The Endurance Pig: Junk In, Junk Out

Several years ago I went to go listen to Steve Born speak. Born is the Technical Adviser for Hammer Nutrition, who has worked with numerous professional cyclists and athletes, and also a multiple time RAAM (Race Across America) finisher, he is also a member of the Utracycling Hall of Fame. Hammer Nutrition is a worldwide sports nutrition company specifically geared toward endurance fuels and all-natural health and wellness supplements. I am a big fan of their products and would probably use more if not most of their products if my budget could afford it. When Born came to Appleton, he came to speak about his philosophies of fueling endurance sports and sports nutrition. During his lecture, he specifically discussed eating habits outside of training, in other words, your general diet. He put it very simply and blunt - Junk in, Junk out. Personally, I have always tried telling myself to treat my body like a finely tuned machine, as opposed to a garbage disposal. This past week, we had my parents over for a game of dominoes. The previous 2 cycles (this one included) I have completely neglected my diet. It's actually rather embarrassing/pathetic. Now, I have talked about my dad in previous blog posts and is effect on me getting started and keeping me motivated in the endurance sport world. While we were in the middle of playing our game of dominoes, I found myself snacking on our kids' Easter candy....again. My dad, as usual, gave me some crap for eating like crap and bluntly said, "Junk in, Junk out." Truthfully, he hit the nail on the head - What I was putting in my body was simply that - JUNK. It was doing no good, other than short term satisfaction, there was no nutrients, no vitamins, no minerals, just sugar and fat. It was going to do me no good, there was no need for it. And to be honest, I wasn't even hungry. It was simply eating partially out of habit and partially due to having a mindset of "I earned this."

I know I have several posts in the past about my diet and how I either struggle with my self control or my choices of food intake. It's funny, because my wife often gets on my case for eating "weird" foods of putting so much effort into eating right. She often says I eat too good and need to "live a little," all while knowing exactly my lack of self control when junk food comes into our house. During holidays or other family get-togethers I have family and friends looking to me like I eat perfect. When truthfully, I don't. I share the same struggles as just about every other person. I love chocolate, peanut butter, ice cream, and baked goods; and when you can combine all those into one delectable dish like an "All Lovin No Oven" ice cream creation from Cold Stone Creamery, or a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough/Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard from Dairy Queen, it's pure heaven to me. Granted, I do eat pretty well majority of the time (80/20) and work my ass of during training and my training volume is a lot more than most. This is why I am able to give the false appearance of eating "twigs and berries" all the time.

The fact of the matter is, when it comes to my training plan, I am able to make all the difficult sacrifices and stick to it as though my life depended on it. But, as soon as there is candy or other junk food in our house, I can't stay away from it. I was doing really well from January until about my birthday, the beginning of March. I was able to shed some of the weight I had put on since running the Boston Marathon, but now my weight has been stuck in limbo between 170 and 165. I have written on here countless times that I would ideally like to be around 160 and 155 throughout my race season this year. So here I sit, already a week into April and my first A race of the year (Green Bay Marathon) only about 42 days away (6 weeks) and I am sitting at 170 pounds. After the Lakefront Marathon, I was about 175 pounds and told myself I was not going to race at that weight again, and promised myself, I would not make the same mistakes in my 2013 race season. So much for that...

Easter was right in the middle of this past cycle. So on the 30th I went over to my Sister-in-Law's house for a large Easter get-together with a ton of food and treats (your typical family holiday spread). I ate way more than I should have and mostly of food I didn't need to be eating, such as carrot cake, cookies, jelly beans, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, etc. On Monday, I made a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough dip to bring into work. It was absolutely delicious. While I was making it, all I kept thinking to myself was, "wow. there is NOTHING healthy in this" and "how much more sugar and fat is going into this dip?" It was like as soon as I thought I had enough ingredients in the dip, I would add something else, it was like the ingredients list just kept going. So, I had my fair share of that on Monday and of course, I brought the left overs home and continued to snack mindlessly on that throughout the remainder of the week - on top of all my kid's Easter candy. On Friday, we brought the kids out to Glass Nickel Pizza for lunch. Saturday, we went out to a local Mexican restaurant with our close friends Pat and Melissa and they also brought Melissa's mother's famous peanut butter bars. So it was a terrible week for my caloric intake with all the Easter candy I continuously snacked on throughout the week on top of all the eating out.

I know I tend to eat more when I am tired from my "turn-around" days and from working 3rd shift in general. I also know I tend to eat out of sheer boredom and out of habits I have formed over the years. These are all compounded with the fact that I lack self control to simply say no, when I very well know I shouldn't be eating something. Also, as a creature of habit, I have developed some habits of eating at specific times, or creating the mindset of I need to eat to fuel. I even find myself eating more sue to simply having kids. It seems like when they do not finish their dinner, I find myself eating their left overs to not throw it away. What it comes down to is I need to realize I do not need to eat as much and/or as often as I do. With the Green Bay Marathon 6 weeks out and after that I will really be getting into the bulk of my Ironman Training, NOW is the time for me to make some specific changes to my eating habits. I am going to start making smarter nutritional choices and start feeding my body for my training. Yes, I realize I have said this, or something similar, in the past. I have tried eating a vegetarian diet, paleo diet, and gluten free diet. So, whats different this time. Honestly, I don't know. Maybe, it's my realization, that I have some sort of problem. Maybe it's just the timing, with a marathon a little over a month away, and my lifelong dream of the Ironman in September. What ever the reason is, something needs to change. I need to starting thinking about what I a putting in my body. It's ironic that I am writing about this today, because there was just an article put out my Ironman.com discussing the importance of proper fueling throughout training for an Ironman. You can read that article here - "Eat for Performance, Not Reward." I do not plan on bringing back my food journal and documenting all the food I take in on a daily basis, as I am not concerned about the amount of food I eat - my concern lays in the quality of food I am eating not the quantity. I do plan on being more diligent weighing myself everyday and documenting the weight. Yes, I realize that daily weight can fluctuate 2-5 pounds simply by the amount of food intake and hydration levels, but I have found that on the 1-2 days following a day or two of overeating I avoid the scales as to think that my food choices never happened.

Sorry for going on and on about my diet, but it is without a doubt the #1 concern I have about my training. It is in the back of my mind with every meal. I feel as though if I can come forward and be honest with my junk food bad habits, I can hope to assign some accountability to my choices.

Brief Recap

Other than making all my poor nutritional decisions this previous cycle was actually pretty productive. Due to some slight schedule shifting due to shifts in my work schedule because of training days, this past cycle saw two 50 mile bike rides, one which was done as a brick with a short 2 mile run afterward and a second which was done as a stand alone bike ride. For my second 50 mile ride, I really wanted to go out hard and ride faster than I did during my brick bike. In the end my second ride was 5 seconds longer than the previous one. I blame it solely on the wind. My average heart rate was about 10 bpm higher than my first ride, but just a tad longer, which shows that I was working harder in the second ride, most likely due to the wind. I did not have a long run scheduled during this cycle as it's scheduled for the first day of the upcoming cycle. I also had my longest swim to date this cycle at 3000 meters (1.89 miles). Things are setting to build up, especially in my run training, leading up to the marathon in May. My bike and swim distances will continue to build, but the volume really won't build until after the marathon, due to concentrating on my run training right now. My long intervals are growing and will continue to do so leading up the race. I am up to 8 sets of 800 meter (0.5 mile) repeats. In the past, I have always done these workouts on a track, at 2 laps per repeat. This year, I have chose to run these repeats on the road. I opted to do this, first, because the track is under a foot of snow, and second, I read an article about the mental factor of running in the road, as this is where the marathon is run. 800 repeats are naturally a difficult workout. It's not a short sprint, but it's not a long tempo run. It's still near 100% effort and then you compound that along with minimal rest, 800 repeats are one of my trusted marathon speed workouts. I did make a small swap in my scheduled training plan because of unplanned weather. I swapped out my long bike ride with my swim/bike brick workout. I woke up Saturday morning to about an inch of snow, which was forecasted. To avoid biking in the snow, I did my bike on Friday and the brick on Saturday.

Favorite Workout

My swim/bike brick workout, which I did on Saturday instead of the originally scheduled Friday due to forecasted snow. I had scheduled a 3000 meter swim followed by a 15 mile bike. I planned out my own swim set, which I have never really done in the past. My goal was to incorporate a long set built around some short speed sets to simulate fatigue. I sandwiched a 1000 meter set between a couple pull/kick sets and short 50 meter sprints. I swam the 1000m set at a moderate pace. I averaged 0:55/50m and finished the 1000m in 18:37, which wasn't blazing, but I didn't want it to be. So I was happy with my swim. Immediately after getting out of the pool I joined a spin class at the YMCA and rode for a little over 45:00.

Moving Forward

The upcoming cycle isn't necessarily a recovery week as far as total volume is concerned, but it does have a short long run and no real long single workout, other than the 20 mile long run on day 1. The long run will consist of a 12 mile goal race pace tempo run at the end of the 20 miles. My plan is to run 7 miles at a moderate pace, and then run 12 at 6:50/mile pace and cool down for 1 mile to total the 20 miles. My total cycle volume will increase by a little over 6%. Along with a 16 mile long run, I have another 50 mile brick bike with a 3 mile run. I also have 2 days with 2 workouts along with one day at work were I picked up a 4 hour block of overtime. It will be a balancing act (as it usually is) to balance my family life along with my training and work. The positive is that after my double back day on Monday (training from 7-3pm and then go back to 3rd shift that night from 10p-6a) I only have 4 more days of work until my weekend. Friday is my "Friday" this rotation, which leaves me with a weekend of Sat, Sun, Mon.

As always I have a few pictures from the past cycle and thanks for reading! Hopefully next week I can write about my successes with my eating habits!

Be fast, be strong, and carry on!