Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Training Update


Just thought I'd give you an update. I've been doing lots of running in the past couple months that I should have been blogging about. I will be posting more about these runs in near future, but for now it will suffice to say that, since the disaster at Pandora, I have run my first trail 50K (with 5000ft of +/-)! YES. I am now an ultrarunner. It's official. I have also knocked out a few marathon plus distance runs, which were a lot of fun.

I should probably add that I've changed up my diet pretty drastically. Never thought I'd be writing this, but I've started eating meat again. A lot of meat. I mean A LOT of it. I'm eating a mostly paleo diet, but eating grains and oats and such pretty freely after my long runs to aid in recovery. I did the Whole30 and I highly recommend it. You start with a month of pretty strict meat, veggies, nuts, and fruit (no dairy, grains, legumes, refined sugar or added sugar). Then you reintroduce dairy, then grains, then legumes in order to see what your body actually does well with. I've found that my body is responding very well to the change. I had no idea how irritable I had become and how uneven my energy levels were as a vegetarian. Not all vegetarians are protein deficient, but I definitely was and it was taking its toll. Eventually, I'll probably move to incorporate more grains, dairy, and whatnot. But I'm still trying to figure out what works best for me; we are all an experiment of n=1 (or whatever the sciency way to say that is).

This Sunday, my wife and I are driving up to Westcliffe, Colorado where I'll spend most of my time running in the Sangre de Cristo mountains (particularly in the San Isabel National Forest). I'm REALLY pumped to get out there and see what my flat-lander legs can handle in terms of real mountain running. The altitude is around 7500 feet, with a few 14ers in the area that I plan to summit. I don't have much planned in terms of specific runs—with one important exception: I'm going to attempt my first 60 km (or probably a full 40 miler) at the end of the week. I'm going to keep things simple and use the Rainbow Trail, which should be *relatively* flat and there ought to be plenty of stream-crossings (and thus water sources along the way).

Feeling very good right now about the Palo Duro 50 miler. Gotta stay healthy, but if that happens I should be more than prepared to really give it my all out there.



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