Running Update

I haven’t written a post about running a long time—I apologize to the readers who mainly come here for the running posts. If you’re still with me, thanks for being patient through all the mental health posts. If you’re someone who reads more for mental health and life updates and aren’t interested in posts about training, go ahead and skip this one.

Running had finally been going well up until this past Wednesday when I had a sharp pain in my foot and ended up having to walk two-and-a-half miles to get back home. Unlike the injuries that had nagged me for months before I had them looked at, I had my foot looked at right away. The doctor took some x-rays and poked around on my foot. She said it could just be some joint pain and that it might go away if I took a couple days off. If it hurts again when I run, I’m supposed to go get an MRI.

Before the foot started hurting, I had got my weekly mileage up over fifty, and if this foot thing is just a little blip, I’m hoping to go back to that mileage in the next few weeks.

I have no scheduled races this year besides pacing a Halloween half marathon. I’m going to miss out on my goals of running a 50 mile race and setting a PR in the 50K. I was too injured to race the 50K I was planning on running in July and had to do the 25K instead.  The first 50 mile I was thinking of was also not feasible due to my injuries. The fall races where I could try and PR at the 50K or complete a 50 mile happen to fall over my cousin’s wedding weekend in Texas.

So, the 50 mile and the 50K goals aren’t happening. That leaves breaking 17 minutes in the 5K. I still have a shot at this one, but it’s going to be really tough. I’ve got to continue building my mileage if I want to have a shot, and that means being efficient with my time and continuing to do injury prevention exercises to stay healthy. Right now my long runs and tempo runs are going great, but my shorter intervals are not. I can tell I’m still a ways off from being able to hold a sub-5:30 pace for a 5K, so I’ve got some work to do before I break 17:00.

I’m using a plan based on a Matt Fitzgerald book, “Run - The Mind Body Method of Running by Feel,” and an article in the now-defunct magazine, “Running Times” called “Always Ready to Race.” Basically, I’ve created a no-plan-plan where I decide on an interval workout during the week and then a long run and a tempo run on the weekend. 

Here are some nuts and bolts as to how I’m structuring my training:

I’m taking off either Monday, Tuesday, or both, or going very easy one of those days. This is mainly because I’m home with Calvin those and there’s not always time to run before or after Laura’s at work, but it’s also to recover from the increased mileage I’ve been doing on the weekends.

Wednesday is an interval/fartlek workout. I’ve done by time, for example 1:00 hard, 1:00 easy, 2:00 hard/easy, 3:00 hard/easy and repeat one or two times. I’ve also done 0.5 miles hard, 0.75 miles hard, 1 mile hard with 2 - 3 minute recovery and repeat once. As I’ve said before, I’m not hitting very many of these intervals at my goal 5K pace, but I’m starting to feel like with increased mileage I’m going to get there.

Thursday and Friday I’ve been doing easier runs of 5 - 9 miles before doing my weekend’s workouts. 

The back-to-back tempo and long run is something new I’ve decided to try, and over the past few weeks it’s been going well. I listened to an interview with famed coach Jack Daniels a few years back where he talked about bunching your training when you have more time over the weekend. So, I’m been doing a long run followed by a longish tempo run, or vice versa, on the weekends.

At first I wondered how I would hold up, and for now my legs have felt good. A couple weekends ago I put in 14 miles on Saturday and then did an 11 mile progression/tempo run on Sunday. I actually meant to do 10 miles on Sunday, but the water fountain I was running to was half-a-mile farther than I thought.

All-in-all, I’m feeling a little better about my training than I was a few weeks ago. I ran a 17:46 at a 5K about a month back—well short of 17 minutes and the first time I broke 18 minutes all season. Since then, however, my mileage has increased, and with the increase of mileage my old injuries haven’t flared up. I’ll be racing a 5K in the next few weeks, so we’ll see how much time I can shave off that 17:46.

Run well.

September Sugar Challenge

If you missed my previous post on the September Sugar Challenge, you’re not too late. You can still join for the second half of the month. I didn’t get near the response I got when I invited my readers to try the August Sugar Challenge a couple of years back. If you want to join, it’s easy. You can read the whole post, September Sugar Challenge, but here are some things you can do to participate:

• Give up one high sugar item from your diet. I recommend a sugared beverage like a blended coffee (things like frappuccinos or lattes can be filled with sugar, often more than the daily recommended amount of sugar in one drink) or soda (most sodas have almost one-and-a-half-times the recommended amount of sugar in a 12 oz serving)..
• Limit yourself to one sweet a day, one a week, etc.
• Eliminate (within reason) processed sugar from your diet. I wouldn’t go all the way with this one. Bread, granola, some sauces, etc. often have some sugar in them. Instead, focus on sweetened cereals, beverages, etc., and try to limit things with added sugar to less than 10 grams or so.

That’s it. If you’re interested in participating, leave a comment and let us know what you’re up to.

I had decided on three sweets a week and to keep those sweets to a reasonable portion size for the first half of the month. Now, I am going to one sweet a week for the second half of the month.

Thanks for reading.

September Sugar Challenge

This blog post is kind of a re-run from a couple years back, but I thought with school starting, it might be a good time to try to maintain or start a sugar-reduction in our diets.

There's already plenty (too much) information on the internet about nutrition. The best I can say is to follow the advice of two of my favorite authors:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
― Michael Pollan, " In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto"

"Balance your energy sources... if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
― Matt Fitzgerald, Runner's World Performance Nutrition for Runners

Sugar is a big problem in the U.S. Most of us get way more than the recommended amount. For woman, the recommended amount is fewer than 25 grams, and for men it's fewer than 38 grams. Consider that your average 12 oz soda has around 40 grams of sugar and your average medium frappuccino has 50 grams of sugar, and you can see how we consume WAY to much sugar from beverages alone.

So, how about a challenge? Pick your own:

Bronze:

• Pick one sugary food or drink to eliminate from your diet for the month of September. 

If you drink sugared soda, sugared coffee beverages, or even a sugary sports drink, I'd go for that. Sure, the sugar will give you some energy, but why waste precious sugar calories on a drink? I'd prefer some sort of a dessert to a soda, but to each their own.

Silver:

• Limit yourself to one sweet a day, week, every other day, or whatever. 

I've done this a number of times, and it works pretty well. When there are sweets in the staff room at work, I usually grab one. If I'm limiting my sweets, I have to ask myself, "do I really want to use my one sweet today (or this week, or whatever) on cupcakes from Target?"

Gold

• "Eliminate" processed sugar from your diet.

This one's tricky, as everything from ketchup to whole grain cereal has processed sugar. You can decide to go all out and eat only whole foods and/or cereals and processed foods with no added sugar, but that's a tall order.

What I'd recommend it set a limit on how much sugar can be in something for you to be "allowed" to eat it. Kashi Dark Cocoa Karma Wheat Biscuit Cereal has 9g of added sugar--I'd say that's a decent baseline.

You can set whatever limit you want and then be reasonable about your food choices. Make sure to check serving sizes, but don't go nuts--it's not worth driving yourself crazy. Does one piece of dark chocolate count as a sweet? It's up to you.

"Cheating" or, "Succumbing to temptation"

Don't beat yourself up--it happens. If you want to try the September Sugar Challenge but are worried you can't do it, try it anyway. And if you "cheat," keep going. Olympic athletes compete for the gold medal, but even when they know it's out of reach, they usually finish anyway. Watch any Olympic event, especially the marathon, for confirmation of this fact.

If you'd like to try this challenge, I'd love to hear from you. Comment on Facebook, Twitter, or on this post and let us know you're trying the challenge. 

I could expound on nutrition for runners, but this post is meant to be all-inclusive. There are countless iterations of diets out there from paleo to vegan, but the most sage advice involves a balanced diet of mostly plants (vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and grains), and mostly whole foods. 

Balancing your energy sources means getting enough calories through carbohydrates, fat, and protein. It doesn't mean eliminating entire food groups--don't do that. But eliminating processed sugar? I don't see a problem with that.