Filling In That Hole

There's nothing like having a senior moment influence your workout.  Rather than run five-to-twelve one-kilometer pieces with rest cycles in between, I ended up doing a version of "ten the hard way" the other morning with my little run group.  Actually, in front of them.

Pete and I got to chattering about his injuries, fitness, training, and racing with about three miles to go.  He decided to run a five kilometer race in the morning, then turn around and race a second event in the afternoon.  Not surprisingly, he marveled at how much more fatigued - and how much more slowly - he raced that evening.

All this, naturally, provided a teachable moment on the joys of recovery.

It seems all too simple:  Exertion (stress) leads to decline in fitness (trough), then a return to homeostasis (baseline) and eventual supercompensation (peak), given enough time.  Add more stress before the return to baseline and you've begun to dig a "deeper hole."  Play your cards right with the level and timing of stress and rest, and over time the baseline is a little higher...that means the athlete is more fit than when they started.

If Pete had been running twice a day - or at the least the occasional run late in the afternoon, followed by a run early the following morning - I believe he would have known how a short recovery period would affect his second run.  He could have learned from trial-and-error how much rest, how much fluid and nutrition, and what specific techniques would have worked.  Or at least what would would not.

Research literature is loaded with many different recovery-enhancing modalities; some of which aren't as highly-touted or marketed as the more-questionable ones.  Naturally, not everyone will benefit equally from the same routine; what works best for you works best for you.

Protein and simple sugars - The latest and most popular blend of protein and simple sugars appears to be chocolate milk.  The moo-juice's advantages definitely lie in the ability to down serious grams of protein and carbohydrates in a matter of seconds almost immediately after the run ends.  Try THAT with a sports nutrition bar!  SlimFast shakes and the Gatorade post-workout shake have also been recommended by several coaches, too, but I started to wonder what the lactose-intolerant runner can do.  A poster on a fitness bulletin board suggested three parts chocolate-flavored soy milk and one part regular soy milk, which they claim has the same ratio of sugars and protein.

Hydration - Water, naturally, is the best choice for hydration, but you only need to drink until your thirst is sated.  A new book by one of my favorite 'smart people,' Dr. Timothy Noakes says the "hydration industry" is, well, 'all wet.'  We didn't have hydration "issues," he says in a recent British Journal of Sports Medicine podcast interview, "until about two decades ago."

Shower - There's nothing like a really warm shower after a hard run; if you have a handheld shower head (especially one with a massage function!) you can focus the flow along the muscles of the lower extremities.  Even though heat and cold treatments are questionable when it comes to muscle soreness, there are very few persons I know who have felt worse after a shower.

Rest - Besides, once you've finished a shower you're probably going to feel like laying down for a bit of a nap.  Even a couple of extra hours of sleep are beneficial to the healing process; sleep deprivation, on the other hand, was found to increase insulin resistance and decrease glucose tolerance, leading to a decreased time-to-exhaustion during exercise.

So, hanging out with the friends and sucking down a couple of adult beverages of choice after a morning's race is perfectly fine, as long as you're not planning to go out and do another race in the afternoon.

Hydration On Knowledge, Not Marketing

Last summer, when we were in Singapore's Tanjong Pagar district, we walked through a fruit market. Vendors were selling, among the durians (horrible!) and papaya (delicious!) green coconuts sliced at the top to fit drinking straws, which I assumed was for coconut milk.

Suzanne, in her goodie bag from the ING Miami Half-Marathon, found a small carton of coconut water. My initial assumption was the beverage sample was for a local concern; considering our proximity to the Caribbean I thought it might be a product sold in the local groceries or bodegas.

Fast forward three weeks to yesterday evening. I felt the compulsion to take my loving wife out for a bite to eat, partly because it was St. Valentine's Day, partly because I did not want to return home immediately after our language class. I've seen my d-a-w-g try to comprehend me babbling Japanese verb conjugates for a thirty-minute period. He looks like he understands every word, but does not know what to think.

Some dining establishments are more amenable to conversation than others - one of our faves, believe it or not, is a place called Beef O'Brady's. The nice thing about Beef's is they have enough television sets playing a variety of sporting events. Suzanne can watch basketball; I let my borderline A.D.D. run its course and try to watch everything else. Beef's also puts us with our interesting discussions, which can range from physiology to economics to familial gossip, depending on who's not drinking at the moment.

This time Suzanne saw an article in the Wall Street Journal magazine, which reminded her of the coconut water drink in her ING goodie bag. She said she liked the taste of the beverage and it seemed to not hinder her recovery after the half marathon. She's not one to tout or maintain devotion to a particular product. If she says something really positive about a product I'm likely to give it a second look.

As we read the WSJ article we learned the increasing demand for coconut water has led to a recent leap on the bandwagon by the usual band of soda sellers.

What's the best way to figure out whether something might possibly be snake oil?

- If a singer markets the product, or owns a share of a product supply chain, it's probably a good idea to give the item a wider berth.
- If the advertising tag line sounds like something you might read on a bumper sticker, walk away...there's nothing to see here.
- If the marketing campaign includes the terms "super-," "mega-," or "extreme," the odds are good there will probably a lawsuit in the not-too-distant future.

And in the case of one maker of coconut water drink, a suit has already been settled.

A proposed nationwide class action suit was filed the other week after an independent study revealed one coconut water product didn't contain the electrolyte levels indicated on the label. While there might be some sort of electrolyte balance or recovery benefit from drinking coconut water, there's no scientific proof at this time it's a more effective means of hydration (or cramp prevention - which has more to do with signals traveling through the nervous system to the muscles than other possible etiologies) than other less-pricey sports drinks.

So, while it might be a good hydration product for those persons who prefer to drink 20% of the calories (50 per 8 ounce serving) of the most common sports drink with the addition of dietary fiber, it's more difficult to tell whether the amount of electrolytes stated on the label (or in the shell, for that matter) merit the hyperbole.

Just because the big boys jump on the bandwagon it's not going to make the product any better. Only more popular.

Blindsided By Beverages

Take a couple of seconds to think about your run routine:

You go out for a run of 30-to-60 minutes, which may or may not include a warm-up or cool-down. You come back to the house, drop your soggy shoes and socks at the door, and amble to the kitchen. Once you hit the kitchen you make a beeline for the refrigerator. You open the door, grab a bottle, can or glass of something cold and wet, and slug it down.

Quick - how many calories did you just take in? Even the most anal-retentive runner, the one who counts every calorie of solid food which crosses their lips, can be blindsided by beverages.

Yes, rehydration is necessary after a bout of running. However, we can - mindlessly - take in more calories over the course of sixty seconds than we burned off in the previous ten minutes. When you start to think about it, it's not all that difficult to see why some runners have difficulty losing those last few pounds. You know the ones - those five pounds which can slow you down by 20 seconds a mile.

That's a minute for a 5K. Closer to ten minutes for a marathon. Ask any marathoner who's come "just that close" to a Boston qualifying time what they would sacrifice for ten minutes. Some might mention a pound of flesh, but it's a little closer to five. Naturally, the issue is one of portion control. When I was the age of my oldest grandchild the largest size soda at the major fast food resturant was the smallest size now; same for the french fries.

And when you look closely at a bottle of the most popular "thirst quencher," you find that the 20-ounce bottle represents not one, but two and-a-half servings. And 130 calories go down the hatch quickly. Very quickly.

I am not saying that sports drinks are bad. What I am saying is that we need to pay close attention to what we eat and drink as part of our training...and I consider recovery as important as any training session on the schedule. There are sports drinks on the market which have more trash than treasure, more empty calories than nutritive value. Some drink manufacturers make claims which can hardly be substantiated and usually come with provisos in small print. Personally, I'm too old to read small print. If I can't read it I probably should not drink it.

When it comes to recovering from the run, I will be the first to say this - slow is best.

Slow down. Read the label. And if you can't read it you probably shouldn't eat or drink what is inside it.

Before The Damage Is Done...Drink

If the casual observer were to look at me after a workout they would wonder if I had been doused with a fire hose. Doesn't matter what time of the year (save for the coldest weeks), what distance, or what intensity. I still am soaking wet. My college cross-country coach, my wife, my athletes and my friends all marvel at what has politely been described as "a very efficient cooling system."

I used to joke, "I sweat when I think." Who would have considered that to be true? I didn't, until I started looking closer at thermoregulation. Our skeletal muscles (including those muscles used for running), liver, heart and our brain all generate body heat. On those days when we're hotter than our surroundings we can radiate heat (think about those infrared scopes used by military and police to observe in dark conditions) to maintain a proper temperature. When the air temperature is hotter than us we absorb heat. Add to the outside heat the heat we generate from our running, and thinking about running...you are thinking about running, right...?

External heat and internal heating can raise our body's core temperature to a point where our brains have to make a command decision; how long can the body go before vital organs are injured? Our brain decides to start shutting less important functions down in order to protect itself, the heart and other vital organs. That usually means skeletal muscles take the hit. Entire muscles don't get shut down entirely, mind you, but a few fibers here and there at first...which we usually recognize as breaks in running form or decreased range of motion (shortened, choppy strides). As the temperature continues to increase the brain becomes more concerned and shuts down more muscle fibers ("is that my calf cramping?") until we decide to either cool things down by slowing down, drinking cool fluid, getting into a cooler environment or stop exercising altogether.

So it's important to keep the core temperature as low as possible, either by deflecting radiated heat from the sun and other surfaces, or by drinking so you can continue to sweat.

Runners who sweat heavily, naturally, will need to take in more fluid per hour. You can determine your sweat ratio by stepping on a scale (naked) before and after a run and looking at the weight difference, adding the volume of fluid you drank during the run, then doing the mathematics to figure out the ratio per hour. Hotter, more humid days might demand more and colder days less, but you'll have a ballpark figure on which to base your hydration plan.

After the run, it's important to begin the recovery process by replacing the fluids lost. Again, the easiest way to know how much is by stepping on the scale to find the difference in pounds between when you started and when you got done. Multiply by 16 to get the number of ounces, then start replacing fluid on a one-to-one or a one-and-a-half-to one ratio.

Naturally, the next question is "what's the best drink?" Water has been the ideal beverage for many years, and works great for most athletes, but an entire industry has developed in the past four decades because of this question. Sweat not only contains water but minerals, lactate, urea and some trace elements. The most common elements found in sweat are the electrolytes; sodium (average 0.9 grams per liter), potassium (average 0.2 grams per liter), calcium (average 0.015 grams per liter) and magnesium (average 0.0013 grams per liter). These values naturally will vary from person to person.

One of the most popular sports drinks on the market provides .4-.5 grams per liter of sodium, .125 grams per liter of potassium and 200-to-220 calories of energy per liter from carbohydrates. There are sports beverages on the market which have protein, others have electrolytes but no carbohydrates, and some include other trace minerals like chromium. This ideally allows the athlete to make up for some of the lost minerals and nutrients before the workout or race is over. The best sports drink, however, is the one which the athlete will actually drink; all the beneficial elements and chemicals a laboratory can offer (whether or not they truly help!) are of little use if the flavor of drink is terrible.

So don't forget to keep that bottle of water or sports drink handy during your runs, or make certain your run routes have places where you can get (or stash) fluids. Drink early and drink often; if you wait until you feel thirsty the damage has already been done.

Getting There is Twice the Worry

I think I b!tched and moaned about six weeks ago about the joy of air travel, concurrent with our trip to Key West. But, since I'm getting ready to go north in about four weeks for the CW Dayton River Corridor Classic Half-Marathon, I think I'll do it again. Come on, you know you love it.

I've complained long and loud about spending time in the Atlanta airport, which is the nearest hub to where we live. We've gone on occasion through Houston or Dallas-Ft. Worth, but more often than not, it's ATL. If you don't mind spending copious amounts of money on food and beverages in order to speed your wait, which for ATL is a given (I'm suspecting a conspiracy between TravelHost, Aramark, or whoever the catering company is, the FAA and the airport authority to get more money out of travelers, but the data is still a little thin.), the time in terminal can be almost comfortable. If I were to travel more often I would seriously entertain membership in one of those airline frequent traveler lounges. When I was offered an American Express/Delta Skymiles card, I thought 'all right, I've made the big time as far as travelers go...'

Little did I know that AMEX card-holding would have nothing to do with being able to get Crown Room membership. Talk about sucking bilge. Since Suzanne travels much more than I do, it would make her life much more comfortable. However, even her travel schedule occurs in fits and starts; she can be on the road for six weeks in the autumn, four in the spring, or two months in November...all at the whim of her company. Hell, with the only place I've been permitted to travel in the past year being Norfolk, VA, I've decided staying home is much more convenient. Unless the trip is some place like Honolulu, HI. Hope those guys at PTC decide to do mid-January again.

As an athlete, it's hard to get comfortable in an airline seat, especially in coach. The Key West trip had the worst of all possible scenarios; not only were we shoehorned in the back of the plane, but I had bulkhead seating. I used to like being able to look out the window when I was younger and flying from point A to point B in Texas and New Mexico, but now what I really want is leg room. I'll even suffer the indignity of having to listen to special instructions from the flight attendant in order to have an exit row seat, if there's more room for me to stretch my legs.

This time, I set up the seating arrangements for Dayton.

Rather than sitting the two of us directly next to each other in the same row, on the same side of the plane, I made certain we both got aisle seats, especially for the trip south. She might not appreciate it so much on the trip north, but I think she will on the trip home.

What if airlines required a BMI measurement in order to determine seating? We could place all of the hefty (and invariably sweaty during summertime) passengers into their own special section. Better yet, they get the side of the plane with the two-seat rows, so they can wrestle with each other over who gets the armrest.

Beats telling them to go Greyhound.