A New PR, Diet, and Tri-geek in training

Man, I am so far behind in my blogging!

First, welcome Steve Nichols to the exciting world of triathlon! I’ve managed to rope him into giving triathlon a shot next year at Tupper Lake. Poor guy, he has no idea what he is in for! Steve, you’ll be a tri-geek in no time!

It has been a very busy two weeks, but I’ve got some great updates to share with everyone.

The Poland Spring Marathon Kickoff 5 miler: I had an awesome race! I met up with the crazies from RaceWithPurpose who were the only team on the course who had enough spirit to dress up in costume. It was great to see them all jacked up about the marathon and I was lucky to spot Coach Adam (aka Fred Flintstone) in the crowd before the race started. He ran the first mile with me and we chatted about all of the exciting things that are going on for the RWP team for next year. I love that guy! Before I knew it I had run a 9:00/mile and was well on my way to a PR. I ran the race in 48:30. A great comparison is the 5 miler on the same route I ran in June of this year at 53:28. SWEET! Yes, I’m enjoying my speed workouts, but I have to attribute the speed primarily to my weight loss. I’ve dropped about 13 pounds since June. Yeah, me!

While we are on the subject of weight, I was getting really frustrated with my lack of weight loss early in the month. I was eating a reasonable amount of calories, good health food choices, and averaging 8 hours a week of training. My weight was going NOWHERE. I needed to do something drastic, so on October 21, I began to follow the Paleo Diet. While on the surface it seems a little ridiculous to “eat like a caveman”, there are many very accomplished endurance athletes that subscribe to this eating plan, including Joe Friel. He even collaborated on the book “The Paleo Diet for Athletes”. There are about as many opinions regarding the optimal training diet as there are yards in an Ironman, but I really wanted to shake up my metabolism, so I figured what the heck.

The diet is a bit complicated, as it the theory behind it. You can go here: Paleo Diet, if you want to find out more. The very basic part of it is; no dairy, no sugar, no wheat, no soy, no grain, little or no processed food and high glycemic carbs only in the immediate post training window or during prolonged training. Yeah, I know, what CAN you eat?! That’s the hard part. Lean meats, nuts, fruit and vegetables are all fine, but really hard to create an appealing menu from. I find breakfast the hardest meal. I can only eat so many eggs and I still can bear the thought of chowing down on a pork chop at 7am. Having said all that. I committed to try it for 2 weeks to see the results.

My daily menu looks something like this:
Breakfast: 1 egg, 1 egg white, 1 cup of last nights vegetables and a piece of fruit
AM Snack: Diced apple, ½ cup shredded carrots, cinnamon and some walnuts
Lunch: The largest mixed salad I can choke down (2 cups or so) and 6oz of fish or chicken. A bowl of fruit salad and some sunflower seeds.
PM snack: A banana and a few nuts, a sliced cucumber or some other veg
Dinner: 6-8oz of protein, 2-3 cups of vegetables
After dinner: good guess= fruit

I know, no wonder I’m dropping weight! I’m sure I can be more creative if I tried, but I just haven’t had the time to really plan my meals all that well. I also know that if there is a Paleo Guru out there reading this, I’m probably not doing the program justice. I’m making a serious effort to drink more water as well, a lot more water. I hate drinking water, but I’ve been trying to get an additional 60oz a day. The biggest problem I had was that I totally bonked on a 4 miler run 4 days into the eating plan. I started the diet change on Sunday and Monday went for a 10 mile run. I did well. I used raisins to fuel for the run and they seemed to work well. Tuesday I swam and biked, Wednesday I went out for an easy 4-mile run and had ZERO in my tank. Nothing. I could get my legs to move. I hadn’t been eating to restock my glycogen stores after my training. The only time in the plan I should be eating more complex carbs like potatoes and such is right after exercise and I hadn’t been doing that, so BONK! I fixed that and added carbs in the meals directly after my workout, even if they are relatively short efforts. Bottom line: I’ve dropped 6 pounds in 10 days, not bad.

The other big change I made in my program was the addition of a new sports drink and gel combo. Up until this point I haven’t been using any supplements before, during or after my workouts. I know from experience Gatorade gives me diarrhea and while I’ve tried to “acclimate” my digestive system, it just didn’t work. I have used Amino Vital in the past and loved the taste, but it didn’t contain enough carbs to justify using it as a drink during long efforts and it didn’t work with gels. The gels were fine, but didn’t contain electrolytes and if I took them with sports drink, the sugar overwhelmed my stomach and I got nauseous. I just ordered 2 products that I’m going to test over the next few months. The first is a new Amino Vital product called Endurance. You can check out the profile here: Amino Vital Endurance. The thing I like about the product is it contains BCAA’s, a mixture of sugars, and some medium chain triglycerides. It’s a really comprehensive mix and the taste is nice. I used it the other night before my track workout and felt great. I also bought a mixed box of e-gel from crank sports. I haven’t tried them yet, but what I like about these is each packet contains 150 calories as opposed to the 100 or so found in other gels. There also electrolytes in the gel that means I can use them with plain water. I’ll keep you posted on how they work for me.

Well, that’s about it. I’ll be in the city on Sunday to root the Race with Purpose team on during the marathon. If you are in the neighborhood, I’ll be at 5th avenue and 97th, feel free to drop by the cheering zone. Good luck to anyone else running the New York Marathon. Enjoy every minute of it.
708 days to Kona 2009.