Caloric Pontifications

It's sort of funny, but I've been meaning to post about food and issues associated with, when I saw a new post at a blog I read about the very same thing. I love this blog from a friend of Katie's, who is training for an Ironman--wow. Just wow. And it reminded me I haven't expounded upon my recent revelations about food yet.

When Tim and I are in the mountains, I often bonk. And I can bonk hard, too. It's something I've only been recently overtly aware of. I've bonked running before, but never during a race or run or workout--only after. Usually it only happens after a race as it's really hard for me to eat before competition. So that always made sense.

But the mountain thing was really perplexing. I can usually feel it coming and am sure to stop everyone so I can eat before we have a "situation," but it's still hard to recover from an especially severe bonk.

When we came back from Peru, I did a little investigating. I noticed that our first climbing day, we motored up the approach after some granola and sugary milk for breakfast. Within about 3 hours I was already bonking and needing frequent gel stops. The second day, when we actually succeeded, we took it entirely differently. We had the same breakfast, but we stopped often for food and water. After the summit, on the way down, we continued to eat--peanut butter and nutella sandwhiches and bars, blocks and gu. Way more food than I usually eat. But I felt like I needed even more. Right after eating a sandwhich, I still felt a little out of it.

Later, a simple calorie calculator told me that climbing with a pack on for 8 hours is about equivalent to 5,000 calories burned. WHAT? Factor in altitude and how hard I work to get back down, and we're looking at 7,000-8,000 calories burned in just 8 hours. Normal people my size who excercise are supposed to consume about 2,000 calories a day. This is about what I consume.

I don't know about you, but I gagged a little bit when I heard that Michael Phelps consumes 10,000 calories on competition days. The thought of eating that much makes me ill. I don't know how it's physically possible to consume enough to keep a high level of energy in the mountains. Eating often helped--I even got a summit, but I never felt good and the amount we were consuming was pushing it for me.

Just like any normal female, and maybe especially female athlete, I have always had a strained relationship with food. I am always thinking about food and my size and how I look compared to others. I mentally punish myself or congratulate myself according to what I've eatten that day. Lately, I don't avoid what I want, but I sure as hell feel guilty about it. Difficult relationships with food go hand-in-hand with middle distance running for females--it's actually not that hard to starve yourself and still do relatively well. But when you move into endurance sports, all bets are off. There's just no way to do what you want without the right amount of fuel.

Tim has a favorite story he loves to tell vegetarians about me. We were out one spring day, skinning up and skiing down a 14er in Colorado. I was doing it on half a bagel sandwhich and so was lightly bonking all day. At the time, I wasn't eating red-meat at all, and very little meat in general. By the time we got to the bottom, all I could think of was a huge, juicy cheeseburger. I didn't get one that night, but I did dream (and I mean obsessively) of them for a solid week before I finally had one and became a life-convert. This was my first big lesson in caloric consumption in the moutains.

And so, now, as I move into totally new running territory, I have to wonder, what is the right amount for me? What can I handle without flipping out? Can I physically consume enough that it won't be an issue? Will I consume too much and balloon? Can I allow myself to healthily get what I need to do I want? Stay tuned--we'll see. . .

Hey Ladies

Thanks for letting me join your blog (I feel so cool now). I am training for the NYC marathon in November. This is my second marathon and I always have pain in my left knee from about 8 miles and on. I have tried the glucosamine supplements, but they didn't work. Now I am trying the strap that sits under your knee. Supposedly that will help. Have any of you tried it? Any other suggestions?
Happy Running,
Alex

Sunday

I forgot that the starts of races here smell like an old locker-room. That was the first thing that took me back to high school cross country: the overpowering surge of "Icy Hot" in my nostrils every time I took a breath. Wow.

And of course they were playing the Rocky theme. Over and over again. Our coaches used to make motivational tapes for us and there was Rocky, every year, prominently located within the first 5 songs. Honestly, they were interspersing Rocky with some song about a girl kissing a girl, which I thought was pretty funny. I wondered how many people packed onto the road could understand what the song was about. But it was catchy and had a nice beat, so I bounced around to it to keep warm and tried not to choke on the smell of Ben-gay.

Once again, there were no waves. However, there were "pacers" who were each carrying a huge yellow balloon that listed their pace. For example, the first balloon said 3:30 or something crazy like that (this is pace per kilometer, lovely States readers). But, in true Latin style, the 6:00 pacer balloon was lined up in the starting area way behind the 7:00 balloon. Of course the whole idea is that they line up in order, and the runners arrange themselves around what they know their pace to be. Excellent plan, right? I thought so too, until, standing beside the 6:00 balloon guy, I looked back and saw a 4:00 balloon. Whatever. We'll just run.

Nike's fun little race provided a nice technical running shirt as the race shirt. This shirt was also our race number, eliminating the search for safety pins. Genius! And we were a sea of red which looks super cool when you're on a long stretch of road and you can see way ahead of you. Everybody looked the same. Except for the poachers, of course. But some of them tried to match and wore red t-shirts, which I thought was cute. Everyone knows they won't be pulled off the course, but I noted the effort and appreciated.

After the hand-sweat grab-fest that was Ultimas Noticias 15k, I chose to skip the water and single cooler Gatorade stops. I run this distance all the time without drinking and it's cold and humid here. No water needed.

As far as how I did, well, I was wearing a chip so didn't think too much of it when I crossed the start line a full 4 minutes after the start. But Nike has my time as though I started at the gun--to which, I ask, why the chip? Whatever. For all intents and purposes, my time was 57 minutes. I felt good and consistent and pretty strong the whole time, and after all the Rocky fanfare, I was feeling quite high and light, flashing back to the good ole days. I was worried I wouldn't be able to break an hour because I have not run this distance in well over a month. So I decided I'm happy with how it went. It helped that I didn't have to come home with ketchup and actually got a Nutri-Grain bar in my goodie sack which I promptly ate.

Our race began at 7:30. By 9 I was back home and getting back in the bed to snuggle with my little family and dream about my plan of attack for the coming months.

The Human Race...

...was just what I needed. Details coming soon.

A Little Inspiration, Please

Tomorrow, people around the world, in more than 25 cities, will race a 10k at the same time. How cool is that? Are you participating?

Ever since our return from Peru, I've been averaging a run about every other day. A short run. An easy one, because my knees have been bothering me ever since Urus. And this time, it is mentally difficult to get back to it.

Tomorrow, I won't be just running another road race. I will be out there looking for my mojo that I seemed to lose somewhere between horrible illness and two big mountains. I will be looking for my groove and my inspiration--my drive to get back to it, build a good base, and start training for marathon distance. I'm looking for a certain spark to fuel a fire circumstance put out. What a better place to find it than out on the road at the same time with people all over the world. Many of them might even be looking for the same things. Good luck to them. And good luck to me. I'm not "racing" in that I won't be competitive, but I have so much to lose.

Heartbreak Hills

Tim and I spent the majority of August traveling. It was great, but incredibly detrimental to my running in so many ways. The plan was to first spend several days in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecuador with several friends who were in town from the States. Cuenca is home to the best rock climbing in Ecuador and is a beautifully renovated colonial city. It's also home to the largest and best preserved Incan ruins in the country as well as the site of an enormous and beautiful national park: Cajas. So you could say there's some cool stuff to do around Cuenca. I'd been looking forward to it all year. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived in Cuenca and that night I was struck with the worst case of gringo-belly of my life. I spent 4 days in the hotel bed. The afternoon of the 4th day I walked a few blocks in town then had to go back to bed. But that night I could eat a little bit of food so at least the next day I got to do a short day-hike in Cajas National Park. Then the following day it was time to leave for Peru.

We were going to Peru for the purpose of climbing mountains in the Cordillera Blanca. I was justifiably worried about my level of strength after not eating for so long, and knew my conditioning was probably out the door as the short day hike gave me muscle cramps. But I was feeling good and thought that as long as I was feeling good, I would recover quickly.

The Cordillera Blanca is so incredible. I had never seen anything like it. I mean, southern New Zealand is beautiful, but the mountains are usually obscured by clouds. In Peru, everything was right there. We spent two days traveling to and through Peru to get to Huaraz where we spent a full day preparing to go into the backcountry. By the time we got out there, we were going to have 4 nights camping and three full days to do what we could in the mountains. We had perfect weather--warm, sunny and dry and NO WIND. At all. We went immediately to the Ishinca valley with our sights set on Ishinca and possibly a shorter peak, Urus. After a day of rest and acclimatization, we decided to just go ahead and try for Ishinca.

Perhaps because we knew it was a long approach, we kinda motored up without taking our time or consuming plenty of calories and water. We came to a fork in the trail a little after dawn. We knew the left hand trail went to the glacier and the "normal route" but looking up at the mountain, the "normal" looked pretty freakin' steep so we chose to keep to the right and go to the other side which was clearly less steep. Hours later we were still on the approach trail, low on water, and I knew I was going to bonk hard, soon. We sat for awhile with the glacier and our route in sight, but we decided to turn back. It was the right decision but it broke my heart. Right then and there it felt like I had lost everything because of my illness. I was exhausted and felt horrible and guilty and so sad that I didn't have the energy to keep going. I mentally counted the miles I put in this summer working on my base so I could soon begin my training plan and I felt the loss of all the acclimatization we did in Ecuador before this trip. Of course, altitude also makes me a bit emotional and maybe I was suffering that as well.

In the end, we turned back and committed to trying a mountain a tad shorter and a little more accessible. And we did it. And we had a great time. And I did it. And I didn't bonk or cry too much or give up. And now I even feel a little proud of the accomplishment. It's more like a big step back onto the path.

I started running again as soon as we got home. It's been hard. I'm fully starting over again which probably pushes real training to November. But I'm not ready to give up on my goal. I want to stick with it. It's just soooooooo hard to start all over when I was doing so well.

"It's Oh, So Quiet--Shhhh, Shhhh . . . "

Do the other authors even read this blog? Just wondering. . . HI MOM!!

We got back to Quito today from Peru and I'm pretty worked, and I need to put in some major hours loving on Bali. But when I feel at ease again and Bali is content again, I have many things I've been wanting to reflect on regarding running and the off-and-on the horse thing, and big mountains, etc. etc. Tomorrow I'll see about getting my heart-rate monitor; so there's that, too.

So, if you're still out there, check back in a couple days. I even promise there will be fun pictures.