Run to Win

Eating well while traveling can be difficult.

Hours on the roads, quick stops at restaurants, and bad hotel food served to captive audiences can easily lend itself to a “not quite right” feeling in your gut even a week after you get home and back to your normal diet.

There are a few tactics you can follow to improve matters, though.
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On our recent trip to Greece, I got some more ammunition against my wife’s dislike of eggplant as she not only enjoyed eating the Imam but even ordered it for herself after trying mine earlier in the trip.

Of course, that just meant we had to try to recreate the dish at home. (I will state, by the way, that despite her always saying how much she dislikes eggplant, she always enjoys the dishes I make with it, so I think the statement is unfounded.)

Imam was originally a Turkish dish that was adopted by the Greeks. The full name is actually Ιμάμ Μπαϊλντί (Imam Baildi or Imam Bayildi), and there are a few stories about a fainting priest that gives it its name. Some say he fainted when he saw how much olive oil was used, and others claim he fainted at the wonderful taste.

Either way, our Imam didn’t taste like what we had in Greece. It tasted very good, and I’ll make it again, but wasn’t exactly the same thing. I cooked it the same way I always try something new…we found a few recipes online, I read them over, and then I went and tried what I could to see what would come out based on the general trends in the different recipes.

Here is how I prepared it:

Ingredients

• 2 Eggplants
• 2 Tomatoes
• 3 Cloves of Garlin
• 1 Onion
• A little Salt
• A fair bit of Oregano & Thyme
• More Olive Oil than anybody should consume in one sitting

Procedure

1. Chop the stems off of the eggplants, cut in half lengthwise, and slice a flat spot onto the rounded (skin) side of each half. Slit the eggplant lengthwise without breaking the skin on the bottom. Sprinkle the flesh side of the eggplant in salt and put them aside in a colander to let the juices drain out a bit.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees (approximately – I put ours at 400 which is probably about 350 in other ovens.) Chop the garlic, tomatoes and onion. Preheat some olive oil in a skillet.
3. After the eggplants have been sitting aside for 15-20 minutes (longer if you plan ahead, 30 minutes is how long I usually leave the eggplant to drain but I was hungry tonight) put them in the skillet flesh side down until they are a golden brown, which should take 4 or 5 minutes. Put them aside on a paper towel to drain.
4. Put some more olive oil in the skillet, and add the onions, then the garlic, then the tomatoes. Don’t let them burn, stir regularly, and mix in the seasonings. Stir regularly but otherwise keep it covered. Get a baking dish prepared and cover the bottom with water – our 9×13 dish needed 1/3 to 1/2 of a cup.
5. Put the eggplant in the baking dish skin side down, add a little more olive oil, and then coat with the tomato/garlic sauce. Cover and bake for 45 or 50 minutes.

Shortly after running 50 miles, I wrote a short little article analyzing what I ate the morning of and during the race. I examined the exact number of calories that I consumed compared to my estimated caloric usage.

Today, I’m going to share a few of the meals that I consumed in the week leading up to the race that allowed me to successfully navigate the 50 mile course.

Early in the week, we took a trip to the Valley of Fire. Beautiful place! Walking around there all day was hungry work, but thankfully we packed some sandwiches that we made in our room before heading out.

It’s important to relax now and then, which is surprisingly difficult to do in the daylight ambience of The Venetian in the middle of the night. Thankfully, I had an Italian beer to help me wash down an excellent pasta dish.

Walking around Vegas can be very tiring, though. There are a lot of people, nothing is near anything else, and if you follow the signs to get where you want to be then you’ll take pretty much the longest route possible that passes as many slot machines as they can bring you near. We were pretty tired by the time we found this Creperie in fake Paris.

Our original plans were to do a hash run on New Years Day, but instead we met some friends at the Egg Works. As it was lunch time, I decided to try one of their Burgers. I don’t think that Erin thought that I’d be able to fit it in my mouth.

She was wrong.

Sometimes, though, a burger just isn’t going to do it. Especially when you’ve been walking around in Vegas. Thankfully, there was a goldfish handy…

(Full Size Images: Flickr)

Yesterday, I ran 50 miles. At once. Yeah, strange thing to do, but it seemed like a good way to finish off a vacation.

At a very rough estimate, I probably burned around 5500 calories or so in the 8 hours that that took. Here is everything that I consumed before and during the race:

Pre-Race

• 1 banana (105 calories)
• 2 wheat rolls (~85 calories ea / ~170 calories)

Breakfast total: 275 calories

Race

• (Lots of) Water (0 calories)
• 2 pouches of Hornet Juice – start & @ mile 19 (60 calories ea / 120 calories)
• 12(ish) cups (2oz to 6oz) of Heed (100 calories per 16 ounces / ~300 calories)
• ~70 Black Forest Gummi Bears (120 calories per 17 bears / ~500 calories)
• 6 Crank Gels (150 calories ea / 900 calories)
• 12 pretzels (24 calories ea / 288 calories)

Race Total: 2108 calories

Consumption Strategy

In all, I consumed less than 2400 calories, which gives me at least a 3000 calorie deficit by the end of the race. That would explain why I’ve been so hungry for the past day or so, I guess.

My general strategy was to eat what I had available for breakfast, and to make sure that I had plenty of water during the run. I wanted to eat gummi bears regularly throughout the run every 15-30 minutes and a gel packet every 45-60 minutes. Since Heed was available, I took a cup of that at most of the aid stations, being careful to space out my gel packets and my Heed consumption since I didn’t think those would mix too well. I also grabbed a few pretzels from the aid station tables on 4 separate occasions, 3 at a time.

I also started with a water bottle full of Hornet Juice which I refilled at mile 19. I meant to refill my sandwich baggy of gummy bears at mile 36, but I got busy reapplying sunscreen and forgot to grab them. I only ran out of water once, but I knew that there was an aid station coming up within a quarter mile so that worked out fine. I did dump quite a bit of water on the ground, though, because “1/3 to half full” apparently meant “so full you can’t screw on the top” to most of the volunteers at the marathon aid stations. That was fine, though, better too much than too little.

This strategy kept me going. The majority of the calorie consumption came early in the race, since there was way I was going to be able to process everything late in the run and I knew I wouldn’t be able to take in as many calories as I was using. I just thought it would be interesting to find the specific deficit, especially since I could still remember everything I ate during the race and thought to jot it down.

Specific details on the race will be going up over the next few days, including plenty of pictures. I carried my cell phone with me and snapped photos of (almost) all of the 50 milers as well as plenty of the beautiful surroundings that are to be found at Lake Mead, although I did not get any photos of the coyotes. (They sounded like they were just on the other side of the hill that I was running around, although they were actually across a river that was on the other side of it.) The crows didn’t excite me enough when they came visiting late in the race for me to take the energy to get the camera out.

Given my fondness for caffeine, I love when I can find a new study that shows that it isn’t good for you.

Scientists in the Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of California conducted a test on 61 people who went through a series of physical and mental exercises to set a baseline first thing in the morning.

That afternoon, they split the subjects into 3 groups before running them through all of the tests again.

The first group took a 2 hour nap, and had better motor skills and improved perception during the tests than either of the other two groups. They scored better than both groups by a very large margin in the verbal tests.

The second group took a placebo. They didn’t do as well as those that had taken a nap, but still did marginally better than those who took a caffeine pill.

The last group took a 200mg caffeine pill, and they reported feeling the most alert and awake.

It seems to me that like most drugs, caffeine dims your mental and physical capabilities while making you feel smarter and faster than you really are. That seems dangerous enough to me to reinforce my elimination of caffeine from my diet (as if the increased chance of going blind and having horrible headaches weren’t enough.)

I would be interested in seeing further studies, though. I’d like to know how effective a shorter nap can be, and I’d also like to see how more physically demanding activities are affected. I know that in general when I take a mid-day nap at work, I’m usually limited to about 20-25 minutes or else I won’t have time to eat, and I am always interested how different activities will affect my training.

This is a case where anecdotal evidence isn’t really all that worthwhile.

(The Study: Behavioural Brain Research – Photo: Refracted Moments™ – Hat Tip: Life Hacker)

It has been a while since I’ve put up a recipe, and since I plan on making this again I’ll at least have a starting place by sharing what I did with tonight’s meal. It obviously tasted quite good. We served the swordfish along with some acorn squash, which worked out well.

• Time Required: ~20-25 minutes
• Cooking Time: ~15 minutes
• Ingredients:
  1. Swordfish Steak(s)
  2. Olive Oil
  3. Salt & Pepper
  4. Fresh Parsley
  5. Lemon (or Lemon Juice)

Preparation is simple. Just (Click here to continue reading…)

Jeff Galloway recently came into the Maine Running Company to share his experiences with us. All of my notes from the clinic will be linked at the bottom of this article as they are available.

This morning’s notes are about what Jeff had to say about nutrition and how to eat to fuel your training.

Food & Training

“People tend to over-record their exercise and under-record their calorie intake…Imagine that!”

Fat is a very efficient source of fuel, but it can be a little too abundant of a fuel source that involves carrying around extra weight, which means that you will require more fuel to begin with.
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The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the second part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment. This part covers the presentation on nutrition and fueling.

Nutrition Basics & Fueling for Performance

The second presentation of the night was presented by Karen Hodge Knapton from Whole Health Consulting, who covered what a basic and healthy diet should consist of for an athlete.

“You cannot expect to start the season without a healthy diet.”

It takes months to prepare the body through healthy eating, and you can not concentrate solely on race day. To that effect, you need to be aware of the 6 basic nutrients that make up your diet.

1. Water
2. Vitamins
3. Minerals
4. Carbohydrates
5. Protein
6. Fats

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