Countdown to Ironman: Week 45: The Paleo Ironman

Everyone knows what endurance athletes eat: bagels, pasta, bread, gatorade, and Gu. Right? Isn't this necessary? Any endurance website or forum will tell you this much, it's an accepted fact. And if you're going to do an Ironman, better buy stock in the wheat farming industry, because according to many experts, it's "foolish" to eat otherwise than a heavy dose of grain-based carbs.

So what the heck am I thinking? I started eating Paleo when I was doing more intensive and less endurance-based training (Crossfit and Karate as opposed to Ironman). But I feel so darned good, I don't want to give up the benefits and go back to eating grain, sugars, etc.. For one thing, all of those niggling little joint pains I used to have? Gone. The creaking knees, the arthritis starting in my knuckles? Gone. Muscle aches and pains after a hard workout? Gone baby gone. Still think I'm nuts? Read 10 Reasons to go Grain-Free and get back to me on that one.

So that leaves me with the Great Unknown, which is how to train for an endurance event on a diet that doesn't give you a whole lot of carbohydrate replacement easily. I mean really, just how many yams and bananas can I be expected to eat? The guy over on the Castle Grok blog can answer that (he's transitioned from Paleo to a high-carb fruit-based diet that involves way more bananas than I will ever be able to stomach) but I don't think I'm cut out to be a fruitarian. Still, I know that as I ramp up my endurance workouts, my body suddenly gets this very intense carb craving, and I'm tuned in enough to my body to tell the difference between OMG get me a Cinnabon NOW and I really need some healthy carbs or my muscles are going to feel dead tomorrow.

So part of this new Ironman journey for me will be figuring out how to do it without the 80,000 boxes of cereal, bagels, and bowls of pasta I consumed last time. As my general guide, the book The Paleo Diet for Athletes will come in handy, although I think it didn't really go far enough in explaining what to eat during workouts. The book covered eating Paleo pretty handily for meals, and essentially says that during racing you need to revert to simple sugars like gels and sports drinks, but it doesn't really say much about how to eat during training, so I may be forging my own path in that direction.

Still, although the Ironman is a huge goal in anyone's life, my real aim is this journey to strive for ultimate health and fitness in all aspects of life. Finding a way to merge my desire to train for ultra-endurance and my need to eat in a way that fuels my body healthily is just part of the challenge.