Carbo Loading's Finish Line

When I was doing my nutrition training, over 10 years ago, sports nutrition went something like this: eat carbs and only carbs and before a race whatever that amount of carbs was multiply it by a factor of at least two.  Once I started counseling runners and triathletes and running marathons myself I realized that no diet, especially not one where peak performance was the goal, could revolve around one macronutrient. My sports nutrition clients eat a diet similar to my other clients with the exception theirs may be more finely tuned. You can’t eat a trough of pasta and feel good the next day (sorry if the photo misled you).

So in comes a client last week, she’s training for the New York marathon and very savvy when it comes to training foods. “Did you see the new Runner’s World she asked? I told her I hadn’t. “There’s an article on carbo-loading and a ridiculous photo with a mountain of pasta.” I told her I’d check it out. I was going on a trip in a few days and I always bring a stack of magazines to devour. The next day, the client emailed. She sent me the link to the article, minutes later she sent another email with the message “you didn’t get the lovely pasta shot, so I took a screen shot, attached!” I explained I was saving the article but I was now extremely curious.

Friday, I boarded our early morning flight to New Orleans. I flipped open Runner’s World and found  “Fill ‘Er Up. The article is love letter to the carb, specifically the white carb. It’s as imbalanced as Mount St. Pasta (pictured above). We’re told “most runners know they should eat pasta, rice, potatoes or other high-carb foods before a half or full marathon.” Immediately, I was thinking alone? What about omega 3’s for inflammation? Or vegetables for fluid and antioxidants? They’re clear though “carbs should make up 85 to 95 percent of your prerace meals.” Fruits, though high in carbs, are discouraged with the exception of bananas or peeled apples or pears. We’re warned other fruits may give you trouble. In the same paragraph the nutritionist quoted encourages her clients “to indulge in white bread and skinless while potatoes” since both are easily digested.  I’m reading and getting incensed while airborne. I’m thinking since skinless potatoes and wonder bread break down into sugar, why not make things even easier and crack open the Domino box for dinner?

Carbs are an important part of an athlete’s diet during training and pre-race. Baked potatoes (with the skin), sweet potatoes, brown rice, sushi, quinoa and soba noodles, gluten free pasta and oats are some examples my clients enjoy. They are mostly “brown carbs” or “good” carbs and though some are fibrous, it’s not as though I’m advocating 5-alarm chili. There’s also the question of portion.  In addition to the pasta picture, there’s an equally obscene stack of pancakes, caption “tall order”, and another nutritionist’s concern that we learn about carbohydrates “so you can toe the line fully fueled and ready to go.”  I don’t think most runners or Americans need an introduction to carbohydrates (we’ve met thanks) nor encouragement to mainline them. If pasta’s your prerace preference, that’s fine but some fish or chicken and even salad will not kill you, if you’ve trained with these foods. In fact, they will help.

The author makes the point that as you taper/run less in the days leading up to a race, glycogen (stored carbs) accumulates. To me, “carbo loading” (would someone explain what a “carbo” is?) happens naturally as you store more carbs (in the new millennium we dropped the “o”) when you’re burning fewer. Another good point made is that you don’t need to increase your calories, just the proportion of carbs, leading up to the race. But there’s an adjacent “good eats” sample day suggesting far from good foods such as bagels, sweetened yogurt, Gatorade, cookies, orange juice, Swedish Fish, chocolate milk oh and for some “easy to digest” fiber black beans and salsa. Now this day may put you in a diabetic coma or nauseate you but it will not make you perform better.

Though Runner’s World’s nutrition information can be a little dated, a few pages later there is a great recipe for Sweet Potato Muffins with ginger and whole-wheat flour from Mark Bittman. On page 46, Dr Weil suggests talks about fiber and anti-inflammatory foods. That made me feel a bit better, they had me worried we were back in the 90s for a minute.  Have you trained for any type of race? What is your pre-race meal? What do you do when you read nutrition information that seems off? How do you feel when you eat a boatload of pasta?

Hamptons Marathon: The Best Laid Plans

So, I ran a marathon on Saturday. Compared to Chicago last year, there’s been very little mentioned here about this race and that was a conscious decision. I figured I would check in after the race, tell you all about my fun day and move on to other topics. We chose the Hamptons Marathon. It’s a small, local race that Runners World gave good reviews. I don’t like marathon training hanging over my head too far into the fall, so late September seemed perfect. Let’s just say my plan didn’t work that well and Saturday- well it was rough.

My training leading up to the race was pretty strong. I was running faster than I had in recent years and diligently tracking all my runs from my Garmin GPS watch in Training Peaks.  I ran a couple of half marathons this summer; one was strong, one more conservative (it was a very hot day). And though I was sidelined with bronchitis a couple weeks ago still felt ready to go. I started eyeing the forecast about a week ago and felt relieved that there didn’t seem to be a heat wave coming. Of course as we got closer rain seemed a good possibility but I was ok with that. What had started out as five people we knew running the race had dwindled to three. Friday, late in the day, my friend emailed she was out, a hurt knee and the weather didn’t help.

So it was just Marc and me. The boys would be staying with friends (very, very nice friends) and we drove out East Friday night. We had our usual pre-race sushi dinner and prepared for the next day. We pinned our numbers to our shirts, packed our shorts with Clif Shots and printed our pacing wristbands. I set the coffee maker for the next morning and of course brought our Le Pain Quotidian coffee from home. I am a big believer in race rituals and am a planner by nature; this too would work against me.

We woke up at 5AM Saturday, my father in law said “I think you got lucky, it’s not raining.” I had my E3 Live, followed by coffee and Purely Elizabeth Granola with fruit. I put some Vega Performance optimizer in a bottle to have in the hour before the race. We drove to the start, found parking close by and felt that nice race day buzz. 

We had plenty of time and a full row of empty and clean Porto potties. I decided to take advantage of this and laughed when a Lululemon bag with the words “Breathe Deeply” had been discarded on the floor of the Porto potty, I decided not to comply.

We lined up at the starting area. Instead of a motivating welcome speech the man counting down said these ominous words “this is not a flat course, it’s very hilly out there” and then we were off. We were running alongside half marathoners and some doing a 5K so it was important not to get caught up and go out too fast. After a bunch of marathons, I knew slow was better than fast and continued to consult my watch and pace accordingly. I distracted myself looking at the runners around me. There was the woman in teal who moved her arms as though she were swimming freestyle. There was also the shirtless man with a hairy back and Vibrams. I briefly wondered where he placed his running number without a shirt.  I also noticed it was very, very humid. It felt like you were running through glue and I just didn’t feel energetic. 

We were on pace through 5 miles and at about mile 6 my hypersensitive Garmin watch, probably malfunctioning from the humidity/mist, stopped. Part of me freaked while the trying-to -be-sane part of me realized I’d have the race clocks and with my pacing band could gauge my speed. The only thing was at 6 miles the full marathon split from the half marathon course and so it seemed did all of the race’s efforts. The next clock would be mile 13 (it said 2:70, 2 hours 70 minutes? It was broken).

Trying to regroup, I tried to use the fluid stations as markers but there were times when these were 2 miles or more apart. Some had Gatorade, some didn’t, and some didn’t even have people manning them. Marathons are very mental and looking back for someone so routinized (ok anal) all of the changes didn’t go over well. By mile 15, I was wiped out. I felt how I did last year in the final miles of Chicago. I had never experienced this so early in the race. There were really no spectators and with the hills I was warned about looming for as far as I could see, I made the decision to drop out. I reasoned that it wasn’t my day and that was fine. I planned to find a police car at the next water station and pack it in. Even my dropout plan backfired when at the next water stop there were no police cars or anyone to drop out with. I had one Clif shot left in my pocket and figured I may as well see if some “triple espresso” would do the trick. I looked ahead of me and it didn’t help that everyone was walking. I elected to continue and figured worst case I’d have a 10-mile walk. Instead, I used my music and told myself I couldn’t stop until a song was over. As I ran for the duration of my son’s favorite song (Paycheck), I passed hairy back. As miserable as I was, I laughed a little

Soon I was at mile 20, I was scared to look at the clock. With my walking breaks and fatigue, I thought for sure it would be beyond horrible. It said 3:18, I was flummoxed.  I was only a few minutes slow. In a typical race, I’d dig down deep and finish strong only I was so exhausted that wasn’t going to happen. There was no euphoria, there was no strategy remaining except to finish. At the 26-mile mark I summoned the last remaining energy and ran it in. Marc was there. Though it was humid and he didn’t feel he could push it like he wanted to, the lack of clocks or water didn’t affect him. He didn’t really have a race plan and it worked out well. As for me, while disappointing this crappy race was also informative and will in no way diminish my planning tendencies. In fact, one day later I realize how lucky I was to have participated and will use what I learned in planning future races.

Are you someone who plans or wings it?  What’s your next fitness goal or challenge?

Do you think being goal-oriented can have its disadvantages? 

Chicago Marathon 10 10 10

We left New York for Chicago on Friday with a plane full of runners. I know they were runners because 2 days prior to the race passengers were in full running gear sporting sneakers and apparel from previous races. I felt a little left out in clogs, jeans and a sweater. After training for 4-plus months and treating myself like a china doll for the past week sleeping over 8 hours a night and hydrating compulsively, I was ready to go. I flipped through Runners World during the flight and wasn’t that thrilled with an article entitled “The End” which basically served as a reminder (confirmation wouldn’t come for another 2 days) that the end of any marathon is difficult.

We arrived in Chicago to some Obama-related traffic. My sister in law, Jenny,  and I headed directly to the expo to pick up our race numbers and swag bags. If there was any doubt about the race date we were welcomed to McCormick Center by gigantic 10-10-10 banners and thousands of other runners. We watched a virtual tour of the course at the Nike booth, gathered some clif shot samples and headed to dinner with our other 2 team Chicago members. We were short for time and decided to go straight to the restaurant. In we walked to The Publican,  some of us were in sneakers, all of us had our big red and white marathon expo bags. Though discrete on the flight there was suddenly no denying we too were runners, in town for the race. The Publican is a fantastic green market based restaurant with a menu that changes daily. We had a delicious meal that included a beet salad, oysters, mussels, steak and Brussels sprouts all served family stlye. If I’m being totally honest, I will say all members of team Chicago had a beer or glass of wine and the 2 there-for-support husbands had much more. I enjoyed my glass of Gruner, the first alcohol in a week and hoped it would calm some of the pre-race jitters I was starting to feel.

The next morning we took a walk to the starting line.

Music was blaring and despite the fact that there wasn’t anyone around, it was pretty exciting. It was hard to picture that same area with 40,000 people crowded in it. We toured around the city, went on the architectural boat tour and to a leisurely lunch (did I mention none of us brought our children) and then back to the room. At the hotel, I did a dress rehearsal trying on my race day outfit: J&J pink tank top, lululemon groovy run shorts (there’s always hoping), Wright “blister proof” running socks (will post a picture of my clearly non blister proof foot tomorrow, consider yourself warned) and Nike sneakers. I pinned on my race number and as Coach Mindy of The Running Center had taught me for my first marathon, I “prepared my altar” for the next morning.

Have you ever run a marathon? If so which one(s)? Do you experience pre-race jitters? Do you wear running clothes on the airplane, be honest.