Starting the run, feeling better step by step

April 6, 2013
Folsom Lake
Granite Beach, CA

Reversing Aging Through Racing

If I raced to almost the exact same time I did three years ago, that means I am not slowing with age. If we are supposed to lose function and fitness as we age, and I haven’t, does that mean I have reversed aging? I say yes. That’s my story and I am sticking to it. It also explains why folks in the older age groups look so great. They’ve reversed aging too. So as long as you don’t overdo it and get injured or overtrained, then you too can reverse aging.

The Race

I wasn’t super motivated to race two weekends in a row. What would that show me? Usually these races have a couple of weeks in between, although I haven’t raced the ICE Breaker recently. There is little else on my calendar for April since I gave up on the Sea Otter Classic due to logistical issues, so I jumped in at the last minute. This race is very similar to last week’s XTERRA, except this race has the bike leg on closed roads instead of trails. As a result it is quite a bit shorter, taking me about one hour less that the off-road version. That should make for faster recovery, right?

Swim: 1/2 mile
Bike: 13 miles road bike
Run: 4 miles trail run

SWIM:
Started great. The breathing tactic paid off again as I have yet to train my swim. As we got further out in the lake the cloudy, breezy weather showed up as some chop that began to push me around. Unfortunately, I kept my head down and followed some feet. They were the wrong feet to follow. I kept swimming wide, wasn’t sighting often enough and I felt my swim collapse. As bad I thought it was going to be, I actually went a few seconds faster than the previous week! Never give up. Note to self: sight the buoys for yourself, don’t trust others.

BIKE:
Two laps on closed park roads. Like the mountain bike leg, these roads constantly have you thinking. Shifting, climbing, descending, cornering, there is never a dull moment. I thought I was going fast, but unlike the swim, this was deceptive. I went slower than the last time on this course. Reflects the need to do much more bike training. Running does not seem to translate into bike fitness the way the reverse does.

RUN:
Killed it. Felt great, and felt even better as the run went on. I kept lifting my pace gradually and I didn’t blow up. I actually went several minutes faster than the previous week on a course that was a half a mile longer! I attribute this to riding a bike leg that was an hour shorter and on roads. Mountain biking really beats up your legs before a run.

NUTRITION:
Two small Japanese sweet potatoes and plenty of time for digestion. Felt hungry at the start, but so what? Took in one bottle of HEED on the bike, nothing on the run. Two servings of Recovery Accelerator immediately after while walking and cooling down. Ate several onigiri rice balls for lunch while driving home. Fillings were pickled ginger, miso, umeboshi paste. A little short on protein for recovery, so I need to create another filling with beans or tofu to use for recovery meals.

SUPPLEMENTS:
I just got my Hammer order for this season, so I brought back the supplements that I think give an ergogenic boost. Controversial and not truly necessary, I still like experimenting with them. I used their Daily Essentials along with some Endurance Amino before and after. Again I used the curcumin and proteolytic enzymes to help with inflammation and muscle recovery. I felt my recovery went well, but the race was an hour shorter.

All in all, a great race. Many thanks to TBF Racing for producing such great events!

Fuel up to go fast

Race day nutrition is very tricky and requires a lot of experimentation. Everyone is unique and some real trial and error is needed to find the ideal pre-race dinner the night before. Breakfast is even harder to figure out, since it might not be needed or even desirable. I failed miserably last summer at Northstar by not eating and drinking in small, frequent amounts. Instead I got behind, tried to catch up which forced my gut to rebel and shut down.

But my recent two races went off very well from pre-race dinner to post-race lunch. I am very excited about what I discovered.

I used to love a big bowl of whole wheat pasta with a thick, chunky sauce jammed with vegetables for dinner the night before. For breakfast, I loved my usual oatmeal, or a lentil spread on toast. I don’t these things anymore. Can you figure out why?

fiber

For any other meal, fiber rich foods are the goal. It slows down digestion and keeps your blood sugar and energy on an even keel. But that’s not what you want before or during a race. That pasta dish? Had me seeking bathrooms as desperately as the Oakland Raiders for a head coach. Lentils for breakfast? Awesome on a regular day, but not so nice when charging hard on the race course, trying to get fuel out of the gut and into the muscles and the brain.

THE LOW FIBER WAY TO A GREAT RACE

My pre-race dinner is now white rice with a few veggies for color and texture. Or potatoes, baked, steamed or mashed with a little seasoning or sauce. I eat dinner early because I want all of that food out of my system before the gun goes off.

TO BREAK THE FAST OR NOT?

NO
Steve Born of Hammer nutrition recommends no breakfast. He would rather sleep. His reasoning is that food consumed too close to the race will slow down in digestion and interfere with fat burning. Muscle glycogen is already full if you train and eat properly, so that breakfast won’t really help. Instead he suggests at most taking a gel right before the start, get into your pace, and just start fueling the way you usually do. This sounds weird, but it works. If the race is under two hours you probably don’t need anything. Longer events will need fueling, but that can be handled during the race itself.

YES
I like breakfast. So I like to eat a little before races. I only do this if I can have three hours before the start to make sure that food is metabolized. Since my muscles are already stocked with glycogen, all the breakfast needs to do is top off the stored glycogen in the liver that was burned overnight. This amounts to only a couple hundred calories. Both of my recent races required a couple hours of driving, so I ate two smallish baked potatoes or sweet potatoes. They took the edge off my hunger, but did not bog me down.

RACE NUTRITION
I stuck with what I’ve used in the past, but I surprised myself by needing less. For a 2 1/2 hour XTERRA, I drank one bottle of Perpetuem, about 250 calories on the bike, which lasted about 90 minutes. I sipped on HEED during the transitions, and I had plenty of energy. In the past I was sucking down gels as well, but I did not feel I needed that much energy. Also important was not overdoing the calories thinking that I needed them and forcing my gut to fight back. Been there before, lesson learned!

RECOVERY
Immediately after finishing, I kept moving, walking to my transition bag, getting my bottle and refilling it with water. I mixed two servings of Brendan Brazier’s Vega Recovery Accelerator which gave me about 160 calories, 35 g carbohydrate and 8 g protein. I kept sipping and walking until I felt my heart rate come down.

POST-RACE LUNCH
The XTERRA race was a bit longer and ended close to lunchtime, but I didn’t feel very hungry until after the awards. I had packed a nice soba noodle salad which made an awesome lunch. After the sprint tri, I was even less hungry, since the race was an hour shorter. Knowing that I wanted to get on the road right away, I packed onigiri rice balls for lunch since I could easily eat them while driving. Very tasty, but I may have been lacking a little in protein.

XTERRA REAL bikecourse

XTERRA Real

Granite Beach, CA
March 30, 2013
Folsom Lake

My Race Season Starts:

I like this race. Since it is the first race of any kind for me, it is always a rude shock to the system. After months of low aerobic intensity Maffetone training, it feels good to open up the throttle. It also hurts. A lot. Cruising around at 140 BPM is definitely not the same as charging up a muddy climb at 175 BPM. I always worry at the start of a season that I have forgotten everything that matters. Like how to pedal my bike over rocks. Or swim in open water. Or change out of my wetsuit. Even packing my transition bag gets its fair share of worry. It was nice to see that I can still do all of those things. Just not very quickly.

Conditions:
Much better than in years past. The last weekend in March can be dicey. Usually the water is very cold, feeling like it was snow maybe twenty minutes prior to race start. Five minutes into the race I was very comfortable. It’s been a fairly dry winter this year in California, so the trails were smooth, fast, and fun. There were only a couple of mud puddles compared to the usual bogs, yet judging by my bike it seems that I brought it all home with me. Temperatures were mild as well, though a bit humid thanks to the clouds and nearby lake.

Swim:
I haven’t been in the water in months due to the usual excuses. Thanks to Coach Rutherford, I can get by on muscle memory. For a half mile swim, I can probably float in my wetsuit. So I picked one thing to work on during the swim and succeeded. I focused on breathing. Many people, myself included, make the mistake of holding the breath underwater. This makes for gasping, and hurts technique. The goal is to breathe as naturally as possible by exhaling continuously while your face is in the water. I concentrated on this one thing and it worked! My stroke was much smoother, and I felt very relaxed and comfortable. When I forgot, I immediately began to tense up and slow down. So despite not training my swim at all, I was only a little bit slower than usual.

Bike:
I like this bike course since it’s a bit technical. It’s real mountain biking. There are no real sustained climbs, but you are always actively doing something: Climbing, descending, clearing rocks and boulders, swooping on singletrack. The first lap felt great even though I haven’t done much mountain biking lately. I smoothly cleaned the technical sections that often trip me up. The second lap was harder. Fatigue set in, and those technical sections tripped me up.

Run:
My legs felt like concrete, but I made them run anyway. Knowing the course, I knew where to hike to conserve energy, and my overall time was typical for me.

Nutrition:
Spot on. The effect of increasing fat burning by Maffetone training helped me race without needing as much fuel. I ate a small breakfast three hours prior, and used liquid fuels during the race. More on this later, since it worked so perfectly.

Recovery:
I also didn’t feel as drained afterwards. My legs often feel wrecked after a race, and my brain is often in quite a fog for a few hours. My recovery the rest of the day went well. After a recovery drink, I had a real lunch. I wasn’t terribly hungry until a regular dinner. Unfortunately, I slept TERRIBLY, and my recovery fell completely off the rails. I blame the altitude that always affects my sleep, and the stiffness and soreness that set in making a comfortable sleeping position impossible to find. A nap the next day made things much better.

Supplements:
Concentrated curcumin extract as an anti-inflammatory and proteolytic enzymes to help break down broken tissue to speed healing.

Overall, a great day and a solid start to the season. Much work to be done before XTERRA Tahoe City!

Make that Green Tea and Potatoes
Dietician Jeff Novick advises us not to drink our calories. They don’t satisfy, and can easily lead to over consumption over the course of a day. While a carbohydrate drink can help during workouts, especially longer or harder ones, I find that training below Maximum Aerobic Function encourages fat burning enough that I do not really need calories during workouts. With the goal of ever increasing the amount of work my body can do burning mostly fat, I’m leaving the sport drink at home for now while I just keep plodding along. Then I looked at my tea cup and got an idea:
GREEN TEA
Yes, green tea in my water bottle. Famous for its antioxidants, but with no calories it could only benefit right? I heard one person say that the nutritional power of green tea is so great, we should consider it a leafy green vegetable! So I brewed a cup of green tea, poured it into my water bottle and filled the rest with water. It’s water, but with special powers. And a little bit of flavor. Even better, if I had one available, would be to add a squeeze of lemon or lime which adds both flavor and improves the absorption of those special antioxidants.
For my real food calories on this week’s long ride I went with:
FINGERLING POTATOES
I cooked up a pound , let them cool a bit, sliced them in half and tossed them with a squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sprinkle of parsley. Next time I’ll add a little garlic powder. I poured the potatoes into a plastic tumbler and stuffed that in my jersey pocket. This arrangement kept the potatoes easily accessible and kept my jersey clean.
Why potatoes?
Because they’re awesome! They always taste great, and can be made to be savory to counter the often sweet fruit based fuels. Potatoes are an easily digested carbohydrate that should easily fuel long training sessions. They’re a little less calorie dense than the white rice or prepared fuels, so you have to be a little more precise in measuring to be sure you have the right number of calories for your workout. I took probably half a pound, filling up the tumbler which worked for my 2.5 hour road ride, but I was definitely hungry by the end. Which was fine, because the other half was in the fridge ready to go as a post ride snack.
So I pedaled through the dormant vineyards of Sonoma county enjoying the spring like weather nibbling on my potatoes and enjoying the day. Real food fueling works so far. I am enjoying real food better than sports drinks and gels of the past, and strongly urge everyone to try savory real foods for long sessions.

Maffetone insists that everyone do at least three months of base training where they strictly follow his 180 formula for a maximum aerobic heart rate. Most people should do it for longer. This means training slowly, and walking if you need to. Eventually the speed will come, but only if you stay honest and disciplined.

Why?

Fat Burning

The aerobic metabolism is responsible for almost all energy in races over fifteen minutes. So unless you race exclusively on the track in short events, the aerobic system is the one to focus on in training.

Mark Allen

One of the best long course triathletes ever, used this method to great effect. When he started, his MAF pace was well over 8 minutes per mile. He later got down to a 5:10 pace at the same low heart rate. He did all his base training at the strict MAF heart rate. If it worked for the Grip, I figured it would work for me.

Stress

Low heart rate training is less stressful on the body and much easier to recover from. It feels good, and  it makes consistent training easier to achieve.

Train slow, train well, and race fast!

Doping cyclists refer to racing when they arenot under the influence of any performance enhancing drugs as racing “on bread and water.” In order to better see how my aerobic engine grows I’m experimenting with my own version of “bread and water” avoiding commercial sports nutrition and supplements. For me it will mean white rice and green tea. Real food.

Base training means building the aerobic engine. This means going slow and resisting all urges to go fast. It takes time to build those capillaries. It takes time for the heart to get stronger. It takes time for the mitochondria to do, well, whatever it is that mitochondria do. But the relaxed pace of training below MAF can be very pleasant. It gives one time to think. It is also a good time to to try new things since there is no pressure.

So Saturday was the first bike ride in way too long, and boy, did it feel awkward! The position on my road bike felt weird, I wobbled a bit going down the street, and today the only soreness is my neck and shoulders. They weren’t used to holding up my fat head for a couple of hours. The good news is that I pedaled well for two hours, but running exclusively is not the same as cycling, so much work needs to be done before racing triathlons again.

The Experiment:
I want to try real food for training rather than processed sports “nutrition.” It seems to me that during low heart rate cycling, it should be easy to eat real food. So I tried making some onigiri to stuff into my pockets. Ordinarily, I don’t need food at all for aerobic workouts under two hours, but I wanted to experiment, and my ride was pushing into lunchtime.

Results?
A qualified success. They tasted great, and chewing on real food was a nice contrast to sucking down gels or liquid fuels. I found that using a little extra water when wrapping them made them hold together better. They held together beautifully in my jersey pockets. Nutritionally, at about 100 calories per half cup of rice, I could figure out how many calories I was getting, which is one of the conveniences of packaged foods. I used the traditional umeboshi paste and higher grade rice which tasted great. I loved the tangy, salty, sour taste, and I think that in the summer heat it would be quite refreshing.

Downsides?
One real, and one potential.

They were a bit of a challenge to eat while riding. They took longer than I thought, so maybe I should make them smaller. Also, the nori wrapper was a bit tough to bite through and chew at times. I anticipated this, but it was a bit tricky. Will it get better with more practice? I don’t know.

The weather was cool and breezy, and I hardly broke a sweat. I don’t know how they would fare in a jersey pocket on a hot summer day. They might need another wrapper of plastic, foil, or wax paper, which would make eating them even more of a challenge for a klutz like me.

But in sum, they taste good, settle well in my stomach, and at a few cents for a serving of rice and a nori wrapper compared to $1.40 for a Hammer gel, I will practice my technique.

11:13

Yay!

I year ago today, I shuffled my way to a pathetic 13:27, only a few weeks recovered from pneumonia. Truly, I was starting from ZERO. It sucked. But I persevered with the Maffetone Method, and my fitness steadily improved, which led to a great summer of racing with no burn out like in past years.

But this year I have been worried.

I slacked off in the fall, quit racing, and got a little too serious about an “off season break.”  The holidays interrupted a little, but I got in some nice runs. Then January came, time to start base training, but things fell apart. Huge work stress, a cold, and other assorted troubles conspired to make me miss too many days.

Last week I tried a MAF test on the track, but the results and feel were so off I knew I needed to retest this. I feared this season was over before it even started.

Then I had some encouraging signs:

• A great weekend long run
• A great informal MAF test that had a two minute improvement over recent times
• A good morning HRV score

So I knew it was time to hit the track on the same day that I started last year to see where I stood. I am over two minutes faster per mile than I was at this time last year (and a bit heavier, oops!) I wasn’t able to hit a MAF pace like today’s formally or informally, until late April of last season. So while I wasn’t able to maintain ALL my fitness from last year as I hoped, or build on it as I think you should be able to when training the low stress Maffetone way, it’s worked out pretty well.

But, I’ve been too much of a run specialist. Time to remember those other two sports that make up triathlon!

The cold and flu season is here, and all the usual precautions apply: wash your hands often, increase the size of your “bubble” and do not touch your face. I’m talkin’ to you, picking your nose at a stoplight! Seriously, though, that is the easiest way for pathogens to enter your body in sufficient force to cause illness. I don’t get sick very often, despite encountering a lot of people every day. I attribute that to a plant based diet, but recovering from a cold right now has prompted me to remind myself of some cold and flu secrets.

I have a problem with the germ theory of disease. There are pathogenic bacteria and viruses all around us, yet we only get sick occasionally. Some people get sick, but those closest to them do not. So something else is at work here, and that something is the immune system. A healthy immune system should be able to resist any infection.

So hygiene aside, what can we do to optimize our immune system?

• Get enough sleep- Sleep deprivation causes stress that interferes with immune response
• Reduce stress- Stress puts the immune system on hold until the threat is over
• Exercise- Moderate, regular exercise like base training improves immune function
• Nutrition- Get lots of phytochemicals and micronutrients, from food, not supplements

G-BOMBS to the Rescue

Big ups to Dr. Fuhrman and his recent book Super Immunity for details about how lifestyle impacts the immune system for both infectious disease and cancer. He created that acronym to serve as a reminder of the most potent immune system supporting foods to include as often as possible.

G- Greens: all leafy green and cruciferous vegetables like kale, collards, spinach, chard, cabbage, broccoli

B- Beans: all varieties of beans, peas and lentils

O- Onions: anything in the allium family: onions, leeks and garlic

M- Mushrooms: turns out this low calorie filler has potent immune benefits

B- Berries: antioxidants and more, grapes included

S- Seeds: especially pumpkin, sunflower, flax and sesame

You do not have to have all of these ingredients in the same dish or meal; spread throughout the day they provide the same benefit. But it is kinda fun to see if you can pack them all into one dish.

Here is one G-BOMBS Dish:

Based on a Spanish dish

Saute some chopped onion and garlic until soft. Add a bunch of chopped chard, a few sliced white mushrooms, and some diced tomato. Cover and steam for a few minutes. Uncover and add a can of drained garbanzo beans, a handful or raisins or currants, and season with salt, pepper, smoked paprika and a splash of balsamic. Heat through. Garnish with sunflower seeds and serve over rice, potatoes or your favorite starch.

These little guys got me through 8 hour solo MTB races!

After my GI distress in last year’s LQS race, I have been a little more interested in finding real food to fuel my long training rides. I have become a little leery of the sweet taste and processed carbohydrates of  sports drinks and gels. One reason I switched to Hammer products was because they aren’t as sweet, and I found the exclusive use of maltodextrin to work better for me. Until it didn’t.

Plus, real food such as natural fruits and starches will be far more nutrient dense than engineered food.

I have found that the Maffetone Method allows me to train on water alone up to 2 hours. Greater reliance on burning fat for energy means I no longer need carbs along the way. Also, following a starch based diet means my glycogen stores are always full. Part of base training will be trying to push that a little further out. Can I ride for 2 1/2 hrs? 3hrs?

But what about racing?

Higher intensity means more carbohydrate burned at faster rates and the need for refueling. Short races of two hours or less I think will be fine with some Hammer HEED or gel. But what about those marathon mountain bike races? It is for these longer events that I want to find some real food alternatives.

Here are some things I have tried with varying success:

• bananas
• dates
• small potatoes

Most people have discovered that bananas don’t travel well. Dates travel really well, they’re like nature’s gel packets, and I know a guy who raced on figs, but fruits have a problem shared with sports nutrition: the sweet taste can get to you after a while. Manufacturers get around this by adding things like citric acid, but this can be irritating. Finally, I began to appreciate what Allen Lim and many pro cyclists call “gut rot.”

As far as potatoes and sweet potatoes go, they travel well, but I worry that the fiber could cause a problem over time. But after reading endlessly about Allen Lim’s rice cakes and reading a recipe for and explanation of Japanese rice balls I had a flash of insight: white rice! I have been a brown rice snob for so many years that I completely ignored that white rice is low fiber but high carbohydrate without being sweet. It just might solve my problems.

So I turned to Allen Lim and his book The Feed Zone Cookbook for some ideas. As a vegan athlete, I took a real chance ordering this from Amazon unseen, but it seems to have some good ideas and stories.  Scott Jurek uses rice in the form of onigiri, or rice balls wrapped in seaweed. kinda like sushi. Brilliant! All I have to do is find a recipe I like and learn how to package it. This part worries me, as I am clumsy while trying to fuel during a ride. I also don’t want my jersey to turn into a glutinous mess. So far I like the rice cake while skiing, but the stop and go nature of skiing coupled with a chairlift ride makes eating real food easy. For cycling, I will have to practice on some long rides to see if it works.

Then what about Tarahumara foods like chia or the little bean burritos they use while racing?

Stay tuned.

Build cardiovascular fitness that looks like this!

New Year’s is over and while the weather here in California is cold, it’s time to put in those base miles. OK, I know, much of the country experiences REAL cold, but temps in the 30s mean my morning bike commute isn’t happening. That’s a pity, because there is no more convenient way to amass training hours than to incorporate them into something you already  have to do, like go to work.

Of course, I could ride on the indoor trainer. But that sucks.

I would rather be outside running than sweating on the floor. But I promise I will train on the trainer this week if I have to.

Base Training Goal: Aerobic Fitness

This will be my second full season of Maffetone training, and this year I have residual fitness from last season. My informal MAF test of my usual running route shows some slowing from last year’s best, but it has been holding steady, and I have not tried to push that fitness further. In the off season, I think that a plateau equals progress. Compared to last year where I lost weeks of training from pneumonia, this year I have maintained some reasonable run fitness. My hope is that I can build on that this season and get even faster. Like last year, I will not race until the end of March, giving me three months of uninterrupted aerobic base training, except for some alpine skiing. I will use my 180 formula maximum heart rate of 145 until I start racing. If everything goes well, I will experiment with calculating my MAF by working down from lactate threshold, which will give me a higher heart rate range to work with.

Why?

Because unless you race on the track, almost all of your energy is being produced aerobically.

Because more health benefits come from aerobic fitness.

Because it creates less stress, avoiding burnout.

Because it’s good for the brain, helping Seasonal Affective Disorder (more on that later)

How to Build a V8 Aerobic Engine

Stick to MAF.

Aerobic and anaerobic workouts can interfere with each other. Use the 180 formula and be disciplined.

Don’t race

Resist the temptation to “tune up” until after you’ve built the engine.

Increase volume

Do this more by increasing frequency than super long workouts. The sweet spots seem to be 45-60 min. and again around two hours. The Kenyans never train for more than 2 hrs, but they train often.

Be patient

Improved fitness will come week by week and three months should build quite an engine.

Happy training!