Key Lessons -- Summer 2001

1. Focus on nutrition and the weight will take care of itself.
2. If I push too hard then my body composition peaks too early (just like fitness).
3. There appears to be a correlation between nutrition and speed. The correlation between weight and speed appears to be weak.
4. Sacrificing nutrition for the sake of weight loss will impair performance.
5. The easiest time to drop weight is when LSD volume is high.

While my personal "numbers" are not directly relevant -- I think they can be useful for context.

My target race weight was 158 lbs. A few people asked me the source of that number. Basically, I thought that it was the leanest I could be and still operate well. Read on!

My lowest sustained weight for the season was 160 lbs at the start of June. I had been doing a ton of LSD work and limited ME work (aside from racing). At this weight, my running was solid but my cycling sucked (due to a lack of cycling ME work). I felt fantastic and was recovering well. I was cold a lot but that's always the case when I am lean. Interestingly, I had my worst race performance of the season (Tri-Cali Alcatraz) around this time.

Seven weeks out from IMC, it was time to get serious. I had let my nutrition slip (this is relative) and my weight was up at 167-171 lbs. Hardly beefy but I knew that I was carrying more than I needed. About this time I set my sights on 158 lbs -- I like my body/mind to know where we are heading.

With the hard training, I found that I was most able to focus on my nutrition on my easy days and recovery weeks. During my hard training days and in the 24 hours after, I found it very tough to stay focused on my nutrition. I always ate healthy but would divert from my strict dietary regime. No doubt my body/mind was trying to protect me from myself!

Personally, I find that I can only maintain strict dietary control for 7-14 day bursts. Fortunately, this works well with an IM Taper as well as recovery weeks. I've found that the greatest gains occur if I am able to control myself when volume is low.

10-12 days out from Race Day, I hit 161-163 lbs and felt great. I realized that my original goal was counterproductive (I am one lean dude in the low 160s) and therefore switched to a maintenance strategy. To maintain myself at this level, I still need to be quite strict because my training volume was well down.

In race week, my weight hit a trough of 160/161 lbs on Tuesday (48 hours after my last "real" workout). After that, it slowly crept up through the week -- I am guessing that it was due to glycogen/hydration effects.

In the 48 hours before the race, I "cracked" and increased the starchy carbo content of my daytime diet (between breakfast and dinner). I ate small amounts of starchy carbs spaced out during the day. I remained lean but felt more "pumped" (Glycogen/Hydration).

My best guess is that I was 167/168 lbs standing on the start line -- post breakfast, post last water drink, fully loaded and ready to go! I had the race of my life.

Race Nutrition Observations

Pre-race dinner was chicken, pasta, white rolls. I ate a pretty big dinner (three chicken breasts, two rolls, two cups pasta). Very low fiber diet in the 24 hours per-race.

Race morning breakfast was three bagels (two with PB and Jam -- one with Jam only). Remembering my caffeine experience at IMNZ (bad, very bad), I drank LESS coffee than what I had been using for my Build Period BT workouts.

Pre-swim beverage was water only, I skipped the gel. Bike total intake was four Cliff Bars, half a PowerBar, 12 gels and, say, three bottles of Gatorade. Total water intake is tough to estimate but somewhere in the range of 9-11 liters of fluid for the bike. I drank a lot because I knew it was going to be a hot marathon. Peed five times on the bike and twice and the start of the run. This saved me! I finished quite dehydrated. Next to no calories on the run -- Next time, I will try to force calories in the first half of the run. I was literally on vapors at the end.

Used two salt tablets on the bike and the same on the run. Not sure if they made a difference, but I would use them again in a hot race.

Post race, I experienced water retention. Perhaps from the salt loading I did in the 48 hours pre-race?

Diet Observations

Post-IMC, I came off the Caveman Plan. The following things happened:

• I gained weight really fast -- no doubt I was eating too much. However, when I strip out all the fruits and veggies that I eat, some of it is going to be replaced with energy dense foods (not helped by eight days of hotel food).
• I felt fuller -- I could eat and feel good for up to 18 hours after a serious non-caveman feeding. Please note that a "feeding" is significantly larger than a mere "meal" -- ha ha ha. Another issue could be that I feel fuller when my body fat percentage is higher -- lower Starvation Stress.
• Fat -- My experience with burgers and fries, led me to suspect that the key to successfully implementing the Caveman Plan is an increased dietary fat content. Joe's been telling me this for over a year! I know that the way I apply the Caveman is low fat. Great when I want to slim but it comes with a healthy dose of "Starvation Stress" and therefore leads to bingeing (again everything is relative). A far healthier way to approach diet is to moderate my approach so I can remain at a stable weight. This is my current goal -- once I lose what I gained during my test. ;-)
• I stank -- bad things happened when I switched to a typical diet. I'll spare you the exact details. My body was unhappy even down to the cellular level. On the bright side, I am happy to report that I was quite content from an appetite perspective.

gordo - 15 September 2001