(12-11-2016, 11:42 PM)marathondan Wrote: Also I can't get away from the simple axiom quoted in a running book some time ago (Hal Higdon I think): "eat a wide variety of lightly processed foods". We've always been brought up to eat a balanced diet. Leaving that behind feels wrong.
Thoughts?
Well there's a couple of points to be made here, and whilst I don't pretend to be full-bottle on the science or even legitimacy of all the claims being made, they do seem to me to have at least a large chunk of truth behind them.
As you say, a balanced diet is the way to go. Unfortunately, in recent times the level of highly refined carbs in the form of wheat in particular, and sugar (especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup) have become cheap and plentiful, and our bodies do not seem to have adapted to this high-carb, highly-processed diet. Additionally, the claim has been frequently made that modern fruits, vegetables and grains bear little resemblance to even what we term 'heritage' foodstuffs, with modern farming practices being geared toward high yields and shelf-life far more so than nutrition*, which has by turn suffered, some say to a very large extent. I find this is not hard to believe and is a relatively recent phenomenon. As an example, I even remember my mother grinding her own wheat to make flour, rather than purchase the relatively expensive refined flour. Apparently, even modern whole wheat flour has much of the essential goodness removed from it, but the primary problem is its very high glycemic index. Maffetone, in particular, believes wheat to be a more serious problem than sugar in the modern diet. Whether strictly true or not, I certainly function better and feel much healthier when not eating wheat-based foods.
The simple argument is that modern, refined carbohydrate foodstuffs have made our diets far more highly glycemic, and our whole sport has essentially been based on the belief that as we consume such high amounts of carbohydrate anyway, we should use that as the primary fuel for our running. This might only really be true for genuine sprinters. For us mere mortals it seems to me far more sensible to burn the fat we store so readily due to our intake of sugar and starch. If we only ever primarily burn glucose when we run, we're only going to crave more sugars when we burn up that fuel, and never learn to instead burn the fat we've so readily stored in our bellies and around our internal organs. This might not be so bad except that our diets have become very carb-heavy generally, and those carbs not burned get stored away as fat, which we have little chance of using so long as we keep shovelling high-GI, refined carbs into our gullets.
In going back through my training logs and diaries, I discovered that in 2012 - my best year of running to date - through sheer numbers of hard kilometres run, I eventually did get to the stage where I could run an easy 15 kilometres with my heart rate at a steady 130bpm. That, however, required running 200km or more per month, most of it far further and faster than the 'easy' 15 to which I refer. The idea of this new strategy that I'm now employing is to get to that point sooner, and with less stress and strain, i.e. fewer injuries. A solid base of aerobic running can then be augmented with anaerobic training to assist with speed development.
So, yes, a balanced diet is part of the key, and that is what I'm aiming at. But by 'balanced' I personally am looking at only about 100 grammes of carb per day, which should be plenty, according to the research and training I've done thus far. Four slices of bread, as an example, is roughly 60 grammes of carbohydrate; a chocolate doughnut is about 50. By eliminating bread and sugar, it actually takes a bit of effort to reach 100 grammes, most of which will come from grains (non-wheat, preferably) and legumes.
So for now, whilst my speed is painfully slow, I am running easily and pain-free every day, which is a new experience for me. I run a mix of thirty and sixty-minute jogs, and I've already reached the point where I can run a full hour staying easily within my target heart rate zone of 120 - 130 bpm. I also feel better generally and have no running-related pain at all.
This is not a quick process though and I may end up taking two and half hours or more to run Almeria, at least given my current rate of progress. Eventually, however, I feel confident that I will be able to run both marathons and Point to Pinnacles without hitting that damned wall.
Speaking of the brutal P2P, the 2016 edition was run today. I was to have run this with number two son, Stephen, but he pulled out through injury and I therefore also pulled the plug. As it transpired, the weather was so atrocious down in Hobart today that the ascent of Mount Wellington had to be cancelled, with the race re-routed; a major disappointment to all concerned. So it turns out that it was a good year to have given it a miss. It remains a firm goal of mine, however, to run the sodding thing at least once more, without running out of fuel, and finishing the thing feeling strong. This is no small goal, and quite probably much harder than running another marathon in the same manner. But there's still plenty of time. I mean, I'm still young. I'm only 55!
Waddle on!
*
CC5 might be able to tell us something about that?
Maffetonovember
