Tag Archives: sports nutrition

I’ll make you banana pancakes

Posted on February 28, 2011 | 4 Comments

I am in a  food rut.  Part of it I can blame on my supertaster aversions (yes, I really do have super powers, I’ve been tested), part on laziness, and part on gravitation to routine.  But I am sometimes a little bit cautiously open to dietary change. 

About two  months ago I started eating two extra-thick slices of Cobbs Cinnamon Loaf every morning with my yogurt mix (100 grams of berries, 175 grams plain yogurt, 25 grams berry yogurt to be exact, which I am) and tea.  Every morning except long run morning, at which time I have been ingesting four extra-thick slices of Cobbs Cinnamon bread with my tea.  For the three years before this culinary switcheroo, my yogurt mix has been accompanied by homemade banana bread with chocolate chips.  And my long run preceded by two slices of the homemade banana bread. 

Homemade takes time and Cobbs does not.  Laziness = a new food.  Yesterday I looked up the caloric information on Cobbs Cinnamon bread.  Tonight I am making banana bread.  

Title:  Jack Johnson – Banana Pancakes.  2005.

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And a buck and a half for a beer

Posted on October 26, 2010 | 7 Comments

I did IT.  Under cover of darkness.  And it was harder than I expected.  A lot harder.  Perhaps the hardest race I’ve ever run. 

I nearly threw up at the 3/4 mark.  Lucky for me it was only in my mouth.  Because if I threw up outside my mouth there would have been a penalty. 

 I would not have survived the penalty.

Did I mention I did it near the scene of a recent shooting?  I ran in fear of the hoodlums lurking nearby.  I have an unfortunate track record with hoodlums.  Lucky for us they were only interested in their fancy smelling cigarettes.

I made the rookie mistake of starting too fast.  I never really recovered.  I was drunk by the end.  Truthfully, I was drunk by the middle, as evidenced by my compulsion to yell OMG I’m totally drunk into the darkness and my lane weaving that added unneeded distance to my course. 

I am a beer miler. 

And I am never doing it again.

Title: Tragically Hip – Little Bones. 1991.

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Wheat kings and pretty things

Posted on October 15, 2010 | 5 Comments

Husband eats Chia almost everyday.  I’m less dedicated, but am a fan nonetheless.  It’s the same food those Tarahumara Indians, popularized in the book Born to Run, eat.  But Husband started eating Chia long before the book became a best seller and before I learned how to spell Tarahumara (that’s right, I didn’t need to look it up).   Husband was introduced to Chia by Husband of Ruth, of Ruth’s Hemp Foods, maker of Chia Goodness.  We train with Husband of Ruth, a man who wears the nickname “Fastest Geezer” with pride.  He has been known to mix chia into his water on long runs.  I’ve never seen him run out of energy.  In fact, on those runs his challenge is slowing down.  Coincidence?  

In the November edition of Runner’s World magazine Ruth’s Chia is listed as one their Top Ten “Good Without Gluten” foods.  Now that Husband of Ruth is the Husband of a bona fide running world celebrity I will make my own claim to this fame as the training partner of the spouse of a bona fide running world celebrity.  Also it is always very impressive to be on the front end of  a trend.  Then when everyone else discovers it you can say, oh that, we’ve been eating that for years, in that pitying sort of manner reserved for people who jump on the bandwagon late.

Title: The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings.  1992.

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They say you are what you eat

Posted on December 3, 2009 | 10 Comments

If we are what we eat, I am days two through twelve of my Lindt Advent calendar.

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My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

Posted on September 5, 2009 | 3 Comments

After a tough run I head to the fridge and pour a tall glass of chocolate milk.  Which I drink with animal cookies.  Eaten head first.  By the time I stretch, travel home, shower, and start to prepare (or, more accurately, wait for Husband to prepare) dinner the elapsed time is in the ninety minute range.  A quick chug of chocolate milk tames my hungry stomach and feeds my glycogen resynthesis during that critical refueling window.  Time and time again I’ve heard (and said) that chocolate milk is a great post-run drink, but I’ve never read the research backing up that claim.  Maybe it’s all a big marketing ploy by clever folks at the Dairy Council of Canada. 

In conducting my “research” (fine, googling “running + chocolate milk”) all roads led me to a 2006 study by Karp and colleagues.  They compared the effects of chocolate milk, a carbohydrate replacement drink (a drink with a high carb concentration, plus protein, e.g. Endurox) and general fluid replacement (a drink with fewer carbs, but also with electrolytes, e.g. Gatorade) on a tough post-recovery workout.  Given that chocolate milk has the 4:1 carbs:protein ratio found to hasten glycogen recovery and improve endurance, the authors suspected it would be a suitable option for refueling our tired muscles.  Lots of investigators have studied those specially formulated sport drinks marketed to athletes, but chocolate milk had never been subject to scientific scrutiny.  With the advantage of easy access and relative lower cost, it is an appealing alternative.  That and it is deliciously refreshing.  And chocolaty, which automatically trumps the unidentifiable Gatorade “hot pink” flavour.  Because, I’ll be honest, if you don’t like chocolate there is something wrong with you.  Chocolaty drinks are so awesome that I have a lame nickname for both hot and cold chocolate milk (ho-cho and co-cho, respectively).  There was a need – a need! - in my life to shorten the names of my most frequently consumed drinks so that I can make my thirst demands more quickly known.  “Co-cho, stat!” is much more efficient than the awkward “cold chocolate milk, stat!”. 

To study chocolate milk as a recovery aid Karp and his co-authors recruited a group of willing cyclists.  First the volunteer spinners cycled hard intervals until they reached a state of glycogen depletion.  During the post-workout recovery they drank chocolate milk, a carb replacement drink, or a fluid replacement drink (each cyclist went through the experiment three times, trying a different drink each time).  An endurance test of cycling to exhaustion followed the four hours of rest and drinking.  The time to exhaustion was 54% longer after consuming chocolate milk compared to the carbohydrate replacement.  The fluid replacement results were similar to the chocolate milk (49% longer to exhaustion as compared to the carbohydrate replacement drink), despite a lower carbohydrate concentration.  Carbs, it seems, quickly refuel us for our next tough challenge.  The authors suspect differences in the type of carbohydrate are important – not all carbs are created equal.  The chocolate milk and fluid replacement drinks were similar in carbohydrate composition (glucose, fructose, sucrose), whereas the carbohydrate replacement drink contained more complex carbohydrates (maltodextrin).  In the four hour recovery window only the simpler carbohydrates were completely digested, thus benefiting the second workout.  The authors also speculate that drinking low-fat chocolate milk would improve performance even more, especially compared to the fluid replacement drink, because the fat in the regular chocolate milk the study riders consumed may have delayed glycogen synthesis.  With low fat chocolate milk, they hypothesize, there would have been a greater endurance benefit for chocolate milk compared to fluid replacement (read: Gatorade). 

Although chocolate milk did not emerge as a stand alone winner, it works at least as well as (maybe better than) commercial recovery products.  I should note that this study was supported by the Dairy and Nutrition Council, Inc; but the methodology and results are sound and I don’t think the ‘milk does a body good’ conclusion was skewed to appease the funders.  Whew, I’m not drinking in vain (at least not my chocolate milk drinking habit).   Bottoms up.  
 
 
 
Reference:  Karp, J.R., et al. (2006). Chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery aid.  International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 16, pp 78-91.

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Flying at the speed of sound

Posted on August 17, 2009 | 6 Comments

How fast is crazy fast? 

9.58 seconds.

Usain Bolt broke his own 100 metre world record at the IAAF World Track & Field Championships in Berlin on Sunday.  It isn’t the 9.55 that Norwegian physicist Hans Eriksen estimated Bolt would have run in Beijing if he hadn’t started celebrating his win 20 metres before the finish line, but he’s close.   I think I may add pureed yams to my beetroot juice.  Zoom zoom.

Title Reference:  Coldplay – Speed of Sound.  From the album X&Y.  2005

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We got the beat

Posted on August 12, 2009 | 7 Comments

Another day, another superfood.  This one may be tougher to swallow: beetroot juice.  Improved stamina, however, might be worth the effort of digging out that old juicer.  My first question: what is beetroot?  Is it a beet, the root part of the beet, or another a vegetable related to, but different than, a beet?  According to Wikipedia, “the beet (Beta vulgaris) is a plant in the beet root family”. That was no help.  Random online sources indicate that in the US you eat beets and in the UK you eat beetroots, but I’m still not sure what we eat in Canada.

The benefits of beetroot juicing are of particular interest to endurance athletes such as runners.  Andy Jones (physiologist and advisor to Paula Radcliffe) and colleagues discovered that a nitrate found in beetroot juice decreases oxygen uptake, which sounds bad but really is a good news for runners.  The researchers compared cycling performance after a six day beetroot juice bender (500ml per day) to a black current placebo.  The cyclists spun for up to 16% longer after beetroot juice consumption.  The increased exercise duration is equivalent to a 2% reduction in time over the same distance.  Now 2% may not sound like much, but that’s an almost five-minute improvement on a four-hour marathon.  I’ve watched people do more for less.  As an added bonus, the beetroot drinker’s blood pressure went down.  The researchers do not know why the beetroot nitrate boosts stamina, but they suspect the nitrate turns to nitric acid in the body, reducing oxygen consumption during exercise.  Ultimately it reduces the oxygen cost of endurance workouts and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise.  Basically, this nitrate-rich food can increase endurance without training.  And it isn’t a banned substance.  As much as I hate those vile little beets, which may or may not mean I dislike beetroots (depending on whether they are, in fact, the same thing), I’m tempted to try a glass. 

Less training, more (beetroot) juicing?

 

Reference: Bailey, S.J. et al. (2009, in press). Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans. Journal of Applied Physiology.

Title Reference: The Go-Go’s – We Got the Beat.  From the album Beauty and the Beat.  1981.

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She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni

Posted on May 3, 2009 | 2 Comments

Elite endurance runners seem have one obvious physical characteristic in common.  They are lean mean running machines.   It makes sense – the lighter you are the less mass you must carry along for the 42.2 kilometre ride.  That translates to a lower energy expenditure in moving your body through space and potentially reduced impact on all your joints and ligaments.  According to an article posted in Runner’s World Magazine (which I have summarized here), the average runner will gain 3.3 pounds per decade (that’s about 3/4 inch in waist girth) even with mileage in the neighbourhood of 40 miles (60 klicks) per week.  As the years go by we start slowing because of our aging bodies and because of our expanding waistlines.  Fortunately, “fitness can trump fatness” and beyond BMI, activity level predicts longevity.  If your primary focus is on the health benefits of running you not need worry too much about those few extra pounds.

That extra six-pack may not shorten your life, but will it lengthen your run?  Popular opinion asserts a gain in weight means an increase in run time.  Many runners lament about the burden of carrying those stubborn extra ten pounds.  Some races even offer Clydesdale and Filly divisions for so-called heftier runners (usually 200 pounds+ for men and 150+ pounds for women), in addition to the typical age-graded categories.  Science supports this contention.  As a general rule, thinner is faster, so long as you lose bad weight (e.g. excess fat), not good weight (e.g. lean muscle mass or water).  It probably goes without saying, but as a public service message should be said anyway – less is not always more.  A BMI <18.5 and your risk becoming weaker and slower, not stronger and speedier (I will save you from my long-winded rant about this arbitrary BMI cut-off).  If you do have pounds to spare though, dropping a bit of weight – allegedly, even in the absence of additional training – should result in quicker race times. 

How much faster?  A healthy runner will race about 2 seconds per mile faster for every pound lost.  As your weight decreases your V02 max increases, allowing you to run farther and faster before oxygen debt (the point at which the demands outpace your ability to use oxygen to produce energy).  Not to mention that running feels easier, so you can train harder by increasing pace and distance which will also lead to faster race times.  At first glance two seconds doesn’t sound like much, but those seconds can really add up over a distance.

This table from Runner’s World provides an estimate of race time improvement with a drop in excess pounds and the associated changes in maximal aerobic capacity.  Caution: the following numbers may increase desire for weight loss.

WEIGHT LOST
5K
10K
1/2 MARATHON
MARATHON
2 lbs
12.4 s
25 s
52 s
1:45
5 lbs
31 s
1:02
2:11
4:22
10 lbs
1:02
2:04
4:22
8:44
20 lbs
2:04
4:08
8:44
17:28

 

Interested in how fast you would be if you were 25 years old and skinny (skinny = 110/142 pounds for females/males)?  Check out the Flyer Handicap Calculator.  It takes your current race times and using an algorithm computes your age/weight equivalency performance.  If I was 25 again (that sounds like a movie) I would finish a marathon a whopping 12 minutes sooner!  Egads, to be young(er) again.  With this nifty calculator you can compare yourself to running comrades of different ages/weights/genders.  All things equal, you may be surprised by who is  fastest.  Hours of fun.  And regret.

Sadly, I can’t turn back that age clock.  My 12 minutes speedier 25 year old self is a long gone.  But few of us would shed tears bidding adieu to a bonus pound or two.

Title Reference:  Larry Williams – Bony Moronie.  Released as a single.  1957.  Cover versions released by  Dr. Feelgood (1974), John Lennon (1975), and The Who (1994), to name a few.

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Running on Empty

Posted on March 30, 2009 | 4 Comments

I don’t think it is (much of) an exaggeration to say that the FuelBelt changed my life.  Before FuelBelt I carried around one of those contraptions with the single large plastic water bottle at the back, pressed up against my spine, sloshing and bouncing every which way.  My water bottle should not have more momentum than I do.  With the exception of those hats that hold the beer cans, I can’t think of a more vexing on-the-run hydration system design.  I also tried the camelback – perfectly fine for cycling, but it became a heat trapping, skin chafing torture device on a long run.  My endurance running career (fine, hobby) hung in the balance – how can one run far and long without an adequate thirst quenching system?  Would I forever be reduced to runs not exceeding 60-minutes in duration?  Then I discovered FuelBelt, with its nifty wee pockets holding four mini bottles.  The options!  Not only can I choose how much fluid to take on any given run (is this a two or four bottle day?), but I can bring an assortment of liquid indulgences along for the ride, err run.  Can you do that with a big floppy bottle?  No you can not.  I have one of the older models, before they made all sorts of fancy schmany (read unnecessary) changes.  It’s a classic.  An irreplaceable classic.
 
Sadly, my much used (and occasionally abused) FuelBelt has been slowly slipping away.  The signs were all there, but I refused to see them.  My belt continued to fit bigger even though I wasn’t getting smaller.  The velcro fastener at the end of the elasticized waistband could no longer adjust to keep the belt at waist level.  Layers of winter clothing helped disguise the slow loosening of the belt.  Mostly I pretended not to notice.  When the water bottles started torpedoing out of their little elastic pockets, all too often landing directly underneath my foot (try explaining to someone how you managed to trip over your own water bottle on the run) or smacking a less than impressed puppy in the tush, I blamed myself.  Maybe I didn’t put the bottle in the pocket correctly; I should pay more attention to what I’m doing.  Or I blamed winter.  Everyone knows elastics don’t work as well in winter.  It’s common knowledge.  In spring everything will be fine.  Sigh.  I  didn’t want to acknowledge the truth, the full extent of the loss of elasticity.  And sometimes everything worked fine.  The brief moments of rebound, of full functionality, gave me hope.  False hope, as it turns out.
 
In every elastic’s life there is that one moment, the final moment when it can’t hold on any longer. It’s the kid who’s gym shorts gave up in the middle of a dodge ball game, standing there wondering ‘why me’ as his shorts slide down to his ankles.  Every elastic has an expiration date.  For me and my FuelBelt that moment was 2K into the Around the Bay 30K Road Race.  That already less than snug elastic waistband lost all of its remaining powers of stretchiness.  As it flopped ridiculously around my hips, the weight of the Gatorade and gel packs created some sort of trampolining effect and my bottles started rocketing in every direction.  Remarkably, the little elastic pockets held on, so every time the bottle rocketed away from my body the elastic pocket pulled it back in.  I’m covered in bruises.  Little plastic bottle shaped bruises.  I had no choice but to clutch the sides of my belt to minimize the shock-waves and soldier on.  Running with your arms clutching a FuelBelt is surprisingly difficult.  Unexpectedly, a lot of that helpful running rhythm comes from the arms.  As I slowly consumed the Gatorade and gels the momentum lessened and the bottles stopped attacking me with such vigour, but by then the damage was done.  I may have internal bleeding. 

I often (nay repeatedly) thought about tossing my FuelBelt on the side of the road, but it seemed a poor tribute to those (probably toxic) bottles that have been my sidekicks on countless runs.  Instead I resolved to give my FuelBelt one last hurrah, one final race, before “sending it to live on a nice farm” with my dog Skipper.

Title Reference: Jackson Browne – Running on Empty. From the album Running on Empty. 1977.

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Running Is Its Own Reward

Posted on March 13, 2009 | Leave a comment

Time and time again it comes to my attention that a sizeable segment of the population are under the impression that people run for one reason and one reason only: to lose weight.  As a slender gal, I’m often asked why I run when I don’t “need” to run.  Why would I exert the effort if not for reasons of appearance?  It’s madness.  Based on the “skinny = why bother to run” theory, health is irrelevant.  Afterall, it’s all about the number on the scale.   Perhaps I should just enjoy my genetic blessings, flop myself on the sofa, eat bonbons, and watch TV.  Ok, I do that too.  There are many reasons why I run and weight control does not make my top ten list.  And given the amount I eat during training, it would be a doomed endeavour anyway.

I find this personal experience interesting in light of recent research conducted by Havenar and Lochbaum.  They studied individuals training for their first marathon to assess differences in motivation between the successful rookies (those who ran the marathon) and the dropouts.  Perhaps not surprisingly, 70% of the original participants quit during training and did not run the marathon.  Using the Motivations of Marathoners Scale (MOMS) the authors found three measures that differentiated the finishers and dropouts: weight concerns and social motives (social recognition and affiliation).  In all cases the dropouts rated those motivators, especially weight concerns, more highly than did the finishers.  The results “suggest that weight concern and recognition motives among first time marathoners are possible predictors of premature disseveration from the training program”.  That is, they dropout.  It seems that the will to get skinny isn’t enough to get you across that finish line.

Ref: Havenar, J. & Lochbaum, M. (2007).  Differences in participation motives of first-time marathon finishers and pre-race dropouts.  Journal of Sport Behavior, 30, 270-279.

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