Triathlon Training Questions?? We've Got Answers!

Questions of the day: Nutrition, training while sick, and road biking vs. mountain biking while training for a triathlon.

Laura is training for the Iron Girl triathlon in Lake Tahoe (and I'm so excited to get to meet her at the race!). But, like anyone relatively new to the triathlon world, she has questions. Since these are things that many people might wonder, I asked her if it would be okay to answer them here, and she agreed. So here's the first one:

The whole topic of nutrition makes my head spin. There are so many different ideas about what is best. My understanding is nutrition should be viewed as fuel for the body yet I am having trouble filling my tank! I am hungry ALL the time.  I graze on wholesome foods during the day but, the hunger comes back within a half hour or so.  Do you know of any foods or perhaps the timing of when I eat that will help me feel fuller longer?  Also, if you know of any foods that seem to do a better job at sustaining energy throughout the day, I would love some ideas. Some days I am wiped out by three o'clock.  I realize this can probably be a tricky question because we are all unique. I would be appreciative of your input on  general nutrition guidelines an endurance athlete should follow.

It's definitely true that nothing besides religion and politics has as many opposing viewpoints as the topic of nutrition! My views on nutrition guidelines can be summed up pretty simply: Eat simple, whole, non-processed foods. If you've followed my journey here from vegetarian to Paleo, you'll know that while I've always focused on a diet of high-quality local and organic foods, I'm also not averse to changing things up to achieve a better and more nutritious eating plan. And recently I've been tweaking my Paleo ways to include more carbohydrates for endurance fueling.

When it comes to hunger, there are some important questions to ask. The first is, are you getting enough calories in? When you start training more, you get more hungry! This seems like such an obvious thing, yet a lot of us get used to "how much food I eat", and are reluctant to eat more than that, especially if we are worried about gaining weight. The fact is, how much you eat is directly influenced by how much you burn. I may eat 30 - 50% more food on a heavy training day than on a rest day, and I'm always amazed at how little I eat on my days with no workouts. It really doesn't take all that much food to keep a sedentary body going, yet it can sometimes take huge amounts of food to fuel an athlete's body. So the first thing to do is to make sure you're eating enough. If you're curious about calories in vs. calories out, you can use an application like Sparkpeople.com or FitDay.com (both of which have Android and iPhone apps) to track how much you're burning (including workouts) and how many calories you're taking in.

The second part of the equation is meeting your body's specific needs. If you're training hard, you are burning through glycogen, which you then need to replenish, hence the need to eat at least a certain amount of carbohydrates. Luckily, carbohydrates also fall fairly high on the satiety index, so they help you feel fuller longer. Sometimes that "empty tank" feeling is simply your body's glycogen fuel stores getting low. I've come to be able to distinguish between what I call "stomach hunger" (the familiar rumbling belly) and "body hunger" which is more an overall sensation of needing fuel.

Many people find that adding more fat to their diet helps them feel full longer. Healthy fats like olive oil and coconut oil are great for this (in fact, I had an athlete friend who swears by a tablespoon of oil when he starts feeling hungry). Now that we are far from the fat scare of the late 1990's ("eating fat will make you fat" was the motto of the Snackwell generation) and hopefully know better, we can make good choices regarding getting fats from great sources like eggs, fish, grass-fed meats, nuts, and seeds. I almost always start my day with two eggs combined with something (veggies, bacon, or coconut/banana are three favorite options) and that helps me avoid the hunger-crazies through the morning.

Hopefully that's helpful and you can avoid that afternoon burn out by fueling your endurance workouts! Next question:

The other thing is biking. I am mountain biker. I love the tranquility of riding in the dirt and through the trees.  Recently, I dusted off my road bike for the first time in three years.  This bike certainly handles the road much better than my moutain bike.  However I am not accustom to riding near traffic!  I need to shake the road riding jitters. Do you have any important road biking saftey or ettiquette tips (besides the obvious like wear your helmet and pray) that I should follow? I just want to be sure that I am not missing any important safety items, especially when I am making left turns or when the bike lane crosses between the right hand turn lane. Also, if I do some of my training rides on my mountain bike will that still be adequate training for the road coarse?  Or will I be short changing myself?

I completely understand - I love being off of the main routes of traffic and I know how nerve-wracking it can be to ride close to cars. My tips are as follows:

1) Wear girlie clothes. Sorry guys, but studies show that drivers are far kinder to female cyclists than to males. They even give them way more room when passing. Anecdotally, I've noticed that when I wear my flowered cycling shirts, I get more consideration than when I wear the green/blue/black team kit. So flaunt your flower power and get some pink/orange/girlie jerseys!

2) Give yourself some room. Unless there's a wide shoulder or bike path, I don't ride right on the edge of the lane. It's useful to take up a little room in the lane, not so much that cars can't get around you, but enough that if you swerve around a stick or rock, or get buffeted by the draft of a big truck, you won't go flinging into the gravel shoulder.

3) Be courteous to drivers and obey traffic rules. Know your state's laws for cyclists (including hand signals) and use them. I always try to send very clear body language to drivers to let them know what I'm doing. A big left arm out, encased in neon yellow is an easy sign that says I'm turning left. Don't make tentative gestures.

4) Wear great reflective gear, blinkies, and lights. A blinkie during the day is even a good idea, and my reflective gear has saved my life in dusk-like riding conditions. For the most part, drivers want to see you, and are happy when you provide an easy way for them to spot you in plenty of time.

As for training on a mountain bike, sure! Make sure you're comfortable on your road bike since the saddle, seat angle, and strain on places like wrists or lower back may be different than on your mountain bike, but go ahead and put in some of your training time on your mountain bike as well. I know the year that my hubby took up mountain biking he became a monster climber on the road bike. It's great training for those hills!

Last question:

What happens when you catch a pesky head cold during training? =(  Can I keep going and watch and see how my body feels? Will throttling back on the training hurt me race day?    

  Taking a few days off to recover shouldn't hurt you much on race day, but more than 4 or 5 might start to have an effect. Generally, I'll train through a light cold, but if I feel it start to go into my lungs or if I'm running a fever, I give it a rest. Also, my sister makes this awesome soup that has a ton of cayenne and garlic in it. If you feel a bug coming on and drink a couple bowls of that stuff, it knocks that pesky cold right outta the ballpark.

I Caved (and Not Like A Cavewoman)

Guilty. I admit it. I busted my 30 Day Paleo Challenge on only Day 5.

You would think that Day 1 would be the hardest, giving up on the chocolate and all that.

Nope.

You would think that Day 3 might present problems, being taken out to a nice restaurant for a business dinner. They ordered a big basket of bread with roasted garlic and butter and put it right down in front of me. They practically ran the dessert cart over my toes. Did I cave then?

Nope.

It was the stomach virus that did me in. I've been a little queasy for a couple of days. At first I wrote it off to maybe changing up what I was eating, but that wasn't it. I'll spare you the gory details, but at a certain point you simply know it's not caused by your menu. So what do you do when you have endless intestinal troubles? The BRAT diet of course. Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. The rice and toast are out in Paleoville, so I tried the applesauce (homemade, no sugar) and a banana. No dice. I tried some pickled ginger. No dice. By 7:30 yesterday evening when hubby was on his way home and called to see if I wanted him to pick up anything at the store, the only thing my body wanted was a few Saltines and an Ultra Strength Gin Gin or two.

So that's what I had. And I felt a whole lot better.

I guess that means I have to reboot the 30 days for busting the challenge, but it was worth it. I could actually sleep without a visit from my friend Ralph, and all was well in the world.

The Comeback Trail

I spent five days at my mom's house this week, which was probably a good thing for my overall recovery. I deliberately did not take my running gear, so no chance of heading out in the very cold air there for a winter run. I took my bike and trainer for indoor workouts and swimsuit so I did a few laps at her YMCA, and now I feel a ton better. One run so far this week proved that my legs still do work, although they pooped out after about 3 miles and the last mile home I was really dragging. It's amazing how a few weeks can take you from easily going out for a ten miler to barely making a 5k! But now that all is well, I know it will come back fast. The weather is gorgeous here and I'm planning an actual bike ride, outside(!) tomorrow.

I feel a serious physical longing to be outside doing this triathlon training thing. Spring fever is setting in!

Ha Ha, The Joke's On Me

I'm way too sick to do any exercise whatsoever out in the cold cold air, but my back feels GREAT! Maybe because I haven't been doing any killer workouts this week... ya think?

Whatever, I'll take it. I'm going to swim tonight if I have to cough up a lung to do so. No really, just kidding. I'm going to swim tonight and take it really really easy and only do 500 yards if that's what it takes to get all better.

Subterfuge

There are people on this earth who must be able to calmly and patiently await the attainment of their goals. The face of the Dalai Lama springs to mind, but I'm sure average every-day people like this exist as well. I've never been one of those people. Sometimes that is an advantage - the ability to push yourself beyond all reason is, obviously, a necessary attribute to training for something like an Ironman, something no really actually truly sane person would do. But often it's a disadvantage too.

Last week I was sick, I basically ran myself into the ground with some overwork and some lack of sleep thrown in for good measure and caught myself a terrible bug that's been going around. This week the sunshine came out to play and, not being able to resist its siren call (though I probably, in retrospect was not 100% well), I headed out for a nice hour and a half bike ride in the cold wintry air on Thursday. Fast forward to Friday morning and I feel like someone had taken a blow torch to my lungs. I can picture them in there all red and angry and inflamed, probably cursing the stupid brain sitting atop their body for putting them through such torment. Today I'm slightly better, but not much. So there goes my workouts for the weekend, blown up for the joy of a ride outdoors after months on the trainer in the basement.

The good news is that all of those basement trainer workouts made riding outside feel effortless and beautiful, something that couldn't describe my first season's rides in years past when my bike sat ignored in the garage all winter. So I have hope that once my lungs truly heal up (and I am NOT, NOT, NOT going to run tomorrow no matter how good I feel) and the good weather returns as it always does, I'm going to have some great early season riding ahead of me.

For now, it's back to bed with my hot tea and my cough drops.

I'm Going to Make You Heal Dammit

Sometimes my body can be sneaky. Sometimes it knows that I'm not really going to give it enough rest or enough downtime. I'm bad that way. So sometimes my body mutinies on me and makes me too sick to do anything. When my back really started giving me fits, I did cut back on the worst culprits - volleyball has been totally gone for weeks {sob} and I've really scaled back the intensity in karate {sniff}. I cut my running miles in half {boohoo}. I've really tried to be good. Honestly!

But it just wasn't enough for the old body to really rest and heal, so now I'm sick. No long run yesterday, no outside work, the leaf pile is laughing its evil head off out there because any exertion in the cold winter air starts me coughing my damn head off. But on the plus side, after four days of this, my back feels really really good. Maybe that's what I needed in the first place, a few days totally off.

Maybe next time I'll listen to my body and give it what it needs. Then again, maybe it'll have to kick me in the butt again. Probably so.

Recipe for Thankfulness

First of all, happy American Thanksgiving from my family to yours! If you want to feel truly thankful on Thanksgiving, try getting really really really sick the week before. It puts all else into blinding perspective. You come to appreciate the little things - walking up a flight of steps without feeling so weak you're afraid you're going to totter right over, eating food and having it stay in your stomach, being able to keep up with your kids, let alone do simple things like prepare them a meal. This Thanksiving, I was grateful just to be able to eat a tiny bit of the lovely food and sit there with my family talking about the things we are most thankful for.

In general, I think I am a pretty grateful person. Many times as I go about my day, I smile and feel thankful for the life I am incredibly lucky to lead - for the beauty that surrounds me, my loving husband and healthy happy kids, my strong and fit body. But this little brush with incapacitation taught me about all the small things that go unnoticed, how I take my body and its capabilities largely for granted. I'm not talking about the ability to run fifteen miles either, that's easy to be thankful for because it really does seem like a miracle to someone who can still remember not being able to run one. But on a daily basis, my body performs a thousand small and seemingly inconsequential miracles, things like moving me from the chair to the counter to pour a cup of tea, or swallowing that tea and digesting it around in my stomach instead of staging a mini-revolution and sending it back where it came from, things like breathing easily and moving without pain. This week I've had cause to examine all of those privileges and realize how easily they can disappear. How quickly you can go from vibrant good health to can't get out of bed.

I've been reading a book called The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World , which is really a fascinating book if you have any interest in epidemiology, cartography, the history of cities, and many other related subjects. But it wasn't the best book to finish shortly before being struck down with a mystery virus. The book is all about a dreadful cholera epidemic that literally took 1 out of every 10 people in the 1800's London neighborhoods it visited. As I suffered through my little bout of stomach flu, I thought of those people who went to bed one night healthy and woke up the next morning knowing that they'd be the next corpse tossed on the loaded carts that made their rounds through the streets. We go through our lives thinking the next day will be just like this one, that all the things we can do today we will be able to do tomorrow, and some days this just isn't true at all.

I'm still nowhere near 100% after this illness took my feet out from under me this week. I'm reduced to eating the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast) and even my usual mug of mate' sits uneasily on me these days. I've lost about 6 pounds, but sadly my high tech scale says my body fat has gone up (now that is just blatantly unfair, isn't it!!) I went thrift-store shopping with my good friend the week before taking ill, and all of my new cute jeans that I bought now hang a bit baggily in all the wrong places. Still, I did get in the pool this weekend and tagged behind my lane of guys for aboue half the usual workout. I know it will come back quickly and for that I am grateful, as well as for everything else I am vowing not to take for granted anymore.

From Good to Bad, Bad to Worse

First the good - my son and I competed in our first ever karate competition this weekend. We had a fun time, he took a second place in his category in sword sparring (with foam swords, thank heavens!) and I am especially proud of myself for entering the sparring competition (which scares the bejeezus out of me, but I did it!) and taking 3rd in my division. I actually beat someone sparring, which is impressive given that I have a hard time not closing my eyes when someone is throwing punches and kicks at me.

Entering this competition reminded me of how much I have learned in sports over the years. I watch my son, who is such a perfectionist and so very hard on himself fret and fuss over how he thought he was doing and I remember being exactly like that as a kid. I hated to lose. In fact, I was much worse than he is, because while he does tend to get down on himself he takes full responsibility for his performance. I used to invent reasons that I hadn't performed as well as I thought I should - I hurt my leg or I was getting a cold, or whatever I could come up with to soothe my ego. I am so impressed by his ability to be comfortable with himself. He said something very profound afterwards: "Even if I was the only one there and I got a first place ribbon, I'd be proud because after all I showed up and lots of people don't!" It only took me about twenty years in sports to learn what he knows already - you're a winner if you show up and do your best.



Unfortunately, my good mood at having faced my fears and entered this competition evaporated yesterday as I began to feel sicker and sicker and sicker. At first, I thought I was just sore from the karate competition. But then it became more than just muscle soreness and descended into that horrible achey feeling that precedes an ugly illness. I hardly ever get sick, so it really blindsides me when I do, and I begin to wonder if I'm dying or something because I'm so unused to feeling this way (and yes, I do feel grateful that I don't have to face this more often!). I haven't thrown up in about a decade, but spent last night hanging out in the bathroom and losing my lunch, then my dinner, then anything else. So I'm about to head back to bed and re-bury myself under the covers, vowing to not take for granted my good health, vitality, and the wonderful thing that is being healthy most of the time.