Protein, supplements and recovery nutrition
Evidence: strong
Total daily protein beats timing, the “anabolic window” is overstated, and a balanced diet does most of what the supplement shelf is sold to do.
Not medical advice
This is a general knowledge base, not medical or dietary advice. If you are injured, unwell or weighing up a supplement or a change to your diet, speak to a doctor, physiotherapist or registered dietitian who knows your situation.
For most runners eating a varied diet, the gap that supplements are sold to fill is small. The evidence points consistently to a food-first position, with a handful of specific exceptions (Maughan et al. 2018).
Supplementation versus a balanced diet
The IOC consensus on supplements is blunt: most provide little or no benefit beyond a well-constructed diet, some carry contamination and anti-doping risk, and the small number with genuine performance support is short (Maughan et al. 2018). The aids with real evidence for endurance running are few: caffeine, dietary nitrate, sodium bicarbonate for the right events, and iron only when deficient. The rest of the shelf is mostly marketing; see supplements that do not hold up.
Protein: total intake beats timing
For recovery and adaptation, total daily protein matters more than when it is eaten. Apparent timing effects largely vanish once daily intake is equated (Schoenfeld, Aragon & Krieger 2013). The acute muscle-protein-synthesis response is maximised by roughly 0.3 g per kg per serving, about 20 to 40 g (Aragon & Schoenfeld 2013; Jäger et al. 2017).
The anabolic window is overstated
The narrow 30-to-60-minute “anabolic window” after exercise is largely a myth. A meal eaten before training leaves amino acids circulating well into recovery, so immediate post-workout protein is often redundant, and the practical window spans several hours (Aragon & Schoenfeld 2013).
When carbohydrate timing does matter
Rapid refuelling matters only when the next hard session is less than about eight hours away; for a runner with a day or more between hard sessions the urgency disappears and total daily intake is what counts. The practical refuelling protocol for that narrow case, along with rehydration and co-ingestion, sits with the rest of post-session eating on recovery nutrition.
A simple daily target
Spread protein across three or four meals of about 0.3 g/kg each rather than loaded into one sitting — that per-meal dose maximises the acute muscle-protein-synthesis response (Aragon & Schoenfeld 2013). The daily total most evidence points to for active people sits roughly in the range of 1.6 g per kg of body mass, toward the higher end during heavy training or when dieting to lose weight: a meta-regression of 49 RCTs found no additional fat-free mass gain from intakes beyond 1.62 g/kg/day (Morton et al. 2018). Most runners eating enough total food hit this from ordinary meals; a shake is a convenience for filling a gap, not a requirement, and it does nothing a chicken breast or bowl of yoghurt would not.