The Athlete’s Kitchen
Copyright: Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD January 2012
What’s best to eat for recovery after a hard workout?
That’s what runners, triathletes, and body builders alike repeatedly ask. They read ads for commercial recovery foods that demand a 3 to 1 ratio of carbs to protein, tout the benefits of a proprietary formula, or emphasize immediate consumption the minute you stop exercising. While these ads offer an element of truth, consumers beware: engineered recovery foods are not more effective than standard foods. The purpose of this article is to educate you, a hungry runner, about how to choose an optimal recovery diet.
Which runners need to worry about a recovery diet?
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In last week’s Feature Article How Many Weeks Before Your Marathon Should You Run Your Last Long Run?, we concluded that it is best to conduct your last long run four weeks prior to your marathon.
Without a long run during the last four weeks, won’t you lose fitness, compromising your ability to run the marathon at your true potential?
Don’t worry! These four weeks provide the opportunity to continue high quality training. As you recover from your last long run, incorporate a variety of speed workouts (assuming they were part of your training program) that will result in improving other factors that will affect marathon performance, e.g. running economy, speed and VO2max (maximum capacity of an individual’s body to transport and use oxygen during exercise).
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Many marathoners run their last long training run two or three weeks before race day. Doesn’t it make sense to run your last “biggie” reasonably close to your race to derive maximum benefit and bolster your endurance? After all, you recover during your taper.
Running your last long run this close to race day is a crucial training error. During a long run, leg muscles sustain considerable damage. Contractile fibres get damaged or destroyed. Until the muscle tissue has repaired itself, the propulsive force that your leg muscles can exert is decreased, hindering your ability to maintain running at race pace over long distance.
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Good news for older runners who aim to improve their running and racing! It was commonly believed that running economy (one’s ability to utilize oxygen at a given pace) decreases with age. The higher your running economy, the less oxygen you require to run at a given pace. Therefore, an “economical” runner can continue running at a given speed for a longer period of time than her less economical counterpart. Running economy is reliable indicator of distance race performance.
An article written by Gretchen Reynolds (that appeared in Tara Parker Pope’s December 21st New York Times Well Blog) reported on recent research conducted at the University of New Hampshire (published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research) that lays this myth to rest. Dr. Timothy Quinn, the study’s lead author: “Contrary to our beliefs, economy did not decline with age”. Being able to utilize oxygen efficiently, middle aged and older runners are capable of fast running and race times.
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We were recently interviewed by the New York Times for an article on women’s running. The article will be published in the lead up to the 2012 Summer Olympics and will examine women’s participation in running from the ground level up to elite athletes.
We may not be Olympic calibre athletes, but we all have accomplishments for 2011 that we can be proud of. Many of us tend to focus on the times when we fell short of our objective and forget our achievements.
List your top ten accomplishments for 2011. Read them out loud. Recall how you felt at those points in time. Take pride in them.
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During the holiday season, many runners are strapped for time but not for calories. How can you keep your hard-earned fitness and not gain weight under these conditions?
The answer is to substitute the CESW (Convenient Efficient Speed Workout) for one or more your regular runs.
Why? This workout really cranks up your metabolism so that you burn calories long after finishing.
Convenient? You can perform the CESW right out your front door, without having to travel to a track or gym. You can also run the CESW indoors on a treadmill.
Efficient? The entire workout including warmup and cooldown takes only 30-40 minutes.
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(Central Governor Theory)
Conventional wisdom holds that during running and racing, muscular fatigue is caused by the buildup of toxic bi-products and/or muscles becoming depleted of glycogen (running out of fuel). It becomes impossible for muscles to exert the force necessary to sustain the desired speed. Therefore, the runner must slow down or even cease running.
The problem with this theory is that it doesn’t explain what many of us commonly experience:
- An ability to sprint to the finish at the end of a distance race
- Running the last repeat of a tough track workout faster than the two preceding ones.
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Consider the following scenario: Your training schedule includes a weekly track or hill workout. One week, you hit your workout targets right on. You are brimming with confidence. The following week, the identical workout is awful with no apparent reason why. You feel bewildered and discouraged.
Knowing where you are in your menstrual cycle can provide valuable insight into your performance. Let’s examine why and how to use this knowledge to your training and racing advantage.
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Any active adult over the age of 40 can attest to requiring more recovery time from training and injury.
Progressive training causes muscles to break down (on a microscopic level), repair and grow stronger. As we age, muscle fibres decrease in number and shrink in size. New muscle fibres are generated at a slower rate than in a younger person, resulting in a slower buildup and strengthening of muscle in response to the demands of training or the incidence of an injury.
I know this fact of life from personal experience. When I was 44 years old and my daughter was 12, we both suffered mild ankle sprains…………on the very same day. As our sprains were of similar severity, we both underwent identical treatment programs, consisting of physiotherapy and strengthening and balance exercises. Ten days after spraining our ankles, she was hopping and I was hobbling! Nothing beats experiential learning for driving home a fact of life.
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Why does running a half or full marathon increase susceptibility to colds?
There is a large body of research that shows that moderate exercise reduces the incidence and severity of a cold or flu but intense or prolonged exercise increases the risk and severity of infection.
The research we found most relevant to runners and endurance athletes was conducted by noted exercise immunologist, Dr. David Nieman, Director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University. (Lance Armstrong has worked with Dr. Neiman and has been tested in his lab. If he’s good enough for Lance, he’s good enough for us). Dr. Neiman found that running or cross-training 30 to 90 minutes a day several times a week strengthened the immune system. However, exercise longer than 90 minutes increased risk of infection.
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