Taper

Ironman Canada is less than two weeks away. Time to taper. Yesterday I swam for 45 minutes and even that felt long. I must be tired. I slept a lot and today I felt better.

I have been doing a lot of "technique" swim sessions but I doubt that it will matter much. As for one I have not made much progress. I am still having trouble breathing every other stroke and when it comes to breathing on the "other" side, I am nowhere near comfortable there. So I guess I will be looking at another 1:20:00+ swim. Not much hope for Hawaii with swims like that.

I do hope however that the bike is better than Lake Placid. There I ran out of steam at mile 90 or so, right before the final climb. Canada has an equally hard bike leg but at least the last 10+ miles are downhill instead of up. If nothing else, some time to recover before the run.

I rode 10 intervals today. Without a speedometer it was difficult to judge how fast I went but I felt good and I rode hard. I am even a little tired now. Not tired as one is from riding long, but tired from a hard effort. I only rode 1:45 so I should recover quickly.

The thing to do now is to watch my diet. I don't want to gain weight during the taper. The best remedy is to follow an Atkins diet and then stock up on carbs in the last 2-3 days before the race (this is known as the conventional carbo-loading cycle), but I doubt that it will work well in my current conditions. It is hard to stick to a no carb diet when everyone else is eating as usual. So I will just try to avoid the most blatant carbs.

My attempt at carbo-loading prior to Lake Placid failed rather miserably and I suspect this time too it won't go very far, but we will try to do better, and see.

A second fitness test

I repeated my 30 minute fitness test today and did better. I ran 4.5 miles in 30 minutes, like I did last year. There was nobody in the exercise room today so I could open the door. That made it much cooler and the lower temperature may have helped. Yesterday was warm and crowded (i.e. people on both treadmills next to mine). I am not sure all the variability is in the cooling, but some surely is.

Tomorrow I fly to Boston. I will rest until Monday, marathon day. We'll see how it goes. I will also cut my carbo-loading one day short because I was invited to lunch on Friday. Normally I would go low carb until Friday night and then eat all carbs Saturday and Sunday.

Carbo-loading and fit test

Yesterday I swam 2,880 yds (144 laps). I was pretty tired and it did not go so well. 

I also started my carbo-loading regime. When it comes to carbo-loading I am a traditionalist and I prefer the old method of not eating carbs (or very little) for a week and then eating two days of almost nothing but carbs.

I have used this method four or five times now and it always works for me. It has several other advantages too. One is that I lose weight. Even though I exercise less, I can eat as much as I want and I never feel hungry either. That is the best part. It seems likely that much of the weight loss is water and much of that is probably due to glycogen depletion. The weight loss is not my aim, but weight control is. I don't want to gain weight now.

The trouble with high carb diets is that you tend to feel hungry all the time. It is not a big problem when you work out a lot because you need the calories. But when you taper it can be really hard and I know quite a few people who gained several pounds during their taper. I tend to lose weight. Usually several pounds.

There are two bad effects: 1. I develop a slight nausea by day two -which may be what keeps me from over-eating, and 2. I do feel sluggish after about two days.

There is one so-so effect: I develop a real craving for carb rich food. After several days, bread, pasta, and other items start looking really good. But that is OK, by Friday I will be able to eat all the bread I want.

In addition to the carbo-loading, I also cut back on all fruit and veggies two days before the race. That too is quite beneficial in my experience. It makes it so you don't need potty breaks and it tends to avoid stomach upsets too.

I did a simple 30' fit test today. 

First I ran 2 mi. to warm up and then I tried to hold 9 mph for 30 minutes (4.5 miles). It is what I did last year before the marathon. Unfortunately, this year I was only able to hold 9 for 4 miles or 26.66 minutes.

It is possible that the heat in the exercise room got to me. The club remodeled the room last week and put the treadmills much closer together to enable TV viewing. They also removed all the fans. Both effects combine to induce more heat stress.

The heat could explain some performance loss, but most likely is that I am not in as good a shape as last year. I finished off with another mile to make it 7 total.

Carbo loading and ride

I started my carbo-loading cycle. I prefer to carbo-load the old-fashioned way. Although I realize that recent research has shown that one or two bouts of hard exercise followed by carb-rich meals can lead to equivalent loading, I do prefer the old-fashioned way of starving one self of carbs for a week, followed by two days of nothing but carbs.

The old-fashioned way has several advantages in addition to good loading. The most important ones are related to feeling hungry and keeping the weight off. Not surprisingly, after two weeks of very intense exercise and 4,000+ calorie days, I am tempted to eat too much during my taper. Now that I no longer burn 4-5,000 calories that means extra weight gain. In the past I found it was easy to gain as much as 5-10 pounds during those two to three weeks.

Not good before a long race. The other alternative is to restrain oneself and therefore constantly feel hungry, not fun!

The advantage of a low carb diet is that one does not feel hungry at all, and secondly, that one loses weight instead of gaining. Both of these are very helpful. The main disadvantage is a feeling of sluggishness, which may actually help prevent over-training, and a slight nausea from time to time. The latter is a small price to pay. I also tend to develop a craving for carbs but that does not come until the end of the week.

To start off my carb loading cycle and deplete my muscle, I rode a hard 40 miles today without eating or drinking sugary drinks. I rode a hilly course for 2:20, burning an estimated 1,940 calories, and working at an average of 220W or 258 NP W. The NP formula is an Ergomo proprietary algorithm that takes into account bouts of intense power output to give a better estimate of the difficulty of the workout. See previous posts.

I will probably do one more 40-50 mile ride and then a few short 10-20 mi rides once I get to Arizona.

A trip across country

I went to Philadelphia on Sunday. Then I spent all day Monday in business meetings. Two days of forced rest. That was good. I did swim a few laps on Monday night as the people I was staying with went to the Y for a workout. I had not packed any workout clothes so I would not be tempted -and besides I did not expect them to go work out- but I did have a swimsuit so I swam a little. They got me some goggles that did not work so well so I ended up doing only a dozen or so laps.

Today I woke up at 4:15 AM EST (1:15 PST) to catch my double layover trip back. From Philly to Pittsburgh to Las Vegas to Oakland. I arrived at 12:20 PM feeling like I just came back from Europe. So much for cheap travel. With no real food I munched on bagels, peanuts and chips the whole way here.

The only problem with traveling is that one ends up eating way too much. There is nothing to do and my appetite is enormous coming off several weeks of intense workouts. With no further workouts to burn those calories there is a real danger of putting on serious weight. 

Fortunately I can start my carbo-load soon. I carbo-load the old fashioned way, by eating an "Atkins" diet for a week and then nothing but carbs two days before the race. The Atkins is ideal since I always lose weight doing it and I never feel hungry. I also feel I can eat as much as I like and that is just great. The main drawbacks are a slight feeling of nausea, a general lack of energy, and -by the end- a rather intense craving for carbs. Other than that it works fine.

Today I ran a hard 5K on the treadmill and I swam 1/4 mile. A pretty light workout, but it works out fine since I am pretty beat from the travel.

Carbo-loading

There are two components to carbo-loading: exercise to deplete carbohydrate reserves, and carbohydrate ingestion. One without the other will not achieve the desired goal. To be effective carbo-loading should be done a few days before the actual event where it is needed.

Let's first review what carbo-loading is and why you would want to do it. Under normal circumstances, the body is fueled by free fatty acids, breakdown products of stored fat. All organs except the brain use free fatty acids. Only the brain has access to circulating glucose. The main exception to that rule occurs when insulin is present. Insulin is secreted when excess carbohydrate is available, as happens after a meal. Insulin promotes the use of carbohydrate by all active tissues and especially the conversion of carbs into fats. Working muscle can access small amounts of circulating glucose in the absence of insulin but the amount is rather insignificant. As a rule, muscle uses fats and internal glucose.

Fat is an ideal energy source, light and very efficient. Unfortunately fat cannot deliver quick bursts of energy. Fat utilization takes time. When fast delivery is required, carbohydrates are used. For very fast delivery, so-called intermediates like creatine phosphate are accessed. These are loaded by burning carbs and their supply is extremely limited.

In essence, we have fat for aerobic exercise and sugar for anaerobic bursts. Endurance racers get nearly all of their energy from fats. Training improves one's capacity to use fat. If at all possible, endurance racers should avoid anaerobic power utilization. However, even under the most aerobic conditions, a small amount of anaerobic power generation is happening. Even though it is small it is a major contributor to fatigue, especially when reserves run low.

Because muscle does not have access to blood glucose, it stores a small amount of glucose as glycogen within its fibers. To carbo-load means to push that storage to its maximum capacity. Athletes who rely on anaerobic power have well defined "big" muscle. Much of that bulk is due to stored glycogen and water in the so-called fast-twitch muscle. Despite all the hoopla about fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle, humans do not have true fast-twitch fibers. But that is another story we will cover sometime later.

The main reason for carbo-loading is to increase endurance by making more glucose available to muscle. Muscle uses glucose for instant power delivery. As mentioned, even so-called aerobic exercise always involves a small amount of anaerobic output. We are trying to extend that capability. Muscle also uses a tiny amount of glucose to burn fat. It is unlikely that carbo-loading affects the latter mechanism.

Carbo-loading relies on a biological mechanism that kicks in when you deplete reserves. After depletion the body responds with excess storage. It is as if the body says, I won't let that happen again next time, so let's put in a little bit extra. Therefore, the first step in carbo-loading is to deplete reserves. To do so, you need to exercise hard.

The traditional method for carbo-loading works as follows. You eat no carbs (essentially an Atkins diet) for a week, while continuing to exercise hard. That is not a pleasant experience, especially towards the end of the week. Fortunately, after your last hard session you can overindulge in carbs for a day or two. That loads the muscle. Traditional carbo-loading is not something you want to do all the time. You should reserve it for special occasions.

In the modern method, which some claims is equally effective, you just exercise hard for a few days and eat lots of carbs. As long as you exercise hard and deplete reserves, the actual timing seems to matter very little and so you can eat carbs concurrently. 

In either case, because of the hard exercise, it is not something you do a day before the race. You may even wonder why you should do it in the week before. Don't you need to taper? You do. But the key is to exercise hard but not long. Remember the intensity matters, not the duration. You don't have a lot of glycogen storage to begin with. Glycogen storage is ninety minutes at most, and sixty seems a lot more likely. So a few brief intense bursts is all that is needed.

Because the traditional method involves eating no carbs, and hence only protein and fats, I have seen this method advertised as fat-loading. There is no such thing as fat-loading -in the sense of loading muscle with fat to increase its performance. The only fat loading is what most people practice (i.e. get fat) and it is not desirable. 

For the detail-oriented, it is true that muscle stores some internal fat, especially the so-called slow-twitch fibers. Nevertheless, fat loading is not needed. Fat can be produced internally from anything you eat (protein, carbs, fat), and the best method to accumulate fat is to eat carbohydrate as any meat producer will tell you. Remember corn-fed beef?

Happy carbo-loading.

Addicted to sweets

It seems the whole country is addicted to sweet. Anything and everything contains sugar or an equivalent amount of sweetener. From toothpaste to bread, mouthwash to electrolyte tablets, health drinks, chewing gum, and even supplements and vitamins, sweet is a ubiquitous presence. Many drinks that would be better plain such as ice-tea or ready-made coffee are nowhere to be found without the presence of plenty of sweetening.

America's addiction to sweets is as bad as its addiction to oil. Both are far more costly in terms of health and lives lost than the addictions the DEA is so obsessed with. Both are real addictions in need of serious attention.

Sugars (or carbohydrates) are an important energy source for athlete. That is because many activities demand high and immediate energy delivery. Virtually any athletic endeavor, except perhaps true endurance racing, requires a fair amount of anaerobic power. Anaerobic power is within the purview of sugar. Only sugars can provide a quick burst of energy.

Even though sugar storage is quite limited, uptake is very fast. Sugars are easy to digest and any sugar intake results in a quick change in blood sugar levels. Sugar intake is also virtually unlimited and sugars do not provoke a feeling of satiety. Furthermore, because digestion is so easy, stomach emptying is fast, thereby removing another natural halting mechanism.

Pure sugars are not that easy to find in nature and the energy required for foraging plus the other materials one needs to ingest to get to natural sugar may limit consumption in "the wild." However, humans have long since found a way to circumvent these obstacles. Human societies spend a lot of time producing or refining pure sugars. Nearly all human civilizations have stores of pure sugar available. These are often used as rewards or "candy," indicating a special role for such precious cargo.

Most societies have instituted rules to limit utilization. Kids are taught that eating too much candy will make them sick. It is doubtful that they would get sick (other than very obese) so the rule is meant to prevent over-consumption. Adults have similar rules and there is little doubt that the sugar-high and the sugar-jitters find their origins here. There are many tales cautioning people against eating too much sugar. 

Unfortunately, in our consumer society marketing groups quickly discovered that making things sweet sells more stuff more quickly and easily. These marketing groups wage a constant battle against common sense and societal prescriptions. They tout overindulgence and gorging. They make it look glamorous and hail it as a sign of success. No wonder then that more than half the country is overweight or obese.

Endurance athletes should be very careful with sugar intake. A diet high in carbohydrates is often recommended by coaches, consultants, magazines, and books. Although these experts will often propose complex carbohydrates and caution against simple sugars, there is little evidence that complex carbs are any better (or worse) than those "simple" sugars. All carbohydrate processing is very fast and any "long term" sustenance due to uptake or processing is probably a figment of people's imagination.

One should be especially weary of so-called carbo-loading meals. Almost all events have added carbo-loading meals the night before the race. Participants have come to expect such dinners and are often shocked when none is planned. Unfortunately, these carbo-loading dinners are anything but. First off, it is not possible to carbo-load in this manner, and carbo-loading the night before a race is out of the question. Second, the meals offered are rarely any different in composition from normal meals one can find in restaurants. They are not suitable for carbo-loading.

As Olympian Jeff Galloway pointed out, so-called carbo-loading dinners are often an excuse to eat too much. Eating too much has a negative effect on performance, and more so if it is done the night before. Many people no doubt feel they can afford to eat a bit extra, but it is the wrong thing to do. If anything, one should eat less before a race. Endurance events rely on stored fats and all of us (including those very skinny individuals) have enough fats to complete several races many times over. There is little need to add extra fat the night before.

Athletes should also be careful with carbs after training or racing. We are often told to replenish our glycogen stores quickly. We are told there is a time after exercise when muscle is especially likely to take up carbs. While that is true, there is little need to rush or to eat extra carbs right after the race. Even though muscle is more sensitive to glucose in the first 40 minutes after exercise, replenishment will still be adequate if no sugar is consumed within that time-frame. Within a day or two, there will be no difference between a person who ate carbs right away and someone who didn't.

There is a real danger however, of eating too much. Especially when the athlete reloads with carbohydrates only. One can consume a 1,000 calories of sugar faster than one realizes. And still feel hungry afterwards too.

The take-home is simple: be careful with carbs. Watch what you eat.