LooseCrew-JeffO: What's Wrong?

LooseCrew-JeffO

Ramblings of an adventurous guy living in Denver and playing in the mountains.
For my trail adventures, visit my Trail Bum blog

Friday, February 02, 2007

What's Wrong?

I've been verbally jabbed by friends about previously not resting enough. They don't know what they're talking about.
I typically ran only three days a week, Tuesday, Thursday and a weekend run or race. In addition, I sometimes had an upper-body work-out at Matrix.
People love acting like experts and talking condescendingly. And I tend to be nice and open to info. But these people don't make sense. Here's why...
Typical training schedule (cut and pasted from Dave Styles suggested training schedule):
Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: Short run
Wednesday: Semi-long run
Thursday: Short run
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: Cross-training
Sunday: Long
run

Now count the rest days. I see two, with 71% training days. My schedule allows twice as many rest days, with 42% training days.
Other sources, like Matt Carpenter, give similar training schdules. And the very people saying I don't rest
enough are probably guilty of running 5-7 days a week. (Many consider "rest" to be nothing more than a short, easy 5-mile run.)

And this excerpt from Kim Mueller, MS, RD about ultra-marathon diet/training:
"Appropriate daily protein consumption for moderate intensity endurance training lasting 4+ hours (ultra-marathon training)."
My weekly hours of training, including upper-body gym workouts have been only about 7-9 hours. If I was training over four hours a day just five days a week, that'd be 21 hours a week. I was only putting 40% of the supposed requisite stress on my body.


What led to my injury had nothing to do with too much stress and too few rest days.
It was caused by less-then-ideal
diet and less-then-ideal running form. I've come a long way, but I've got a long way to go. I know what I'm doing wrong, but not necessarily what I need to do to get it right.
I'm reading a book about sport nutrition, primarily towards marathoners, plus other sources of information. They all agree that whole foods, uncooked and unprocessed, are best. But some of those also say that not everything needs to be whole and/or organic. Those call for certain engineered products like vitamin suppliments, creatine, protein drinks, and sport drinks.
Ironically, the worst food I eat tends to be from when we finish running and then go eat pizza, mexican food, etc.
A friend told me that decaf coffee has all sorts of leftover poisons from the decaf process. I need to look into that. I'd hate to give up coffee, but it would certainly save me some money.

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