At the start of the last two half marathons, July and August, Alaska and Ohio, my weight was somewhere between 210 and 215 pounds. I am 6.0 feet tall. At my highest weight, in college, while playing football, making a concerted effort to gain weight with muscle mass, I could never get my weight above 215 pounds. These days, some 26 years later, my weight distribution is significantly different, I no longer carry the muscle mass, but I do not seem to have any difficulty carrying the weight elsewhere. What ever happened to the saying, "muscle weighs more than fat?" I suppose the truth is that a pound of muscle weighs exactly the same as a pound of fat. Once again, please don't read me wrong here. I am not suggesting that I am fat. I do not have anorexia or unhealthy body image issues. I am not concerned about my weight from an esthetic perspective. I do not have, nor will I develop an eating disorder.
If you were to take a look at the elite athletes, (for the record, I am nowhere near an elite athlete and at this point I have resigned to myself that I never will be) they are all very thin. Because they are all different heights, average weight is a bit meaningless, but let me give you some data. Most running coaches utilize the Stillman height/weight ratio table that allocates 110 pounds for a 5.0ft male and then 5.5 lbs. for each additional inch. In this calculation, I should weigh 176 pounds. Moreover, it is suggested that distance runners need to weigh 5-10 percent less than this calculation, which would put me at 159-168 pounds. Another common calculation is that your weight should be 15 less than your height in cm. This would put me at 167 pounds. This all seems a bit ridiculous to me. I think that someone, one of my family members or one of my patients maybe would call hospice for me if I weighed 167 pounds. Although it is commonly understood that if you weigh less you can run faster.
Running, simply stated is a form of jumping. One cannot move forward without moving up. Each upward movement moves against gravity and the more weight that must move against gravity requires more energy. Imagine running with a 10 pound sandbag strapped to your waist. It would most certainly be more difficult.
Larger athletes are also less efficient at delivering oxygen throughout the body. Less weight means that each breath allows whatever amount of oxygen that you intake to be delivered more efficiently to the muscles and organs. Similarly, leaner athletes can dissipate heat better. Because they have a higher surface area to body weight ratio and less insulating fat tissue, the heat will be dissipated more efficiently and they will burn carbohydrates more efficiently.
"In professional distance running, being light is not an advantage, it’s a necessity. And it's a precarious truth that to be the fastest runner you can be is to be as light as possible without being too light. Finding that threshold can be tricky business."
One elite runner that I like to follow is Galen Rupp .
Galen is the American record holder for the 10,000 meters and placed third in the olympic marathon last summer. Galen is almost 6 feet tall and races at just over 130 pounds. Another runner, Chris Solinsky is the heaviest man in history to run under 27 minutes for the 10,000 meters.... the heaviest man in history.
He is 6 foot 1 and 160 pounds. -- My fastest 10,000 meters is 45 minutes... so, we are not even in the same league much less the same race. Here is a pic of the two runners together. Hardly a difference.
So, my point here is that it is clear that lighter equals faster to an extent. There is certainly a such a thing as too light and too light too fast. I also understand that my body type is a bit different than an elite runner. I will never get down to 167 pounds, and I do not want to be that lean, but I think it is fair to say that if I were to weigh less, then I could propel by weight farther faster.
OK, so that is the why. Now for the how. I learned about the book below from Dr. John Kois and Dr. Doug Thompson at The Kois Center where I train and teach. I mention that because, while I am not going to summarize the book for you, I want you to understand that this is not a fad diet, but a diet based on science. Doug and John are very science driven and The Kois Center is an Evidence Based Dental Teaching Center whose motto is Advancing Dentistry Through Science. This book is not about dentistry, but about wellness and longevity.
In the book there is a menu. It is designed to be a representative sample of the types of foods that one should eat for wellness and longevity, that is to be healthy short-term and long-term. There is research on foods that help prevent cancer and dementia, etc. The menu is a two week menu -- breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, dessert. There is also a discussion about fasting and intermittent fasting and what they call the fasting mimicking diet. This particular diet is a 5 day fasting mimicking diet from Prolon. https://prolonfmd.com/
I was somehow able to convince Valerie that we should do this. So, for two weeks we strictly followed the diet in the book. The plan was to then do the 5 day fast after those two weeks. Since I had a race coming up, we decided to do the fasting mimicking diet after one week of the wellness diet, then go back to the wellness diet for the second week. I wanted to switch it up like this because I did not want to go into a race right after a fast. BTW... it is not true fast. It is a fasting mimicking diet. There is roughly 1100 calories on day one and 800 calories on days 2-5.
Here is how it played out. For one week we followed the wellness diet strictly, then went directly to the Prolon diet, then back to week two of the wellness diet. THEN, we both had a nice binge. Valerie was craving red meat, specifically a hamburger, so we went to a local gourmet hamburger shop that we enjoy. We had planned this event. We were excited about it. It was a reward for all of our efforts and a "treat". We had bacon and eggs for breakfast, and I must have eaten about four of the kids muffins, then we went to church and went directly to the hamburger joint with our appetites and mouths watering. As we drove up, we noticed a relatively empty parking lot, which could be a good thing as maybe there would be few other customers and we could get our lunch faster. As it turned out, the restaurant was closed on Sunday. I respect that, but was supremely disappointed as I wanted my hamburger. As we looked around for an alternative binge spot, we noticed a Chili's nearby and sped over with renewed anticipation. I'll spare you the onslaught that ensued on the meat and carbs, but suffice it to say that there was not more than a few crumbs remaining after we completed our meal and we were sufficiently impressed that no one vomited. Of course we were stuffed like the Thanksgiving Day turkey that we would have devoured if it were Thanksgiving and it were a Thanksgiving Day Cow, but that was simply not enough glutenous activity for the day, so we went across the street to the fro yo joint and further overindulged with sweet treats.
After this event, and it was an event. We decided to go back on the wellness diet, but modify it a bit to allow for some days of left-overs to allow Valerie a break from the chopping and cooking and shopping, and to modify it to allow a couple of days off. One day we might eat some chicken or even a hamburger, gasp. We later had dinner with some friends and had a nice steak and potatoes and cheesecake... OMGoodness, it was AMAZING. One other time I had lunch with a friend at the Greek restaurant and had a lamb and chicken pita with fries. Otherwise, we stayed on the wellness diet.
Then came race week. Oh, ALSO, while on the wellness diet you are supposed to exercise. So, we did. We even walked every day for 30 minutes. (It is supposed to be 1 hour, but I could only force Valerie to do 30 minutes a day). While on the Prolon diet, because it is a reduced calorie diet, they suggest that you not exercise... so, we just did not run as far as fast. We still ran our mile a day, but it was more of a light jog. Nobody passed out, fell down or had any complications.
So, race week came. We were still on the wellness diet, but I added some carbs. I ate more of the carbs in those meals that contained complex carbs and even supplemented a piece of bread or a bagel or noodles or something. I started this 3 days prior to the race.
BTW. I weighed myself in there somewhere and I weighed 192 pounds. Not bad for 19 days and then a couple of binge days.
You may remember the title of this day's blog. Diet, Pickle Juice, Carb-Loading and Altitude. I just covered the diet part, now pickle juice. For a week or so... maybe 2, I was having some calf cramps. The cramps would happen in the evenings when I was not active. Maybe while I was sitting or maybe while I was sleeping. They would wake me up as my calf would flex, tightly and a jolt of pain would disrupt my slumber. Gradually it got more frequent and then began to happen while I was running. I did not so much cramp while running as I would feel a tightening as if the cramp was coming. I remembered a friend, Dr. Mark Benavides (an avid cyclist) telling me that pickle juice was the cure for cramps. So, one day I was out running and had this happen again. When I came in from my run, I chugged a jar of pickle juice and felt instant relief. Maybe it was placebo, maybe not, but either way it was quite effective. So, for the next couple of days I would drink some pickle juice. The cramping went away completely. Was it the pickle juice or was it going to go away anyway. I dunno, but it went away. The day before the race in Santa Fe New Mexico I went to the grocery to get my pre-race dinner and my race day breakfast. I bought pasta and tomato based pasta sauce for dinner and a 7-up cake for dessert. Carb loading.... mmmmmmm. For breakfast, I got a package of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and a local maple syrup. I also decided to pick up a jar of pickles to potentially help prevent cramping during the race. I drank some of the juice with my dinner and then had some after breakfast which was almost 3 hours prior to the race start.
I ate way more pasta than I really needed. It was weighing heavy on me that evening and I was relatively inactive, so it felt like it was just sitting in my stomach as I got up at 3:00am for my breakfast. I knew I needed to eat, so even though I was not hungry, I ate two large pancakes and some pickle juice, then of course I had to have some more of that yummy 7-up cake. I was stuffed, but still had time before my race to digest it all. Just to finish up on this thought before I move on to the Altitude portion, the good news is that I did not cramp up at all, but I was burping up pickle juice the entire race.
Obviously I went a little overboard with the carb-loading. Earlier on Saturday, when I drove to Santa Fe from the airport in Albuquerque, I stopped at IHop and had bacon and eggs and pancakes for breakfast, or maybe it was lunch since I had breakfast at the house before my flight... of course that was about 5:00am and I ate at IHop at 10:30 MST which was 1:30pm EST. So, I was hungry and my body was all confused.
The elevation in Santa Fe was 7000 ft. I went for my daily run Saturday afternoon, and struggled. It was tough to get some oxygen. I ran an 8:45 mile, but it was tough. So, I knew the race would be tough, but hoped that if I ate well and hydrated properly then I would be OK. What was worse about the Altitude was the first 2.5 miles were all uphill at the highest altitude. It travelled from 7000 ft to 7300 ft. then graduated downhill to a little over 6000 ft. over the next 10.6 miles. Uphill in altitude was a killer. I decided to start slow in the middle of the pack, which may have been a mistake. It was a small street at the starting line and no corrals. It was what I call a free-for-all start. Fast runners trying to get up front and slow runners starting tin the front. I hate crowds and I hate being pinched in, trapped, boxed-in. I tried to keep it slow at the start, but I could not stop from trying to pass the slower runners. I am certain I cut off several people. In fact, one person said, "excuse me, Sir". He sounded sincere, but I think he was being sarcastic as I totally cut him off. I yelled back, "SORRY!!" Then at about the 0.5 mile mark, I started to see a tunnel forming around me. I was getting dizzy and my vision was darkening. I was about to pass out. I cut off a few more people to make my way over to the side of the road, where I was forced to stop and walk before I awoke in the ambulance. I was able to regain my wits and started running again. About a mile later, it happened again. I stopped again. Both mile 1 and mile 2 were in the 10:20 - 10:30 range. After that, I was able to find a slower pace that I was able to maintain. It was around 8:45- 9:15. If I got in the 8:15-8:30 range I started getting dizzy again. So, I maintained a slower pace and was able to finish with an average pace of 9:17.
Somewhere in there I also lost 3 miles. There were no mile markers on the course, so I had to rely on my watch. It beeped and vibrated at each mile and I would check it to see what my pace was, as I always do. One time in there it beeped and I wen to see my pace and could not remember what mile I was on. Was this mile 6 or 7? Maybe it is 8. When I looked at my 9:09 pace displayed on my watch, I also noticed an 11 indicating this was mile 11. Where did the other 3 miles go???? I was pretty excited at this point. I only had two miles to go and I checked my time. I was at 1:43. I tried to do the math and see if I could finish under 2:00, but all I could focus on was the fact that I would normally be done by this time, and my breathing of course. I tried to speed up hoping I was close. Then I recognized that the last half a mile was uphill again.... and steeply uphill. What a cruel joke.
I finished 2:01:55. And it was a killer. Next blog I will write about the race.... in the next few days.
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