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Fuelling the machine- AKA the female marathoner study

Fuelling the machine- AKA the female marathoner study

Nutrition is a big part of any endurance event training and particularly so for an event as gruelling as the marathon—no news there. Any runner—or marathoner, anyway—can affirm that.

The nutrition and “wellness” industry—since that’s what it is—surely makes a veritable shitton of money off consumers who are looking for the next “big” thing or the easy way out to drop a few pounds so they can look super hot in their little black dress, their skinny pants, or their birthday suit. Again, stating the obvious here.

All of these industry norms are at odds with endurance athletes, of whom it behooves to think of nutrition and food consumption as how we effectively fuel our machines—our bodies—to perform and function as well as possible, both in our daily training regimes and on the day it matters most: race day.

Yea, this is a good way of thinking about it
Yea, this is a good way of thinking about it

Don’t get me wrong; I realize that it is extremely problematic to think of our bodies strictly as “machines” that need to be “fuelled” so they can “perform” properly.

I get it; promise.

I’m not into vehicularly anthropomorphizing the entity that basically dictates our quality of life each day. For now, however, bear with me; I’ll get back to this tangentially-related body image point later (probably in a separate post… trying to contain the diatribe here, folks).

In the past week, I got my personalized results from a study I participated in last fall, as I was in the final bouts of NYC marathon training. I saw a post on runnersworld from a graduate student in San Jose, asking for adult female marathoners to participate in her study about their nutritional habits. Once I emailed her, indicating my interest, she quickly accepted me, so I was in.

From what I recall, the first part of the study involved taking a series of very involved questionnaires that covered a host of topics, ranging from my own marathoning experience (17 fulls and probably about 18 halfs at the time); my attitudes toward food and body image; my knowledge of nutrition and micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals (FWIW, I consider myself very informed about this stuff, but this specific survey was hellaciously hard); and a flurry of other topics that I’ve since forgotten. Completing the three or four different questionnaires alone took over an hour, and that was before I even began the heavy part of the study.

Erin, the PI, asked all her participants (whom she coded with numbers to protect anonymity) to track our food/beverage intake, as well as exercise habits, for an entire week, to the letter. She wanted serving sizes, portion sizes, minutes exercised, effort expended at said exercises, time of day, vitamin and supplement consumption, even brand names of the food and restaurant names of the locales we patronized—in other words, the meticulous of the meticulous.

At any rate, Erin’s findings were pretty surprising. You can read them here at your leisure if you’re so inclined, but the highlights include the following:

  1. given that I was marathon training, doing cross fit, and breastfeeding last fall, I was consuming nearly 1k fewer calories than I “should have” been. The language in the report makes it sound quite dire, but at least from what I can remember, I don’t think I was starving myself or anything like that. In fact, like I said before, with the exception of the past few weeks, I usually eat… a LOT. (That is often the source of many a joke from my friends and family. My mom wonders where my food goes. I point to my ass).
  2. My diet wasn’t as balanced as I thought it was, apparently. The analysis points to several vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which, as Erin points out, can be easily rectified by eating more vegetables (I was slightly under the RDA that week) and by eating larger portion sizes. Again, the latter is almost amusing to me because I eat… a lot. (Sidenote: again, FWIW, some of the labels on the report are inaccurate. I don’t think I’ve been to an Old Country Buffet in probably 20 years!)
  3. At least according to the report, my underconsumption, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and breastfeeding all last fall allegedly could have/would have seriously compromised my athletic performance last fall (speaking in the hypothetical here, since NYC never transpired). This is a huge surprise to me because, like I’ve alluded to already, I think I eat a pretty balanced diet; if I feel sluggish, I don’t attribute it to a lack of a certain vitamin or mineral… hello, mother of a toddler?! (Interesting to note, here, that the study indicated my iron consumption was great. That’s like a BOOYAH! moment for me for all the naysayers who say vegetarians or vegans struggle to get adequate amounts of iron).
  4. And finally, another interesting part: probably like most people, my sodium consumption was higher than the RDA, but I learned it’s almost irrelevant for endurance athletes. This especially surprised me because I had never thought about it in these terms before: we’re endurance athletes. We sweat. All that sodium we consume? It comes out. Consequently, while I should care at least a little about my sodium intake, at the same time, I shouldn’t… (and the study even says as much—namely, that if endurance athletes were to heed the RDA for sodium, that could have deleterious effects on the our performance… and hell, my endocrinologist was trying to tell me to take iodine supplements for the past few years).

This study’s findings, as well as my own recent ruminations on how I stopped weighing myself as a pretend-Lent goal and managed to drop some weight, and my suppressed appetite of late, make me wonder what all of this means.

Call it a wake-up call of sorts, if you want.

Initially, I scoffed when I read the report’s findings (treading waters fast and furious in Da Nile, perhaps?) because I know I eat a lot of food—huge portions, large quantities, you name it—but I think what I often gloss over—and what people like my husband have to remind me—is that even if I do eat a lot, I typically am eating foods that are pretty nutrient-dense and calorically kinda low.

The fact that I will eat huge quantities of the aforementioned doesn’t really negate or balance anything out… especially when I’m in the throes of training.

At the same time, I’m educated enough in this subject to know that I need to eat a decent balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat—among others—so I’m definitely not “that runner” who only eats carbs and stays the eff away from all fats, even the good stuff.

Believe me.

Of course, I’m not perfect, so I’ll want junk food every now and then, but overall, I tend to swing toward the camp of “I want to eat a lot of food, provided it is healthy [read: not fried, nothing dairy, no animal anything, nothing with a soul, and not something with a laundry list of unrecognizable ingredients whose names I can’t pronounce—thank you, Michael Pollan!] and nutrient-dense.

I’m well aware of the horrible things that female athletes will put themselves through in order to gain an edge—all the bad stuff like bulimia, anorexia, all types of disordered eating habits—and while I’ve never had to deal with a disorder, proper, I do recognize that I probably have some disordered eating habits that might predispose me to some self-sabotage if I don’t keep myself in check.

Fuelling my machine—nutrition—has been something of a struggle for me for the past few years, as I’ve tried to be mindful both of the stuff I’ve mentioned here, of getting ample amounts of all the good stuff to keep the machine running well, as well as the nitty-gritty stuff specific to training and racing, like figuring out what I can eat—and when—that will both give me enough energy to rock the fuck out and kick major ass… and, obv super importantly, not give me the trots.

All this stuff is a balance, and having a totally non-vested third party look at my habits and throw some truth back in my face is something of a wake-up call—but definitely, 110%, very good feedback.

I don’t think I could have been more impressed–or surprised–with this study’s findings, even if I contest the validity of some of the claims.

What’s your story with fuelling your machine? Do you treat your “machine” any differently when you’re training than when you’re not? Have you ever had any experiences working with a dietitian or a nutritionist?

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That was ugly, kinda

That was ugly, kinda

That, of course, referring to Fleet Feet’s inaugural women’s half marathon in Chicago a few weeks back.

I had a premonition about this race that I stupidly chose to ignore: namely, that racing a half in June–and late June, at that–was almost assuredly a disaster waiting to happen.  I wasn’t expecting to best my 1:33 PR that I set in January or anything along those lines, but I also didn’t really want to spend the money to “race” a half (note the air quotes) in June when I knew in my heart of hearts that it would probably become more of a training run than a race.

Well… I guess I need to learn to listen to myself a little bit more.

The race itself was actually well done.  It was organized very well, as any Fleet Feet race is, and even for it being the inaugural year, there didn’t seem to be any hiccups in event management (like with having a sufficient number of porta-potties, fluids on the course, nice race swag, that sort of thing), and the race boasted a solid number of participants: about 5k in the half and another 1k in the 5k (I think).  Running along the southern lakefront path isn’t that big a deal for we Chicagoans who run it nearly every weekend, but I could definitely see how it’d make for some nice scenery for the suburbanites or out-of-towners (and really, quite frankly, I think the southern path is actually quite nice, so even I enjoy it when I’m down there).

Race day weather was fantastic for standing or lounging around outside, but it was definitely warm for running, probably around mid-70s and sunny at the start (7am) that only got warmer… but again, it comes with the territory of racing in June.  That made me nervous right from the get-go (forcing me to have a moment with myself… “Erin, why didn’t you listen?!”), but I figured it’d be ok and that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.  I was more concerned with the fact that I hadn’t yet, uh, “relieved” myself pre-run and that it’d happen during the race, which would be a first for me (ever).

As the race was about to begin, I nestled myself among the first group of people, right up at the starting line, figuring that these folks were going to run around a 1:40 or sub-, times I thought I was capable of posting that morning.  Once the gun went off, I was with or immediately behind the lead pack, about runner #10-12 at any given time.  I was blazing at a pace that I knew I couldn’t sustain for 13.1 miles; in fact, my first two were in the 6:30s.

While it was an awesome feeling to be with or so close to the lead group, my body was beginning to have an F-U moment with me.  My stomach felt crampy–again, a very peculiar feeling, and one that never happens to me while running–and low and behold, my GI decided that it was a good time to pool blood and move my digestion along.  Between miles 3-4, the abdominal crampiness soon became sentiments of “ah shit, I gotta go!,” though fortunately I was able to make it to a field house in time for some during-the-race diarrhea.

Oh yea, the big D finally made its appearance during a race.

Only took six years and probably a hundred or so races to finally get to that moment.

Incredibly, my detour took less than a minute, but for the next several miles I felt like crap (ha, pun intended.  I couldn’t resist).  I wallowed in self-pity for a while and thought of what I read in Scott Jurek’s book, about the things he does when he’s racing and not feeling well.  I considered my options: DNF, which I didn’t want to do, and truly did not feel was worth doing; walk, which I didn’t think would make me feel any better either and, if anything, would only make the race longer because I’d still have to cover the same amount of distance; or finally, just run more slowly.

I chose that last one.

My 6:30s dropped to high 7s/low 8s, and then they hung around the 8:40s for a while, enough for me to drop from runner #11 at the 3-mile mark down to around runner 50+ at the turn-around.  The leaders were just a couple miles in front of me, so I figured I was still going to be pretty close to a 1:40something finish if I kept up at that pace, and it took a while, probably until about mile 8, for the 1:45 pace group to catch up to me.  The sun was in full effect now as I shuffled my way back north.  My desire to run a 1:40 became a desire to do a 1:45, which then became a desire to finish and to post a sub-2, which would make for a solid (albeit slow) training run for the day.

Around mile 10, I passed an aid station that was blaring some great 80s rock.  As I got closer to the station, I was passing south-bound runners who were considerably slower than me but who looked like they were just rockin’ out, having a great time.  Finally, some endocannibinoids kicked in, and I decided that even if I had finally gotten diarrhea during a race, and even though I had gone out way too quickly, and even though I was stupidly running a half marathon in the heat of a late-June Sunday morning in Chicago, I was going to have some fun with it and run a solid 5k finish, fatigued and possibly dehydrated.

It was finally around mile 10 of this 13.1 jaunt that I remembered that not every run or race is meant to be a PR and that sometimes, running is fun purely because it puts us in motion and allows us to reach beyond ourselves, to get over ourselves, and to overcome whatever challenges manifest that day.  Once the endocannibinoids got me to this realization–and the fact that I’d soon see Jack and Guerline around the finish line, waiting for me–I began to have fun again.

As I finished my 5k with sub-8s, passing up several other runners along the way, I saw around mile 11 or 12 that the race’s status had gone from being yellow-flagged to red-flagged, the race’s CYA measure to try to warn runners to slow down and not go for PRs or anything like that.  They could have said that around mile 4, as far as I was concerned! I saw Jack and Guerline as I was on Columbus Drive, about 50 paces from the finish line, and I gave them a thumbs-down, laughing, as I yelled “I’ll see you on the other side [of the finish line].”  The clock read 1:46 and change by the time I crossed the line, and by no means was the race a PR or a PW.  It made for some lively banter with Jack, Guerline, and Erin at the finish line, one of thosetype of race experiences that you chalk up to “well, just a training run, did the best you could.”  No anger, no frustration, no disappointment… just c’est la vie.

If nothing else, this race was merely an adventurous training run and an unofficial, “soft” beginning to my NYC training that I don’t have to formally begin until the week of 7/8.

A body in motion is a body always moving forward.