Followers

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Recent Activity

Recent Activity

In Bob Seebohar’s book “Metabolic Efficiency Training”, he talks about teaching one’s body to be an efficient fat burner by not only the way we train, but also (some would argue more so) what we eat.
That’s one of the things that I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks since Superior Spring.  I feel like my nutrition has to play a role, I just need to continue to tweak what I eat and figure out not only what gives me the best performance, but:
  1. What gives me the most energy for life
  2. What helps me to get the rest I need to sustain my pace and my training
  3. What gets me to and keeps me at the weight and the look that helps me feel comfortable
…to name a few things.  We’ve all got different goals.  Many people have these same questions and most people just don’t know what it feels like to not be tired after eating, or have trouble sleeping because of the vicious effect that comes with the S (tandard) A (merican) D (iet), or just can’t (or choose not to prioritize highly enough) losing that weight that adds up and eventually takes its toll on one’s joints and body over time. 

I should be talking right, as I am in the middle of training for another ultra marathon.  The running keeps me motivated; gives me a verb, something to train for and do, it’s a carrot at the end of the stick.  We should all have carrots around health and wellness.  We do everywhere else.  What about graduation, or jobs and career advancement, even retirement.  Instead of waiting around for those things, we should be doing something in the meantime.  Use the time we are given to positively have an impact on those around us.  Most of those reading this do that every day.  What about health though?  Are we proactive about taking care of ourselves?  Are we living to be as effective and energized as we can be?  Are we making healthy choices with the things that we eat, or the things that we do?  Are we moving or sitting, practicing self control when it comes time to make the decision as to what we put in our mouths? It is a choice each and every time. 

Here’s what I’ve been doing for training and what I plan to do for the next few weeks leading up to Afton 50k and Voyager 50 mile.  I almost consider them one as they do fall so close together.  I won’t do much training between the two and that will all depend on how I feel after Afton.  Mostly the adjustments I make with be with nutrition.  Again, not real sure what that will look like either as I continue to be an experiment of one.

From May 20th – May 27th I really didn’t do much except recover and replenish my glycogen stores.  I probably ate a few things that I shouldn’t have, made a few poor choices, but I’m back on track again.  Once I start to train again and my focus goes to the end in mind and reaching the physical (action verb) thing that I’m trying to accomplish, my nutrition becomes more important to me.  We start looking at our meal and snack choices like opportunities to fuel our bodies with things that are going to help it run better, more efficiently.  That’s what happens to me anyhow, and it doesn’t have to be a 50 mile race… it can be exercising 3-5 days per week for 30-45 minutes at a time.  Most of us probably “waste” that amount of time in a day doing who knows what.  I challenge you to train for something though.
May 28th – June 2nd My focus here was still recovery and I started to lift some more weights as I felt my muscles coming back.  Superior was tough and I ran on dehydrated muscles for some time, so it took a little bit longer than I think any other 50k I’ve done, to come back and feel that I could get after it again.  I ran lightly during this little training block but like I said, I was just trying to recover as much as possible.  I had about 7 weeks between Superior and Afton now.
Now we get into more day by day – my focus this time around has been to work more on lower intensities to try and train my body to burn more fat more efficiently.  I’m trying to train mitochondria.  I’ve been doing lots of long, slow distance, and I’ll save the pace work for closer to race time.  Most of the time that I spend between races in July will be primarily slow, steady stuff depending on how I feel.  I may just treat it as a 3 week long race…
June 4 – 10 miles evening around Elm Creek in the evening
June 6- 10 miles from 6:30-8ish; thanks Kate for watching the kids
June 8 – 3 miles to Life Time Maple Grove where I met my lovely bride for a bosu circuit squatting with arms, bosu shuffling, and some core work (great job Kate)/ then 7 miles past home through the park reserve with a 2 hill finish.  It was hot and I was absolutely beat for Saturday too.  Really it took about 3 days to recover from that week.
June 12 – 5 miles from CRT then back the club to do my cardio point (it was neat to see what it was mid run)  AB 137 top speed 7mph at 2 degree incline.  For the first 5 miles I kept my heart rate right around 130BPM topping out at 146BPM.  After the cardio point, I went out and did another 6 down the LRT on the north side of Shady Oak Lake and back again to the club (30 out and 30minutes back).  I was a bit run down and fuel depleted.  This run was at 11-1 and I hadn’t eaten since 5:15 that morning when I had some eggs with a little cheese and a big ole’ cup of chocolate milk.  That’s something I’ve reinserted into my diet.  I really like chocolate milk and with the probiotic I just started taking, it doesn’t bother my gut much anymore either.  Also, it’s now almond milk.  I ate a pizza post workout L
June 13 – weights/ legs mostly; 1 leg hack squat, 115lb deadlifts x 25, hack squat light x 20, walking lunges w x over vipr reach (with shoulder blade) x 80/ then it was a 60 minute treadmill tempo run (my first speed work since Superior).  It felt great and a day later although a bit depleted, my ROM is wonderful and it just feels so… functional.  Here’s that workout:
·         5 mph for 1m
·         6.5 mph for .5m
·         5 mph for .25m
·         7 mph for .5m
·         5 mph for .25m
·         7.5 mph for .5m
·         5 mph for .25m
·         8mph for .5m
·         5 mph for .25m
·         8.5 for .5m
·         5 mph for .25m
·         9mph for .5m
·         5 mph for 2.5m
·         10 mph for .25m
·         .15 mph walking cool down
With a 6 exercise core workout to finish (some sb, crunches, bridges, planks, etc) it’s not as important what you do, it’s that you choose to do something and… MOVE!

Today was just an active recovery day.  I spent 10 minutes warming up and 45 minutes on the foam roller and stretching.  I feel great and have been making better nutritional choices.  It’s tough to get enough good calories though.  I feel like I need to keep shoveling it in.  Especially when incorporating some speed work into the program.  Bursts of effort will boost one’s metabolism for up to a day and a half after the activity takes place.  That means that if you do any burst training, your body will work FOR YOU to burn more calories while you rest for up to 36 hours.  Pretty neat stuff!  I suggest training around your Aerobic Base for awhile first.  Just go for a walk… with a purpose:!

Here’s the plan for the next few weeks leading up to Afton:

June 15 - hills around the Minnetonka area then off to Maynards with the team
June 16 – active recovery
June 17 – 150 minutes steady/ most likely beginning around 5am in order to be home in time for church at 9:30
June 18 – 100 minutes steady; maybe venturing to explore some new training grounds.  If anyone has any ideas for places to check out within 15 minutes of the Chalet at Elm Creek Park reserve, I would love to hear them, and if you want to run, lets go!
June 19 – active recovery
June 20 – 60 minute tempo run/ to 160 BPM and recover jogging down to 120+BPM
June 21 – 100 minutes steady
June 22 – active recovery/ foam roll, stretch, upper body running exercises, lunging circuit (20-30 minutes of weights)
Off until the 27th/ busy
June 27 – 100 minutes steady
June 28 – active recovery
June 29 – hills @ Hyland if anyone wants to join me it’s probably be 2:30 or so between the ski hill and the ski jump hill; going easy on the downs as I’ll need fresh quads in a week
June 30 – wedding, super fun!  Can’t wait Co.  You got the perfect guy!
July 1 – 100 minutes steady
July 2 – 60 minutes speed/ hills
·         1 mile warm up
·         .5m x 2 speed
·         Tubing hill x 2
·         1 mile cool down home
July 3 – active recovery
July 4 – 40 minutes speed
·         1 mile warm up
·         .5m x 2 w full recovery
·         1 mile cool down
July 5 – active recovery
July 6 – rest/ check in for Afton
July 7 – RACE.  I’m going hard for this one.  I’m treating it as a training run but am still going to go for a PR in the 50k distance which is sub 5:35.  Very doable I think if I can stay tight to my nutrition and training, learn from my race day nutrition in the past and play with what works during my training. 

My hope in writing is to motivate, inspire, log my own workouts, and get my blog followers asking some questions about their health from a behavior modification and self discipline standpoint.  It’s all about choices and support.  We all have people in our lives that will enable us to make poor decisions about what we put into our bodies.  We also have people in our lives that will push and encourage us to make positive choices around nutrition and exercise.  You have a choice and instead of just going along with poor choices because you don’t want to make someone feel bad or it’s hard, make the difficult decision so that you too can feel better than you ever have before, like the way you look, have more energy throughout the day, sleep better at night.  We have the power, all of us, to inspire those people around us to care about themselves as much as we care about them.

INTAKE DECISION CHALLENGE
Drink half your body weight in ounces of water.

I posted earlier that often times we are not actually hungry, just thirsty.  See if you notice a difference in 3 days of following this simple tip.

No comments:

Post a Comment