I have a good relationship with the local newspaper and specifically the sports wrote Glen ‘Quarters’ Quatermain, who luckily for me is also a marathon runner. Glen, like myself, has competed all eight previous City to Surf marathons so we have a common bond as we try and keep ourselves in this ever diminishing group. I have attached the article at the end of this post as well as a hyperlink.
I may have been a tad uncomplimentary to my swimming and cycling skills in the interview to drive home the point I was a more reasonable runner. I was certainly no Michael Phelps but would never finish dead last, maybe last 25% . Cycling I could probably manage a mid-table finish but running was always my forte.
I have made the Sunday Times on two previous occasions and unfortunately both times my life has remained unchanged. No book deals or Hollywood producers fighting over film rights, just the odd comment from work colleagues as we huddle around the coffee machine. I have mentioned to a few people about the impending article but it seems these days no one actually buys the paper. As Ross explained it to Zac, a young runner ‘in our circle of trust’ ‘a newspaper is like a static ipad displaying yesterdays news’. A tad harsh but for the latest generation of ‘I-users’ but probably about summed it up.
Either way I feel this article will not be my golden ticket out of the daily grind but stay tuned, funnier things have happened, and Hollywood may need a balding, skinny, bearded runner for the latest blockbuster.?
City to Surf Perth: Big Kev’s on a roll
Glen Quartermain, PerthNow
FOR a decorated marathon runner, Kevin Matthews makes a pretty average triathlete.
When the engineer emigrated to Australia from the UK in 2001 he decided to “embrace the Aussie lifestyle” and complete three half-ironmans.
“What is more Aussie than completing triathlons in Speedos, it ticked all the boxes in my view,” he said.
“I realised I swam little better than a brick, rode a bike just as bad but could hold my own running, albeit in budgie smugglers. So I turned my attention to marathons and initially ultra-marathons.”
Ironman’s loss has been the Chevron City to Surf for Activ’s gain with 50-year-old Matthews is one of only 20-something runners to have completed every one of the eight marathons held so far on the last Sunday in August.
He’s pretty good at it too. “Big Kev” is on a hot streak, running his past 25 marathons in under three hours. He also completed the cherished 89km Comrades ultra-marathon in South Africa three times from 2008-2010.
He will put his streak on the line on Sunday, August 27 in the Chevron City to Surf for Activ marathon.
“I pulled up lame a few days before the Bunbury Marathon in April this year,” he said. “I initially thought it was a calf knot and had it treated accordingly but it just got worse so I had an ultrasound scan and it turned out to be a 5cm calf tear.
“I set myself a goal of competing the Perth Marathon as I still had a good 10 weeks.
“But I broke down again a few weeks out and another scan revealed another new, smaller, calf tear.
“There is no fool like an old runner. I had probably pushed it too hard, too early but was desperate to run Perth as it would have been my 10th Perth Marathon in a row, and my 13th Perth in total.”
Matthews has since put together a five-week training block, averaging about 120km a week.
“Runners love numbers, be it fastest times, distance, pace or streaks,” he said. “I’m privileged to be part of an ever decreasing band of runners who have run them all.
“Missing Bunbury and Perth hurt but missing the City to Surf would have been devastating. To get the opportunity to be in the inaugural marathon of a big city these days is virtually unheard of, so to have that opportunity in your home town is a double bonus.
“I think the group is down to 30 now from the inaugural 1000 who started the first City to Surf Marathon in 2009.”
The Chevron City to Surf for Acitv will be marathon number 42 for Matthews.
His personal best of 2 hours 41 minutes and 14 seconds was set on the course in 2013 and he went within 30 seconds of beating that last year when he ran 2:41:41 for a fifth-place finish.
“This will be my first marathon since I turned 50 earlier in the year but I have no plans of slowing down or stopping in the near future,” he said.
Matthews will post his account of the marathon on his running blog before, after and probably during the race. Go to www.runbkrun.com .
Winter in Perth isn’t really that bad, truth be told. It is dark until 7am , give or take a few minutes depending on how deep into Winter you are, but temperature wise it very rarely gets into the single figures and if there is rain it is normally sporadic and avoidable. Today was a great example, it had been forecast as rain all day and torrential so I set the alarm for a 5am start determined to get one 10k in before the onslaught which was promised later in the morning. Now I’m a morning person when morning means sunshine and cooler temperatures, like in Summer. Winter is a different story as I have never really enjoyed running in the dark. I can stand the conditions because after 8 years in Aberdeen Perth has got nothing but darkness is not my friend. When I run it is to soak in the surroundings (when I actually look up , which truth be told is rare. Example this morning on Facebook there were several photos of a beautiful sunrise which I missed completely. ?) in the dark it is hard to soak up anything when you are watching your every step. (assuming there is little or no street lightning, which is normally the case in Perth due to the size of the metropolitan area, too large apparently to kit out with decent street lights?)
Summer mornings though are the complete opposite. Summer in Perth can be brutal with temperatures hot enough to cook eggs on concrete, and that’s a cooler day normally ! Mornings is the only rest bite from these temperatures that would probably make hell seem cold. Anything past 8am and you’re struggling to survive the temperatures, so most of the important runs need to be early morning. Early evenings can sometimes be acceptable but lunch time runs are for the suicidal runner and mad dogs of course. Morning runs in Summer are a thing of beauty and set you up for the day ahead. You bounce out of bed like tigger on steroids and explode into the outside surroundings. Winter, not so much, you struggle out of bed and then normally spend 5 minutes talking yourself up to put on your running costume before sheepishly opening the front door hoping for a monsoon to justify retreating back to the comfort of the warm bed, which you were mad to leave in the first place. When you eventually start it normally ends well and I reckon in the 8 years I’ve been logging my runs I’ve only had a handful that I actually regretted starting. This thought alone has propelled me into the dark on a number of occasions.
So what are the benefits of running on those Winter mornings ? The most important is the regimented approach you need for training, when you say you are going to run , you run. If you set your alarm then you need to follow through and go for that run. It’s a discipline thing and runners need discipline. The run itself need not be that important as running in the dark is hard to judge pace as you always feel you’re running faster than you actually are. (Which doesn’t help the situation !) The main benefit is setting you up for the rest of the day. After a dark morning run and a warm shower you feel so much better pre-work.
Sometimes though you need to pick your battles like this morning. With a forecast of possible storms I reset my alarm and decided I’d chance a lunch time run and the possibility of an after work recovery run if the planets aligned, by this I mean if I can complete my Dads taxi and dog walking chores before dinner and still find 50 minutes for a relaxing 10k. Confidence is low but after a good double-up day yesterday and the marathon less than three weeks away I’m actually happy with one soaking a day, two soakings a day would be greedy surely ?
With less than three weeks to the City to Surf Marathon now is the time when you can avoid to miss the odd run as you really should be tapering and concentrating on quality over quantity. Three weeks stills seems to be the norm when it comes to tapering but personally I have knocked a week off that and go down the road of a more aggressive (I.e. less running) two week taper. I found three weeks was just too long and I often felt I was losing fitness rather than rebuilding tired muscles. I’m use to running twice a day, every day and to suddenly stop running just makes me feel flat and also gives me more time to spend standing in front of the fridge, fidgeting !! Body and mind love routine and to change this can have the opposite effect to what you are looking to achieve. Well that’s my excuse anyway, as with all things running it is runner specific and I’m sure most runners benefit from a 3 week taper. It did give me the excuse I needed this morning to avoid the wind and rain and grab a few extra minutes in a warm comfortable bed performing one of a runners most important exercise, often over looked, sleeping ! (Though I was probably dreaming about running so maybe I should put down a few kilometres on Strava ? Interesting concept…..)
This weekend I have three weeks left pre-City to Surf marathon. Will that be enough time for me to grab the required cardio fitness needed to run the marathon in under 3 hours ? This time last week I would have confidently said ‘no problem’, I had just ran a 150k training week, including some quality paced runs, that had give me my ‘mojo’ back. Unfortunately I was a tad premature, as always, and my calf started to act up on the Monday after a long weekend of training. Luckily Monday coincided with an awful day of storms, wind and rain in Perth ( a rarity luckily) , so a day off was a blessing. Not being one to ‘sit on my hands’ I booked myself into my nearest physio and had some dry needling on the offending calf Wednesday afternoon with another session on Friday. My physio confirmed that it wasn’t a tear as such just the calf responding to the last 4-5 weeks of ‘proper’ training after such a long time recovering. I suspected as much as I had run over 100k for the last 3 weeks in a row and if the calf was going to tear again I felt it would have weeks ago. Of course I have no medical qualifications but a runner knows?
So today after dry needling the calf my physio offered me some Rock Tape (He had been given a free sample so was happy to share.) I had obviously seen Rock Tape many times over the last few years but wasn’t convinced of its effectiveness and always felt it looked a bit silly (not that I’m one to ever worry about looking silly of course .) Well not being one to turn down a freebie I allowed the physio to put some Rock Tape on my calf after first consulting the video from the Rock Tape website ( https://rocktape.com.au/products/#videos. ) Well, for a change, I seemed to underestimated this product. I ran the lunchtime after the physio appointment for 11k at a reasonable pace , albeit mainly on grass, and felt great. So good in fact I doubled up this evening for another 13k and only stopped due to hunger pains and dog walking duties. The Rock Tape has so far survived two showers and will go to bed tonight still stuck to my calf, doing whatever it does ? So how does Rock Tape work ? From the Rock Tape website :-
I’ll certainly be purchasing some in the near future and I feel this will become my friend as I continue in my battle for full fitness. Of course all this good work may be undone when I attempt to take off the Rock Tape currently clamped to my calf. I assume it will just peel off gently and leave all my hairs untouched or maybe not ? I feel trouble ahead, served up with a good helping of ‘pain’. There doesn’t seem mention of the removal process on the website funnily enough but looking at sone of the athletes featured they look more like mummy’s than athletes and if the Rock Tape caused any issues when removing they would probably need an anaesthetist to help them. I’ll let you know how I get on but assuming all is good this product definitely gets the thumbs up from me. Now do you think I could get away with bright pink ?
Real men wear pink?
After writing the post last night I ran a 12k progressive this afternoon with the Rock Tape still on my calf and felt great, not a murmur from my troublesome right calf and I gave it a good workout (see my Strava details below. Remember if it isn’t on Strava it didn’t happen, you do have a Strava account don’t you..? http://www.strava.com feel free to follow me, Big Kev, Perth, WA should be enough to find me in the search option.) Admittedly the calf would have benefited from my two visits to the physio and dry needling but the Rock Tape seems to have totally cured my ‘tired calf‘ niggle that has been troubling me all week. As with all things injury based time will tell but this afternoons run has given me the confidence to lock in that sub 3hr City to Surf Marathon time again, after I’d almost given up earlier in the week. Maybe that was the Rock Tape brings to the party, a placebo effect that convinces your brain the injury is cured and/or does enough to concentrate the brain on doing what needs to be done to overcome the injury i.e. making small adjustments to reduce the load on the affected area. My physio seems to think this is how Rock Tape works, by concentrating the mind on the injury and there by curing it by adjusting what needs to be adjusted. This seems to ring true with the Rock Tape company who claim a Neurological effect – altering the perception of pain and improving body awareness. However it works for me it certainly seems to have helped and I couldn’t be happier. Of course with all things running this could change in an instant, right back to my original question, could I get away with pink Rock Tape ?
Strava is life, the rest is details.It seems to know no bounds?
With the Chevron City to Surf Marathon now less than 4 weeks away it is time to start to dial in a predicted finish time. Normally I’m pretty accurate with my predictions as with the experience of 59 marathon (or longer) finishes I know the distance well enough. Of course its not to say each one doesn’t hurt and I’d be kidding you if I said they got easier the more you do but with experience does come wisdom.
This marathon though is different, I am coming off the biggest break in the last 7 years and, truth be told, am not 100% sure how this will affect my finishing time, albeit how much slower than the last time I ran this course last year where I ran a 2:41:41 for 5th place. There is no way I am in that form after such a long lay-off but I certainly feel the old cardio fitness returning. I have Mark L. looking at sub3 (his first of many I predict, if he can stay away from triathlons!) , Mark C. looking good for a sub 2:55 (minimum) and Jon, the wild card , probably closer to 2:50. Who do I choose to run with as when you make your decision it will be near impossible to change as you won’t know until around the 32k mark (when you come out of Kings Park) if you have made the right decision. Leave Kings park ‘full of beans’ and you probably went out too slow, ‘stagger‘ out of Kings Park and you went out too fast, logical really.
So how can you decide on a goal marathon pace without experience to guide you. There are several websites that offer good predictor times using race distance from 5k up to the near race distance. Anything under 5k and you’d be hard to predict a marathon time and even 5k is probably a tad short IMHO. (Note, Mike K. use to predict his marathon time on metres rather then kilometres but he is a special case, in every sense of the work. )
The best, in my opinion, is the McMillan Running website ( https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/ ) In the example below I typed in my last 10k time of 35:12 (ground zero for my calf tear , in April) and put in a predicted 2:39:59 marathon finish. The resulting table shows my current numbers in the left column, as predicted by my last 10k time , the numbers I’d need to run in the right column to hit my sub 2:40 goal. As you can see they don’t marry up showing running a 35:12 is not going to be enough, probably, to hit a sub 2:40 marathon time. This is a fair call.
Sometimes the truth hurts but dialing in your marathon pace correctly is so important , it’s better to find out now than 21k into the marathon when you have nothing left !
Looking at the times needed to run a 2:39:59 I have the 1/2 marathon time covered (my PB is 1:15) but not the 10 Miles (57mins. required, my PB is just over 58mins.) , the 10k (34:06 while my best is 34:18) or 5k ( 16:25 while I have ran 16:40). Admittedly I’m close but all these near misses probably add up. (the 50km time of 3:14 is way quicker than I’ve ran a 50k , currently!) So it looks like the McMillan calculator has got my number, literally, and in my current form (or even when I was running well at the end of last year) I was always doomed to fail.
Of course what the calculator does miss is the ‘run of your life’ type races. When these happen all tables are thrown out the window and you get to rewrite the record books. This happened last year at the Fremantle half when I was in the middle of a hard training block for the World Masters which involved a massive increase in weekly distance and many races. I remember sitting in the car before the start of the race hoping I wouldn’t embarrass myself after racing a 10k the previous week and a massive weekly training total. The conditions weren’t that good either with a strong wind. I even turned up late to the start and made it by about 2 seconds, everything was going wrong. When the race started I decided I’d run with the leaders until I couldn’t hang on and then gradually work my way back to the pack and chalk up the race as a nice training run with a medal at the end. The first 10k was painful but I hung on and even managed to get to halfway with the lead group. It got better within the next 5k when my friend Ross decided he had enough and it left myself and two others in the leading group. Now both these two runners were better runners than me but both seemed to be off their game, to such an extent that at 18k I found myself leading and actually feeling comfortable (well as comfortable as you can be 18k into a 21k race.) Anyhow a kilometer later both the other runners in the group suddenly realised they were in a race and I was dropped back to third place, which would be where I would finish. (Truth be told I was distracted at the time practicing my winners speech in my head.) The placing wasn’t important though as I managed to run 1:15 dead. A massive PB when, less than 90 minutes earlier, I had to making all sort of excuses to justify the bad run I was about to have.
There really was no rhyme or reason why I ran a PB on that day and I still don’t really understand what happened but when a ‘run of your life’ happens just go with it, don’t hold back or ask questions just enjoy the moment and cherish the time you are in ‘the zone’ . These runs are few and far between , otherwise they’d become the norm, and how or why they happen is a mystery. I was tired, over trained and mentally ready for failure before the start of the race but something magical occurred and I managed to run a time I doubt I will ever threaten. My only regret on the day is a rookie error of checking my watch as I crossed the line rather than smiling like a Cheshire cat at what will probably be my fastest ever half finish, luckily of course I have photoshop trickery, so this can be ‘amended’ to show my true emotion at a later date. (I may even adjust the time, what is the current half world record I wonder ?)
Lesson learnt, when you have a ‘run of your life’ look happy at the finish and don’t check your watch !
I was reading through comments to some of my posts this morning and came across one from my running buddy Jon who has transformed himself over the last few weeks into a fat burning machine taking on board the Banting diet. ( https://realmealrevolution.com/the-facts ) It really is worth a read as the results are amazing.
My lightbulb moment commenced as I was, for the 2nd time (unrelated) on same day called Mr.Squishy! First one being as my son gave me a cuddle goodbye in the morning (cheeky git), and the 2nd one being by yours truly out on a lunch time run asI found myself dropped at the back of the pack (on an ‘easy’ run!)… what happened to me pushing the pace at the front, seems longer and longer ago in fact I think my age began with a 2 back then !! (approaching 36 now) Enough was enough, time to do something.
It was then I started an unsustainable ‘calorie restricted diet’, this is truly short term focus as never works long term, however a few weeks in I remembered an Ironman mate Toyney had mentioned several years ago about Banting (LCHF), I laughed it off at the time thinking along lines above loving my carbs too much !
Anyway, I looked at some of Toyney’s material he had given me at the time, and what I read seemed like perhaps this is what I had been waiting for all along ! Forget ‘calorie restricting’, instead eat and eat how much you like, caveat being based around a Traffic Light system (good enough for kids at school, yet as adults we have instilled good eating habits and moderation being the key?); Green eat as much/Orange in moderation/Red to avoid: http://www.bantingfood.com.au/banting-food-list.html Note: This list has actually been modernly adapted to now green/light orange/dark orange/light red/dark red ! (I’d recommend reading ‘The Real Meal Revolution 2.0 by Jonno Proudfoot’, about $30)
Bingo. Weight came off, week by week, in fact around 10% in 10 weeks. About 15/16 weeks in now, and weight has plateaued (anyone looking at me would say nothing left to lose !) – food seems and feels ‘sustainable’. To me, it doesn’t feel like a ‘diet’. Truly a clean way of eating. Who doesn’t love eating fresh food every day, it doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact its equal if not cheaper than the way I ate previously (but wasn’t about the cost). First weeks hardest adapting over to carb depletion, but since then training as usual.
Where to from here, well i haven’t missed my carbs (mostly); training and volume consistent. Still have plenty of energy for double days/long runs etc. I have several new gears in my training regime not seen for many years. I have new motivation to achieve some real PB’s so watch this space. I am testing out a shortened carb load in the marathon for that ‘intense’ effort, but otherwise carbs are gone (for now).
Jon has always been a good runner with a pb of sub 2hrs50mins and many sub3 marathons but he has struggled over the last few years to regain that high standard but lately the ‘old Jon’ is back and then some. What brought it home to me was his morning run yesterday. A 32k commute to work where he progressively got quicker and ended up running sub 2hrs50min marathon pace. He then backed up the morning run with another quicker 10k at lunchtime. That’s a marathon distance at, or close to, his marathon pace.
32k morning run to work at Marathon pace.
What really impressed me wasn’t the distance, though that is still pretty good re-work on a Winters morning, but the way he finished. If you look at his last 10k they were as quick or quicker than the middle section of his run. He was accelerating into the ‘death zone’ (that distance from 32k onwards where the body tends to start to malfunction, the wall as us marathon runners call it!) This is what really stood out, it wasn’t your normal long run where most of the time it is just watching the watch and hitting the ‘time target’, this was a proper test. To then get back out a few hours later and throw down another fast 10k brings home how Jon has transformed his cardio fitness and fat burning.
If you wanted proof the Banting diet works look no further than Jon, bye-bye Mr. Squishy, you will be missed.
The old Jon would eat anything, including medals !! Not sure that is a High Fat , Low Carb. option ?
This week sees the release of a shoe that is designed to give you a 4% performance boost . To put that in context for my goal marathon time of 2hours 40 minutes, if I purchased the Nike VapourFlys, I would run over 6 minutes quicker. Surprisingly they are sold out instantly and I don’t expect to be able to get my hands on these bad boys for a few months minimum. I mean c’mon, Nike have designed the holy grail of running shoes, 4% performance boost for no extra effort, you would be mad NOT to buy these running weapons of mass destruction.
Some people may bulk at the price of $350 AUD but I just spent over $3000 on an Elliptigo so I wouldn’t lose too much fitness while injured. (Money well spent by the way, I love my Elliptigo) $350 for 6 minutes off my marathon time, a small price to pay, hell I’d paid 10 times that !
These shoes could put EPO suppliers out of production, why waste money and risk being DQ’d if now, legally, you can find 6 minutes, more if you are slower ! Of course there are rumours they are not IAAF accredited yet but I’m sure your local marathon club will turn a blind eye as long as you don’t show off and break a world record. They even look cool and will probably add a few inches to my height as well. My vertically challenged running buddies Jon and Bart’s will wet themselves when they realise they can be 6foot tall , run faster, look cool and all for $350, is there is a God he just delivered to runners , big time !
So to the title of this post. Are these shoes just cheating wrapped up in a pretty package with a nice swoosh logo on the side. Personally I don’t think so, as long as they are ratified by the athletic governing body. If they aren’t and I am allowed to wear them to my local races, which I think will happen, can I still take the moral high ground? . Hell yes, Triathletes have been doing this for years. I remember when I first did my half iron man in 2001 I completed the whole course in speedos (budgie smugglers as they are known in Oz. ) and my bike was less than $1000. No fancy triathlon bike with aerodynamic everything, silly helmets taking from the Death Star scenes in Star Wars (I mean seriously?) , Zipp wheels costing the same as a small house on the Florida Keys and coaches reinventing the ‘wheel’ so to speak making something that really is quite easy so difficult. (Again is it me or has every triathlete got a coach? Maybe they get confused with all the different events?) So for us runners we finally get the chance to get something for nothing , well not really nothing but in the scale of things $350 for 6 minutes in a marathon is ‘nothing‘.
Shoes are so often overlooked when it comes to getting better times. So many people train in their Asics Kayano’s , a shoe that weights about half the weight of the owner and is built for the mass market who know no better. (Oops , there goes my Asics sponsorship) I have nothing against Kayano’s and have more than 10 pairs in my garage from a by-gone age where I believed the hype that you must change your shoes every 400k and you need as much support as an alcoholic on his first visit to AA with a bottle of Gin in his coat pocket. I, personally, now use shoes with less heal drop and run them to the ground, literally, believing that a show moulds itself to your running style and is good for nearly four figures of distance if looked after. (This is my personal opinion and every runner is different so make your own call.) This is more of the barefoot running school of thought. ( http://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/ )
You need your training shoe and your racing shoe, there is a reason there is a marked difference and the reason is weight. Your racing show is lighter and, according to physics, will make moving forward easier due to less weight attached to the end of your legs. For me I race in racing flats choosing the Nike LunaRacer (now that was a great shoe!) or the Adidas takumi sen 3 . These shoes are expensive and don’t last as long as everyday trainers but they are a must have when you are chasing PB’s. I reckon these shoes are good for 2-3 minutes over a marathon compared to heavier alternatives. Of course the market for every race shoe is now completely destroyed and if I had shares in any shoe company advertising racing flats I would sell very quickly, they are now dinosaurs.
On the bright side I hear Adidas is throwing its hat in the ring and organising its own sub2hour attempt and I’m sure they won’t be wearing the Nike VapourFly 4%, I’m hoping it will be the Adidas <insert silly name> 5% (or more) which will mean I will be able to go even faster. If this keeps up in the near future I will finish before I start and that will be a sad day because the need for training will be obsolete, all us ‘runners‘ will need to do is put on the latest Nike <insert silly name> and be teleported to the finish in the wink of an eye. Maybe, as with most things, the future is not as bright as I first thought. I miss the world before the internet, mobile phones, TV’s the size of a wall and social media but will I miss the world without the Nike VapourFly 4%, I’ll let you know once I get my grubby paws on a pair!!!!
High Fat, Low Carb diet, is this the running revolution we need to have ?
Lately I have been looking at new diets and training regimes while all the time ignoring my Stella 2016 season where I ran so many PB’s and achieved times I thought beyond me. Since my injury I have been mulling over all different types of training programs aimed at the older runner because I assumed what I was doing was wrong. Was my calf injury caused by over training or just old age catching up with me? Either way I needed to change the way I trained as old age wasn’t going away anytime soon and over training was a definite possibility.
Initially I turned to Joe Friel and read ‘Fast after Fifty”. ( http://joefriel.typepad.com/blog/ ) as the title resonated with me after turning 50 myself in February this year. His points was then mimicked by the book I’m currently reading written by Mark Sisson, ( http://www.marksdailyapple.com/blog/ ) another triathlete over 50 who has changed his diet and training due to the onset of father time. His book Primal Endurance is a virtual carbon copy of what Joe is preaching. Add in Phil Maffetone ( https://philmaffetone.com/ ) and it seems everything I’m doing, and have been doing, is wrong. All three of these authors are advocating the same high fat, low carb diet (HFLC) and also a cross-fit type exercise regime which , apparently, is better suited to the older athlete. Even Tim Noakes has changed his tune and moved to the HFLC diet. He is determined to take on type 2 Diabetes which he puts down to the carb rich diet we have been recommend and encouraged to eat , and have been for the last 50 years. ( https://www.thenoakesfoundation.org/ ) . Noakes feels so strongly he had been taken to court , where we won, and also set up his foundation. This from the running god and author of the running bible “The Lore of Running”. All four of these guys cannot be wrong surely. Years and years of experience at the highest level combined with the best authorities on the subject all coming to the same conclusion.
I get what the guys are saying but in the back of my mind is always my 2016 session where I basically started to run twice a day , every day, albeit normally at a lot slower pace. I also raced nearly every other weekend so regularly put myself in the anaerobic zone. My diet was the stereotypical runners diet, very carb focused with smatterings of pancakes and muffins. This worked and produced great results at 49, better than I had ever achieved. So what I was doing was all wrong according to the HFLC diet advocates but it worked. In my corner is most of the running world but the same could be said of all the “the earth is flat” believers from the Middle Ages. sometime the Status Quo is wrong. Is this the case with the HFLC diet ?
Taking this one step further will we look back in 10-20 years and ask how we could possibly eat junk food as part of the average persons daily food intake ? Will McDonalds be akin to smoking in the seventies, once embraced and then when the truth came to light vilified ? Are a runners best friend , carbohydrates, the scourge of the performance enhancement and holding us back by providing poor fuel and adding weight to our running frames for no return. It gets worse of course with the next inline in the HFLC most wanted radar, sugar. Of course sugar offers little or no nutritional benefit but boy it can taste good, especially when disguised as a Yelo muffin or Clancy’s pancake. This is of course the ‘fly in the ointment’, the ‘elephant in the room’, giving up carbs and sugar is not just against everything we have been taught over the years , it goes against our taste buds. Who really can honestly say they don’t like a good donut or three ? Dark Chocolate Digestives, brownies, ice cream , the list is a long one and all are justified with the old adage ‘I’ve just ran xxx, I’ve earned this‘.
This will be the last post on nutrition for a while because truth be told I haven’t really answered the question of what diet to follow. I have said this before many times, ‘just eat good food’, be it carbohydrates or a diet rich in fat and no sugar. What works for you works for you. I feel the most important part is you need to be happy with what you are doing and achieving the goals and targets you set yourself. If you’re ticking all the boxes what does it matter if you enjoy the odd ‘treat‘ , you only live once (I’m assuming?) so you need to be happy. The only caveat of course is you also need to be healthy so don’t take this post as an excuse to drive to your nearest deli and order 24 donuts. Short term you may be happy ( after you recover from the sugar high headache!) but long term your health may suffer. With all the good will in the world people you still need a balanced diet if you want to be a successful and happy runner, and this is always the end goal.
The comeback from injury is a slow process where you need to nurse the injury while also being mindful of an impending marathon in less than 7 weeks. Of course some people would question entering a marathon while recovering from a calf tear but I ain’t ‘some people’ and the City to Surf is important to me as I have ran every one since the inaugural running in 2009. I have mentioned before that being at the start of a major marathon is the holy grail of marathon runners, a once in a lifetime experience and one not to be taken lightly. Currently for the Perth City to Surf there are 26 runners who have ran all previous 8 iterations and each year we all wonder how many will fail to turn up or finish. I’m assuming all 26 now know they are part of a select group and will do everything in their powers to stay within the fold. There’s no rejoining this group, once you’re out you are out for good. For the City to Surf there is a list of 40 finishers who have finished any 7 of the 8 marathons, but really 7 out of 8, c’mon , if you ain’t one of the 26 who have ran all 8 you might as well not have ran any, sorry but that is just the way it is.
City to Surf finishes 2016
This is why I entered the City to Surf the moment I could run (hobble) 4k and after a second scan only showed a small calf tear. This was all the incentive I needed to sign up. Luckily I have had a good recovery so far and managed to rack up some reasonable weekly totals while nursing the calf.
Injury recovery has started in earnest.
Of course these weekly figures pale into insignificance to previous totals pre-calf tear. I have attached an extract from Strava for January this year which highlights some serious running totals and all this in a Perth summer. (Note: if it isn’t on www.strava.com if never happened !) The pierce de resistance in the extract below is my one and only ever 200k week. No real point for the total but with runners it’s all about numbers, be it weekly totals, pace, racing time etc. etc. so to make 200k in a week was a rite of passage I suppose. Certainly got some kudos in Strava, the facebook of running, another important reason for the 200k total. This is a similar story to the City to Surf list of runners who have run all 8 City to Surf marathons, run 7 and it means nothing. Running 199k in a week is impressive but 200k is a whole different ballpark. Is 200k a week sustainable ? Not for me. The pressures of juggling family, work and running is thwart with danger . I read somewhere you can do two things well but not three. I’ll leave you to work out which one suffers normally. (A clue here, it aint’ running or the family (well not too much) ) Even for a professional running 200k a week will normally end up with parts of your body breaking or even tearing ( like maybe a 5cm right calf tear?)
Good times, January 2017.
Is injury inevitable with large mileage? Tough one to answer, there are so many variables when it comes to injury. Some people may have the weirdest running styles and a junk food based diet but seem to run forever without injury, while others take care of themselves and tick all the boxes when it comes to recovery, hydration and nutrition but spend half their time on a physio’s bed. Personally looking back at my calf tear there were many reasons for the eventual injury and I reckon I had many opportunities to avoid injury, all were ignored.
Have I learned my lesson moving forward? I think so, bar running a marathon 8 weeks after the second calf tear is diagnosed? I have been running on grass as much as possible and keeping my heart rate under 135bpm average, this has restricted me to less than 5min/k average pace which obviously reduces the load on the calf. The next big challenge of course is to not only finish the City to Surf marathon but to finish it quicker than 3 hours to maintain my 25 in a row sub3 finish streak. Maintaining streaks is as big as entering inaugural marathons, a runners ‘precious‘ that must be nurtured , loved and never relinquished. This will be a challenge as I just mentioned I am nurturing my injury which means nothing faster than 5min/k pace. I need to eventually be able to run 42 km at an average pace of less than 4min15secs. / k in 6 weeks. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
For the moment it feels great just to be running again, albeit slowly and on grass but with the help of the Elliptigo ( http://www.elliptigo.com) for some good ‘second sessions’ commuting to work and general cardio recovery I hope to be able to cross the City to Surf Finish line for marathon finish number 9 with a time starting with a two. Greedy perhaps to put a time on a marathon I’ll be lucky to get to the start line, probably, but another thing us runners do so well is optimism and I have it in spades.
After the obligatory long run on Sunday me and the posse sat down at Clancy’s Café in sunny City Beach to mull over the weekly events. Due to a suicidal café manager they have stopped serving the best pancakes in Perth and instead offer waffles. This has not gone down well with the boys but needless to say we all ordered the waffles anyhow, after a slight protest which was of course ignored. ( In Perth the customer is always wrong apparently. ?) As we all wolfed down our coffee’s imagine our surprise when the waiter came over with a quiche for the table. There was much laughter among the lads at the thought of one of the boys eating quiche but then Jon put up his hand and took the offending article from the waiters grasp. After a period of stunned silence the banter began in earnest. It started with the obvious comments about Quiche being invented by women so they could enjoy bacon and eggs and not feel guilty, where as there is nothing a man enjoys more than a bacon and egg sandwich smeared all over this face. We then moved into the old Wife’s tales about Quiche affecting a mans sexuality. True to his ‘Banting diet’ regime Jon even ate the quiche but left the pastry, as I tucked into my waffle I wondered if Jon was enjoying his quiche as much as I was certainly enjoying my waffles, with extra maple syrup.
After my post earlier in the week regarding diet, and Jon ordering quiche, the conversation again turned to weight, diet and running performance. The table agreed as a whole that the most important thing is to get to your racing weight and how you get there isn’t important as such. If Jon wanted to eat quiche and test his masculinity then that was his choice. The rest of us ‘real men’ chowed down on our waffles confident our sexuality was not being compromised. Of course the quiche was probably helping Jon’s cause where as you would be hard justified to argue the case for waffles (with extra maple syrup) and weight loss to be perfect partners. I made a conscience effort to put in an extra hour on the Elliptigo in the afternoon to counter the waffles , a small price to pay me thinks.
I have attached the 10 golden rules of Banting below but, of course, have issues with a few of these. The first four are , at a push, do-able but the problem starts at number 5. Imagine skipping a meal, it just seems to alien to me (and all runners really. ). As runners we are normally always hungry as we exercise , the old adage calories out, calories in. The more calories we lose the more we need to refill, common sense surely ? Thus skipping meals is something that never happens. Breakfast, lunch and dinner is a bare minimum. This lead me to number 6, to quote John McEnroe ‘You cannot be serious!’….No snacking ! Runners love to snack as we’re always hungry and truth be told we enjoy snacking.
Unfortunately things now take a big turn for the worst as we look at rule number 7. No sugar, which means no sugar I assume, I had to reread it a few times to make sure I wasn’t missing something? Oh dear, Mr. Banting just lost about 90% of the population with this ‘bad boy’ rule. No sugar means no waffles, muffins, pancakes, do I need to go on ? This for me is a show stopper but we’ll continue on, rule 8 is another hard one to stomach (excuse the pun) as they’re taking out bread, pancakes, waffles again. (Banting really wasn’t a pancake fan was he?) Rule 9 is another tough one because there goes banana’s, our staple go to food after most runs. Banting does redeem himself with rule 10 as eggs are a runners friends but in the Banting diet they become your number one food source. This must have serious consequences for the people around you on a daily basis as eggs can certainly cause some unpleasant smells to be offered to the world, if you know what I mean. (I’m sure Quiche does not have this unpleasant side affect and any aroma would smell of ‘elderberry’s’ ?)
So that about sums it up for me. It ain’t going to happen. I’ll get to my racing weight with extra hard work and it’s a price I’m willing to pay. So as Jon sits at home eating his quiche reading ‘Good Housekeeping Monthly’ I’ll be out on the pavement putting in the extra hard yards needed to justify the pancakes, waffles and ‘all things nice’ I’m about to devour and I wouldn’t have it any other way……
10 golden rules of Banting
1. Remember: this is not a high protein diet. It’s a high fat, medium protein, low carb way of eating
2. Choose real foods that look like what they are, and cook them from scratch
3. Fat is not the enemy. Enjoy it!
4. Eat only when you are hungry; eat until you are satisfied – then stop
5. Don’t eat when you’re not hungry. You won’t die if you occasionally skip a meal you don’t feel like eating.
6. Stop snacking. You won’t need to – it’s just a habit.
9. No (or very, very little) fruit. Think of it as a sweet rather than a health snack.
10. Embrace eggs. They’re healthy, satisfying and very good for you.
So to sum up this post there are diets out there for all people but to me a diet should be defined as a ‘temporary’ change of eating habits that is long term unsustainable. I see it so many times at work where people go on the ‘liteneasy’ diet where the food is delivered to them daily and costs a kings ransom. They do lose weight but look miserable every time lunchtime comes around as I tuck into my smorgasbord of meat, rice and pudding (runners love pudding!) while they are faced with something that looks like it was prepared for a small child who has an allergy for anything that tasted good and loves tuna. Eventually they come off the diet and the weight returns like an old friend as they sneak to the comfort foods that made them smile and they enjoyed eating. This of course is the fundamental flaw in diets, you are changing peoples eating habits by giving them food they don’t really enjoy eating or quantities that are not satisfying. What a diet should do is couple the diet changes with a change in attitude towards nutrition. Once you enjoy eating the food offered it is no longer a diet but a lifestyle change, which is sustainable.
It looks like Jon has embraced quiche and thus he is enjoying the Banting diet and does not see it now as a constraining factor in his daily diet choice. Thus he is at or near his racing weight and running the best I have seen him run in many years. This is a double positive, a new diet that he is enjoying and a performance spike. Of course this is the sacrifice Jon is prepared to make but now he is at his racing weight he can control his urges and maybe treat himself to a ‘macho‘ waffle and maple syrup in the near future. Maybe next week there’ll be more than one quiche making its way our table, we’ll see.
The one reason why a HFLC diet will never work for me.
What William Banting did in the late 1800’s was basically describe a High Fat , Low Carb (HFLC) diet. My friend Jon had taken on this diet and lost a considerable amount of weight and also improved his running, breaking sub3 for the first time in years in the recent Bunbury marathon. Truth be told I think a large portion of Jon’s weight loss was his ability to walk past the fridge in the evenings rather than scavenge like a starving hyena , which is the normal runners actions late in the evening, searching for one final sugar hit. The only fly in the ointment is the guru of all things running and he who must be obeyed, Matt Fitzgerald, is not a HFLC fan. I have attached an article written by Erin Beresini quoting Fitzgerald and his views.
I think the best thing is to research the subject yourself and decide whether a HFLC diet is for you. To really gain the full benefit of this diet you’d also need to train aerobically (a posh word for slow!) for a few months to teach your body to burn fat. I personally reckon you’d have no choice but to train aerobically while starting this diet as you’d be without a runners best friend, Mr. Carbohydrates and his side kick sugar.
I’m curious myself to try out the HFLC diet but it would mean me forgoing my Yelo muffin ( http://www.yelocornerstore.com.au/ ) and coffee and personally I’m not ready to give these up, even if I can improve my performance and even general health. We’re on this planet only once and we give up so much for our running I refuse to lose one of the few pleasure in my life. Myself I’m a believer in putting in massive weekly distance , without worrying too much about pace, eating as healthy as possible with the odd ‘treat’ and enjoying my running without a regimented training programs that must be adhered to. I run because I love running and I eat because I also love eating, restricting myself with a ‘diet’ (because that it basically what you are doing) does not sit well with me. It’s hard enough finding enough time in the day to run while juggling family, work, puppies, Elliptigo time sleep and other ‘stuff’; adding in food as well just becomes too hard. !
Do I believe a HFLC diet will work and do what it says, yep I do; will I change, no. Sorry people but this runner is sticking with the Status Quo and to quote my Dietitian professional running friend David Bryant when I questioned him on this subject he responded ‘Just eat good food’. ( I took ‘good food’ to mean pancakes, muffins (from Yelo) etc..?)
Currently in my running group there is a split on the HFLC diet. Jon has embraced the diet and shut the fridge door while Mark C. has gone down the Matt Fitzgerald path and gorged on carbohydrates and sugar. Both are currently enjoying success with their chosen paths but I suspect Mark C. is enjoying himself a lot more. We’ll see this Sunday when Mark will chow down on waffles while Jon will lose himself in his scramble eggs, I know which one I’ll be ordering.
So digest (excuse the pun) the two articles below and then scurry off and research away, as with all things in the 21st Century it’s all on Google…..
William Banting was a British undertaker who was very obese and desperately wanted to lose weight. In the year 1862 he paid a visit to his doctor, William Harvey, who proposed a radical eating plan that was high in fat but included very few carbohydrates. By following this eating plan Banting experienced such remarkable weight loss that he wrote an open letter to the public, the “Letter on Corpulence”, which became widely distributed. As more people started following this eating plan to lose weight, the term “banting” or to “bant” became popularized.
Banting merely discovered what human beings were designed to eat: what early humans ate 200,000 years ago. Respected biologists, geneticists, paleoanthropologists and theorists believe that human genes have hardly changed since human beings began their journey on earth. If you could put the entire human history into one day, we have only been eating cereals and grains for five minutes and sugar for five seconds, a very short amount of time in our existence. After the success experienced by William Banting on this low-carb, high-fat eating plan, the “banting” diet became the standard treatment for weight loss in all major European and North American medical schools. But in 1959 it was excluded from all the major medical and nutritional textbooks.
In 1977 the US government published the Dietary Goals for the United States, a set of guidelines that advocated a diet high in carbs and low in fat, exactly the opposite of the diet we have been following for much of our existence. It was decreed that we should eat six to eleven portions of grains per day and that sugar was absolutely fine to add to everything. This diet was subsequently adopted across most of the Western world and a plethora of low fat-food products hit the shelves. This has had a disastrous effect on our health. Since the early 1980’s the incidence of obesity and diabetes has risen rapidly. Can we really call this a coincidence?
There is a common misconception that eating fat, especially saturated fat, is bad for you and that it is a primary cause of high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity. This is simply not true and was based on a flawed study by Ancel Keys in 1953. The truth is that a diet high in carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates and sugar are the cause of obesity, diabetes as well as other chronic illnesses. Vegetable (seed) oils and their derivatives such as margarine are also a contributing factor to heart disease, although manufacturers tell us the exact opposite.
This might come as a surprise, but of the three macronutrients in our diet (protein, fat and carbohydrates), only carbohydrates are non-essential for human life. We cannot function properly for more than a few days without eating fat; without an adequate protein intake we develop protein-calorie malnutrition within a few months. But avoiding carbohydrate has no short- or long-term effects on humans, other than the (usually beneficial) effect of weight loss, especially in those who are the most overweight. While we need a constant supply of glucose, it can be produced by the liver from fat and protein and doesn’t need to be ingested as carbohydrate in our diets.
The usual refrain of anyone looking at banting for the first time is “but what about my cholesterol?” There is much evidence to support the fact that cholesterol is not the culprit in heart disease. A bit like a policeman being at the scene of the crime being blamed for the crime – cholesterol will only adhere to a ‘leaking’ artery wall which is damaged by inflammation – to protect you. By living on carbs and sugar those arteries remain inflamed. Sugar is the most inflammatory thing you can put into your mouth, and will continue to rob you of perfect health. Grains are turned into sugar by the body. So a high carbohydrate diet will always foster inflammation in the body, not only in the arteries but the brain, liver, digestive tract and joints leading to many of the chronic diseases we see today which are supposedly ‘incurable’. Many people report relief from all the above in a relatively short time after adopting the Banting lifestyle.
Below is the article quoting Matt Fitzgerald, who is the running guru. Matt is not a fan of the HFLC diet but Tim Noakes is a big advocate , and as we all now Tim Noakes was the original running guru. Maffetone is also a big fan of the HFLC diet and training at an aerobic pace restricting your pace by heart rate. ( https://philmaffetone.com/ )
Before Dr. Robert Atkins launched his low-carb diet in 1972, there was Banting, the fat British undertaker who designed coffins for England’s elite in the 1800s. According to Men’s Health, the guy needed to drop a few kilos, so his doc put him on a high-fat-low-carb (HFLC) diet and, presto change-o, he lived to 82 and was buried in a skinny man’s coffin.
It may seem silly to talk about Banting now, but he’s back from the dead, courtesy of a controversial sports scientist who has been vehemently championing the Brit’s diet for the past few years. Professor Tim Noakes, from the Sports Science Institute of South Africa at the University of Cape Town, even published a book of Banting recipes that sold out not long after hitting shelves earlier this year. There’s just one problem with the diet: It’ll make you slower.
Matt Fitzgerald, author of the new book Diet Cults, has some sobering words for athletes who try to train on fat. “Decades of research indicate that high-carb diets are optimal for endurance and that ingesting carbohydrates during endurance exercise enhances endurance,” Fitzgerald says.
Sports nutrition scientist and European Journal of Sport Science editor in chief Asker Jeukendrup, for example, recently published a paper outlining carb needs during exercise to enhance endurance, suggesting athletes take in small amounts of carbs during training sessions lasting an hour, 60 grams of carbs per hour for exercise lasting two to three hours, and 90 grams per hour for exercise lasting longer than that—regardless of body weight or training status.
Noakes’ diet, on the other hand, advocates eating as little as 25 to 50 grams of carbs per day. While upping your healthy fat intake to around 40 percent of your total daily calories is fine, Noakes promotes a diet that’s 80 percent fat and only 10 percent carbs. Most endurance athletes, Fitzgerald says, should not be cutting carbs.
It’s not just science that shows carbs make athletes better. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence as well. Eating carbs “is almost a universal practice among the world’s best endurance athletes,” Fitzgerald says. “The typical Kenyan diet is 78 percent carbs, and they destroy the rest of the world in distance running.”
Clearly, there’s a lot going on behind Kenyan running prowess, but the carbs can’t be discounted. “If you care about your performance as an endurance athlete, the safe way to go is a high-carb diet,” Fitzgerald says. “If you go on the high-fat bandwagon, it’s a crapshoot.”
Proponents of HFLC claim the Banting diet is the key to weight loss and improved health and encourages the body to burn fat for fuel. But studies comparing HFLC to nonrestrictive diets found that, over time, people lost no more weight “banting” than they did otherwise. Celeste Naude, a researcher from the Center for Evidence-Based Health Care at Stellenbosch University, told the Mail and Guardian that “the dietary pattern and food choices promoted with a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet are not well aligned with healthy dietary patterns and food choices known to, along with a healthy lifestyle, reduce the risk of diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancers.”
Why the fervor? Fitzgerald says the desire to follow a restrictive diet is fulfilling mental, rather than physical, needs. He calls the phenomenon “sour grapes syndrome,” after Aesop’s fable about the fox who couldn’t reach some hanging grapes. Rather than admit he couldn’t jump high enough to get them, the fox decided they must be sour anyway. As Fitzgerald writes on his website, the victims of sour grapes syndrome:
…are endurance athletes who cannot cope psychologically with being slower than they would like to be and who resolve this cognitive dissonance by replacing the goal of doing their sport well with that of doing it “right.” The syndrome is being spread by various movements that promote alternative methods that are contrary to those practiced by the most successful athlete … By latching onto [HFLC], athletes can claim a kind of victory over superior competitors.
At some point, Fitzgerald writes, when a movement grows large enough, “it begins to win converts among athletes who are not, in fact, wracked with jealousy of faster athletes but who simply don’t know any better.” To enlighten those athletes, he cites a study recently published in the journal Nutrients in which researchers compared HFLC athletes with those eating a balanced diet. While HFLC made athletes leaner, it also caused them to lose power due to “impairment of the muscles’ ability to burn carbs.”
The athletes had, essentially, trained their bodies to use fat for fuel and decrease reliance on carbs. The result, Fitzgerald writes, is a reduced tolerance for high-intensity training and impaired “performance in all races except perhaps ultra-endurance events such as 100 km trail runs.” If you want to go fast, your body needs carbs for fuel. Training on a Banting diet makes your body less efficient at doing so, ultimately hobbling most athletes on race day.
The next time you’re thinking about cutting carbs, check your motives. If you’re doing it to look lean or run 62 miles or more at once, HFLC may work for you. But if you want to perform optimally at nearly any other endeavor, don’t ditch your bagels.
Jon, pre Bunting Diet while I was mixing both diets, pancakes and bacon. When it comes to Diets I swing both way !
