilage absorb significant mechanical load across 42 kilometres and require specific nutritional support to recover properly.
Why Wildfang Exists
I built Wildfang because I spent twenty years learning — through direct experience across three continents and thousands of kilometres — exactly which foods and compounds made a measurable difference to performance and recovery. And I wanted those foods in a form I could access consistently, without sourcing organ meats, weighing creatine, and preparing spirulina separately every single day.
Every ingredient in Wildfang is one I relied on personally to perform at my best. Not because someone told me to take it. Because I felt the difference myself, understood the mechanism behind it, and refused to build a bar that left any of it out.
The kid running the Tasmanian hills didn't know where it would lead. But the food he was raised on — real, whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense — turned out to be the best foundation he could have had.
That's what Wildfang is built on. Nothing less.