Staying Positive & Nutrition

Its amazing what 10 hours of sleep can do! I'm feeling quite a bit better today, although I still have a lingering headache, and I usually never get headaches. Hopefully it goes away sometime soon.

Last night I left out anything positive in my post, because, well, I was grouchy. So now, let me tell you about my ride that came before my hideous swim!

As usual on Thursday, TNT does a back to back bike-swim workout. It can really kick you in the face if you're not careful (I suppose I wasn't)! The ride (although on trainers) was outstanding. I was just in the zone. Jimbo, the guy leading the spin class, is a very experienced cyclist. I don't think theres many people who can keep up with this guy. He's full of tips that really, really pay off.

Last week he told us to take some time to spin with just one foot on the trainer, just to see where our 'dead spots' are. I started my workout this way so I knew what aspect of my spinning to focus on. It helped a lot. Then he told me to stay 'light on my feet.' Again, it helped me out big time. Another tip: 'drive your knees towards the handlebars,' again, my pedaling got smoother.

Towards the end I was pushing a cadence of 110 while staying completely smooth. A few people even commented on it, including Jimbo and my friend George who has completed several Ironmans. I'm hoping these skills will carry out onto the road when it really matters!

On a completely different note, I'm getting ready to send out letters & donation forms for Team in Training. Nancy, Bill, & Nic are already on my list. Does anybody else want to join the cool gang that gets letters? If you do, send me an email: TheRelentlessRunner at gmail dot com

Thanks everyone for your encouraging words last night and this morning! It definitely helped kick my funk!

Update: Rather than making a new post and continuing my posting frenzy, I thought I'd just append some nutrition stuff.

Friday is my shopping today, which means its my day to decide on new foods to add to my diet! From last week, I'm liking everything new I mixed in: raisins, tuna, eggs, and almonds. This week I went all out on new foods. Here's the list:

• Plain Yogurt
• Luna bars - Chuck has been talking about these lately. They're completely natural health bars. I noticed after I got home that they say "for women," but I ate one and everything is still in tact. Nothing new has sprouted either.
• Apples - I ate apples a lot last year, but I got a few bad batches in a row and stopped. Time to start again.
• Carrots - Needed veggies of some sort, I'm not a huge fan of carrots but I should be able to acquire a taste for them
• Real chicken breasts - As opposed to the pre-cooked crap I was getting before
• Taco stuff - Had to look everywhere to find tortillas without hydrogenated crap in them
• Organic eggs - Suggested by someone, thought I'd give them a shot. They're brown.
• Peanut butter and Jelly - Picked up some without high fructose corn syrup, that stuff is Satan's spawn. It's everywhere.

We'll see how this goes! I'm starting to have quite the variety in my diet. And yes, Marcy, this should make you feel guilty. Very guilty. Family Guy's evil monkey is trying to make you guilty too!

Nutrition & Training Plans

Lately nutrition has been a big topic on a lot of blogs I read. Chuckie V really drilled it into the ground a couple weeks ago, and The Everyday Athlete had a great series of posts recently. The main emphasis? Eat simple.

Avoid foods with huge ingredient lists. Your body has to process that crap. Generally, if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. In other words: If it can't come out of your mouth, don't put it in your mouth! Chuck has been on a rather extreme (but convincing) caveman bit recently. The idea is to eat the foods that we evolved on. It's more extreme than a lot of people would go, but sadly it does make sense. Heidi had a great list of Ten Super Foods recently. Her list is simple too, foods like: cottage cheese, apples, fish, eggs, almonds. Simple foods.

Recently I've been trying to revamp the way I eat once again. I'm taking it in steps, though, otherwise I have a feeling I wouldn't stick with it. Every week, a few new foods to add to the mix. This week I added eggs, almonds, raisins, and tuna. So far, I'm enjoying the variety. More filling food for breakfast and healthier snack choices -- its so incredibly easy to grab a handful of almonds on the way out the door!

I'm not sure what I'll add next week, but I'm open to suggestions and will be trying at least one or two new foods. What healthy foods can't you live without?


On a completely different note, I've decided to make some changes to my training plans this year. Remember the goal for a 1:20 half marathon in May? I'm throwing that out the window. It isn't that I don't think its possible, I do, but I don't think its smart. Going for such a fast time so soon would be absolutely begging for injury. I need to keep building my base. I can't be stupid.

The result for my training? I'm getting rid of my ultra-fast tempo runs. Faster runs are staying on my agenda, just none of the six minute pace stuff. I'm going to back it off a bit and train below my lactic threshold for a while; the goal is to keep my HR under 175 on my hard runs. Once I no longer see any benefit from this, I'll start working in faster stuff. For now, though, I'm noticeably improving every single week, so why risk the injury? My major races are ages away!

My race schedule is getting altered a little bit as a result. I'm only going to run one of the half marathons (St. Louis, April 6th) and then focus on triathlons through July. In June I will have my tri for TNT, then in July I'm strongly considering the Half Ironman in Racine, WI. After I survive that, its back to a focus on running to Hammer. Like. Hell. At. Chicago.

Two major peaks for the year: the Half IM and Chicago. Everything else I'm mostly going to train straight through.

Sound like a game plan? I think so!

What up Doc?

This post is just a bunch of random bits of information. Even though most my posts turn out that way, this time its on purpose!

• I made the decision to switch to the PhD program. Although I still have to apply, I see no reason they would reject me. But that does mean I have to jump through the hoops of getting recommendations again; oh the joys!
• My healthy diet is turning into habit. Yesterday, my Aunt sent me cookies. This huge tin of wonderful chocolate chip cookies! I ate 3 of them when they got here, and they're absolutely amazing. But, I have no urge to eat them. At all. I see bananas or cookies and consistently choose a banana. I look at my workouts the next few days and feel as though I can't afford to put crap in the tank. A good shift, but even I'm taken aback by it a little!
• Today is a rest day, which means I'm bored out of my mind; I don't feel like I need it, but I scheduled it so I'm taking it! I've had 10 workouts (13 if you count ab workouts) in the past six days, and I'm not feeling it at all. Adapting? Maybe!
• I'm scheduling a massage for next Friday to work any kinks out of my legs that are starting to show their heads; I figure its good for me physically and mentally, so why not? I'll call it a "treat" for working so hard lately.
• Tomorrow has seven miles on the schedule; the farthest I've run post injury! I'm optimistic about it, as always! My hip is feeling stronger than ever, and I'm ready to push it a little bit farther. 9 on the 9th, here I come!
• Finally, an endorsement for Vanilla over at Half-Fast. He's organizing a "Shave Your 5K" challenge. The idea is to see who can cut the most time, or percentage, off their 5K this year. See his post for the official rules. Go participate, even if its just because of his swawesome logo!

Okay, thats a lot more random than I thought I had; but its too late now; I hope everybody has a great weekend!

Massage & Nutrition

Today was day one of making a few changes to my diet. It isn't full swing yet, but I'm giving it a go. I'm going to list what I ate today so it is open to public scrutiny and will help me get things right. You will notice I eat very, very frequently.

7:00 Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast
8:00 Drank about 12-16oz of water during class
9:00 Banana after class
10-11 OJ/Blackberry Smoothie (made too much, but drank all of it. About 4 cups worth)
11:00 Rice for lunch (about 650 calories worth)
12:30 Apple on the way to office hours
1:50 Clif bar after office hours
3:30 Apple on the way to my massage
6:30 Left over hamburger helper for dinner
6:30 Chocolate milk with dinner

I will still probably eat something before bed. I don't know what, but I'll be hungry again soon! Update: I started eating again before I finished writing this, some Wheat Thins.

As you see above, I got a massage today. It felt pretty good (duh) and left my legs feeling great! My legs were extremely, extremely tight; which could likely be a cause of the injury in my hip. I do know from prior knowledge that tight muscles lead to injury, so it isn't just masseuse-trying-to-get-my-money hype. She recommended not running for two days afterwards, but honestly, two days off because of a massage? I think not!

My left hip is feeling pretty good afterwards. I plan to at least go for a test run tomorrow, even if I don't make it my prescribed 13 miles. I really need to not take any risks so close to the race; even if I end up having to take a 4 week taper as opposed to 2 week, I'll still be in shape to run under 3 hours. Taking a stupid risk could end up with me not even making it to the start line!

On a more flatulent note: since having my massage I've has a serious case of gas. I don't know if this is normal or not, but I thought I would attack your unsuspecting senses with a mental whiff. I don't see anywhere in my blog description: "I'm trying to woo the ladies with my very appropriate writing topics which have nothing to do with the secretion of gas," so I thought I would share that with you all. Enjoy!

-Doug

Nutrition: Round One

I'm that guy everybody has a grudge against for being naturally skinny. Go ahead, hold that grudge! During the summer in high school I would sit at the computer all day and my diet consisted largely of Doritos and Coca Cola; I didn't gain a pound. I'm lucky in that sense. However, this luck left me with little interest in nutrition for most of my life.

I started caring a lot more this year when I really started training seriously, I did the basic things to improve my diet without doing any real research. I cut pop / soda out of my diet, stopped eating a majority of the junk food, went for a lot of carbs to fuel my long runs; things of that nature. Sure, I knew I should be eating more fruits and veggies like Mom always told me, but those rules don't apply to me anymore, right?! (wrong)

This summer I had a friend, Dan W, who was probably the biggest health nut I (or any of you) will ever meet. He was full of information about good and bad foods to eat, and started getting me on the look out for high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils in the ingredient lists of things I eat. I looked a little bit, but ultimately if I wanted to eat something, I would.

Recently SLB put on his apron and threatened to do horrible, horrible things as he pulled out his rolling pin if I didn't shape up in terms of nutrition. I ordered the book he suggested and it came in the mail today, as I mentioned earlier, which immediately gave me reason to procrastinate grading! I read the first little bit and decided I'm going to take this nutrition thing in phases. I can't just turn it around over night, but I'm starting to make changes now!

I learned quite a bit in the first chapter or two. I learned I'm not drinking enough water. Remember that old rule of 8 cups of water a day? Yeah, that doesn't cut it when you're active. Try 16! Thats right, if your pee has color in it, you better get to drinking! I always keep a water bottle with me, but I'm going to drink a lot more now that I got the inside scoop on hydration.

Hmmm! What else did I learn? Oh yes. Fruits and veggies. Eat them! They're very important in those vitamins and minerals and they help prevent injury since they provide what your body needs to rebuild itself. What? Oh, this hip? I guess I should have gotten this book sooner!

Next up, whole grains! When you're not eating whole grains you're eating, well, partial grains. If you're only eating part of it, you're probably missing out on something, don't you think? Yeah. You thought right. The extra goodness in whole grain helps fight disease and offers more vitamins, mineral, and fibers. Sure, most of us probably knew this, I think I had it stored in the back of the vault somewhere, but I'm actually making the switch.

I went to Walmart tonight, since I'm taking my car into the shop tomorrow and don't know when I'll get it back. I made up a list of what I wanted and decided I would cover at least as much as I mentioned above. I switched to whole grain bread and bagels, and bought a whole bunch of fruit including: bananas, apples, frozen mangos, frozen pine apple chunks, frozen black berries, and sliced peaches. I bought a blender too, per a friend of mines recommendation. He makes a ton of smoothies every week to get all his fruits and suggested I do the same; anything tastes good once its a smoothie, right?

And now that I will be without a car for the next few days, I'm locked up in my apartment with only this healthy stuff to eat, so this ought to be good for me!

Its a big change, though, because generally speaking, I'm one picky eater. I usually try new things if they're offered to me, but rarely on my own. I am the one person on this planet who doesn't like lettuce, and that is not going to change unless I get amnesia; or maybe if someone can prove simply by eating lettuce I will knock 20 minutes off my marathon time, not likely!

Theres still other changes I have to make to my diet, but they will come in time. Things to add include: fish, even more fruits and veggies, and whatever else this nutrition bible recommends. For now, I need to work on getting used to this batch of new stuff!

Round one!

Fight!

More miles to nowhere...

Okay. I admit it. I'm sidelined again.

After my long run Saturday lots of things hurt. If it was between my waist and my knee, it wasn't feeling very pleasant. However, as my quads and hamstrings healed up, one pain stuck around; my left hip! I ran Sunday because it all pretty much blended together. I took Monday off as per usual, and ran Tuesday because it felt better than Monday; and because I'm stupidly stubborn.

Today I decided to stop being so stubborn and admit that I need a break, again. Its really frustrating since I had to take a week off for my ankle just two weeks ago, but I gotta do what I gotta do. Running is only going to cause more harm than good right now, and thats what I gotta focus on!

I've been doing my wonderful icing, heating, stretching, tylonel(ing?) routine the past couple days, and its making progress. Especially since I jumped on the sweat machine (stationary bike) rather than running today. It actually felt good on my walk back from class, which is really promising since it was hurting pretty good on the way back yesterday. Tomorrow will be more time on the sweat machine, regardless of how good my hip feels, its getting the extra day off! I can't afford to take any chances with the marathon in 25 days.

My friend Stephanie also told me she had hip problems a little while ago and a massage fixed her right up. This Friday I have a massage scheduled with the lady she suggested. I figure best case: my hip works again, and worst case: I get a massage. So, um, I'll take it! I have extra birthday money laying around anyways!

Two days ago SLB gave me a motherly scolding about my diet. However, instead of giving him an "I knowwww mommmmmmmmm," I'm going to take his advice. I ordered the book he suggested pretty much right after he suggested it, since it was only $15 on amazon. Honestly, I thought I was doing pretty good for myself, but if I can revamp my eating habits in order to run faster and feel healthier, I'll take it!

Hope everybody's running is going good. Put in a few miles for me :)

-Doug