My appointment was for this past Friday, and the session went really well.  I was the first athlete of the day, and had the full and undivided attention of Coach Al Lyman and  Dr. Kurt Strecker (DC).  The evaluation included assessment of:

• muscle length
• joint mobility
• joint stability
• motor control and coordination
• appropriate muscle action
• resiliency and resistance to fatigue and
• functional strength

This was accomplished through a combination of static measurements, stretching measurements, and video recording of my running form on a treadmill, both barefoot and in my normal running shoes.

Here is the video evaluation:  (not pretty)

The evaluation lasted almost four hours and I came away with a very detailed and specific report.  Basically my core strength, stability and balance need a LOT of work.  Without this rebuilding, I’m on a course to get injured during training or racing, which will set back my long term goals of a Kona qualifier.  None of this was surprising to me.  I knew that I was hitting the limits of my run fitness based on how I felt after racing or running hard sets, or anything longer than about an hour.

I came out of the evaluation with a set of exercises and stretches to get me through the first phase of rebuilding my running.  The evaluation criteria and results and recommendations was presented in a printed guide, with photographs of the specific exercises and stretches, as well as a DVD with video examples of the same exercises and stretches.

So now, the rebuilding work begins!

The Whole30 program is a really strict approach to a Paleo diet, which is based around the theory that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were healthier, stronger and lived longer (excluding accidents and being eaten by saber-toothed tigers).  During my experiment, I focused on good quality, organic meats and eggs, lots of vegetables and fruits.

Some of the stuff I ended up eating weren’t Whole9 approved.  For example, Lara bars are considered a “sweet” and should be used sparingly in the Whole30 program.  I love Lara bars, and would occasionally use them as breakfast or a mid-morning snack when I had a early morning workout.  I also ate Kind bars for the same reasons.  Kind bars are less paleo because of the added honey as a sweetener, where Lara bars are just fruit & nuts.  I kept adding Hammer Whey to my breakfast smoothies because having a chicken breast for breakfast isn’t my thing (yet).  I also used Hammer Recoverite right after a hard workout because this stuff just works for me and really does help me recover faster.

I also had a couple of days where I just threw out all the rules and ate what I wanted for a particular meal  Those days were interesting experiments to see how my body reacted to the different foods.

So what have I learned from these last 30 days?

• I’m much more tuned into my body’s fuel needs.  Sometimes feeling hungry is my brain telling me I’m over-stressed.
• Having too FEW calories are as bad as having too MANY calories.  I get really grumpy the day AFTER I’ve shorted myself calories.
• Real foods taste great.  I’ve always liked fresh vegetables, salads and fruits, but I’m finding that I start CRAVING them right after a day where I’ve had stuff that isn’t paleo.
• I may not be celiac, but I have much less GI distress by eliminating all grains.
• Sticking to a paleo diet means that I’m thinking about my next meals frequently.  It takes more work to eat this way.

At the start of this experiment I was worried that I’d have problems keeping my energy levels high enough to maintain my workouts.  This was never the case.  In fact, I never had a serious bonk or even “afternoon dip” in energy levels.  I used to have both of these problems on my standard diet.  In fact, my energy levels seemed HIGHER when I’m on this eating plan.  That’s likely due to increasing complex carbs from fruit & veg and eliminating simple carbs from sugar and grains.

So what’s next?   Part of the program is the “reintroduction” phase where I’ll add back some of the eliminated foods one at a time to see how my body reacts.  I’ll probably start with some limited dairy.  Before I do start the reintroduction, I want to get my blood work done to get a new baseline.

Ever forward

On the blog front, I’m playing with a cleaner look to the site, and eliminating some of the extra widgets.  More work to come.

Swim: 14:01
T1: 2:47
Bike: 50:57
T2: 1:18
Run: 25:58

1:35:01

8/26 A/G, 48/289 O/A

Signed up at the last minute simply to “do a race” and shake of the last of the grad school rust. Goals were to go hard, stay on the gas the entire race and see what happened. And thats what I did. I feel pretty darn good about the results, given minimal run speed work, no planned speed work on the bike, and limited swimming. I was confident that I could have a good race, as this past week I had some nice snap in my bike & run, with a breakthrough brick on Wed.

The race: Well run event. Competitor Group has taken over the SBR series and this was the inaugural year. Well organized setup, plenty of parking, nice venue, plenty of helpful volunteers. They lose points for not having the bathrooms open right away, but that may have been the state park employees. Live band, huge breakfast burritos, and free Red Hook beer after the race (but none for me).

Swim – I was in the third, and smallest wave (nice!). I opted for no wetsuit as the water was warm, and it was only an 800m swim. Course was out and back, but the challenge was all the lake grass. The first two waves chopped up the stuff so it was like swimming in Miso Soup. I had to slow up a couple of times to pull the crap out of my goggles, and untangle my hands and arms.

T1 was faffing about with my Garmin and socks. Next time I race a sprint, I leave both at home.

Bike – the course was a long out-&-back, then a short out-&-back. Up a hill, then down a hill. Lather, rinse, repeat. My race plan said “if you are not in pain, you aren’t moving fast enough” so I pushed and pushed. I flew by a ton of people, and only got passed by two or three. I’ve been trying to improve my descending as well, and that really helped on this course.

T2 faffing with the Garmin cost me here too… WTF is wrong with me?

Run – out on a “trail” that used to be a paved path, but was pretty degraded. Started climbing almost right out of the gate, and kept going mostly up until the turnaround. Splits reflect the course: 9:04, 8:29, 7:52.

I got chicked around 2 miles by a 45-49 AG woman (she blistered the uphills), but held off all others in my A/G until less than 400m from the finish where I got passed by two guys flying past me. At that point I was calling down to Scotty for more power, but the silly engineer was out on a break or something ’cause he never returned my call.

Lessons learned: Poor transitions cost me at least two A/G spots. That’s a lesson that stings a bit, but it’s easily fixable. My run needs improvement but it’s come a long way in just a couple of months of effort.

One more thing. It really feels great to write a race report again.

It will be interesting to compare/contrast the EN camp with the Fireman Ironman camp this coming weekend.  While not exactly the same type of event (Fireman camp doesn’t have scheduled/coached workouts) I will get the opportunity to talk to a lot of other athletes with a lot of other coaching plans, including some pro and top-ranked amateurs.

As you can probably tell, now that my school work is complete, I’m looking for things to do with all of my new found “free time”.

So it’s time to focus on training.  Right now my biggest challenges are diet and consistency.  #1 is consistency.  I need to schedule the workouts in advance, put them on my calendar and get up and out when the alarms go off.  As far as diet, we start the weekly veggie allotment in two weeks, so getting fresh fruit & veg will be easier.  Now just to stay away from sweets.  It’s going to take a concerted effort to quell the chocolate jones.  I’m going to need to figure out what’s causing that trigger each evening.

Got some fun times planned with a long beach/anniversary weekend, and back-to-back Lake Placid training camp weekends and looking forward to OBX later in the summer.

Life is good.