OK, you bonked on zero plan but did you actually manage to take in nutrition or not? Did you get a lot of water/gatorade/gel? Was it hot?
The way to execute on autopilot in a marathon is not to plan it to death. It is to ***practice ***it. Go on some longer, MP runs with a couple of gels and wearing – if you must - one of those water holder belts. Sure it will slow you down a bit but it will let you practice this nutrition plan. Or do a run or two like this on some sort of a loop that goes by your own personal water stop.
Personally, I don’t think it matters much if you take 4 oz of water here instead of 4 oz of Gatorade there as long as you get the sugar in over the course of the race. I don’t think it really affects your performance that much. It’s what you do in the aggregate that really matters. And mostly (my opinion) what makes people blow up in the marathon is just plain going out too fast. Yes, lack of nutrition can make you bonk but if you bonked with 7 full miles to go – you definitely went out too fast. No amount of sugar you consume is going to buy you 7 miles in a marathon.
You say you should be able to run 2:22 - 2:24. How do you know this? From previous marathons or from shorter races? Because if it’s from shorter races, well, I think you experiencing a phenomena that many marathoners do. Marathon predictors suck. You can hit all of your predicted times in races ranging from 1 mile to 30k no problem and the have all kinds of trouble in the marathon. The marathon is different. It can take YEARS to get it right. I’ve seen so many people experience this.
Assuming I’m correct – and you haven’t already run a couple of, say, 2:27-2:30 marathons, I think you might be better off just going out easy. Don’t go out at 5:25-5:30 pace, give yourself a mile or two of just “easy” – think like 5:35-5:40 type of easy. Try to keep the effort that easy for as long as you can. If you do it right and you are truly in 5:22 - 5:24 shape, that same effort should start yielding 5:25 - 5:30 pace within the first few miles all by itself. And if it doesn’t, maybe you are not in the shape you think you are.