While eating and fueling properly are important for any athlete, they become of increasing importance for Masters athletes.  Why, you might ask.  Because when we are younger and the body is still in growth mode, we can afford to make more mistakes with how we train and how we take care of ourselves.  But, as we age, it becomes ever more imperative to "do things right," and fueling -- during the day as we as during workouts -- is an area where there is a lot of confusion.  

Marketing is a strong catalyst.  In striving to be the best we can be, we're looking for any edge to help us achieve our goals.  It is only natural that we look to nutrition.  Depending on what you read and who you believe, we can follow a diet rich in carbohydrates.  Or, we can rely heavily on fats because fat is a more dense source of fuel and we have enough fat stored in our bodies to complete 10 Ironmans back-to-back.  There's vegetarian, fruitatarian, Paleo, vegan and so on. Much of it is based on personal belief as much as perceived and/or actual benefits.  Confused yet?

I came across this video on the BBC, "Sugar vs Fat",  which is arguably the most enlightening piece about nutrition that I've come across.  Identical twin male doctors alter their diets for a month -- one follows a extremely high-fat diet while the other follows an extremely high-carb diet.  Their body composition and blood profiles were measured at the beginning of the month as well as at the end.  Their starting points were pretty darn similar (ex: 26% v 22% body fat).  Some of the results are predictable while others may prove provocative.

Note
Conspicuously absent from this research is the part protein plays.  A couple thoughts here.  First, too much protein is not a good thing.  The body can only process so much and what it can't process gets broken down into urea, which contains both nitrogen and ammonia, the latter of which can be toxic to the body.  The rule of thumb for endurance athletes is 1.5-2g of protein for every kilogram of weight.  Thought of another way, up to 1g of protein per pound of weight.  This will provide enough "building blocks" to keep the body from cannibalizing its lean muscle mass and help promote healing and growth.  

Weight Loss
What should not be a surprise is that the brother on the higher-fat/lower-carb diet lost more weight -- 4kgs vs 1.5kg.  While the doctor stated a good amount of the loss came from cannibalizing muscle, we really can't know this because the pod in which the body composition measurements were taken only measure fat vs non-fat composition (which includes fluids). Undoubtedly, fluid loss factors into some of the weight loss, not just fat vs muscle.

Exercise and Performance
The brothers conducted a stress test on the bike.  First, they "rode to exhaustion" for an hour. Then, they relied on their chosen fuel of choice -- pure fat or an energy gel -- and raced up the famous Box Hill in Britain.  The point of the initial hour was to burn up much of the existing muscle glycogen so that each brother was mainly relying on the type of fuel to which they had committed themselves.  It should not be surprising that the brother on the high-carb diet crushed his high-fat brother during the hill climb.  This is because carbohydrates are an immediate fuel source and the body needs that immediate fuel, especially during more intense bouts of training and racing.  Fat as part of a fueling strategy might be beneficial for ultra-athletes who are racing wholly aerobically. However, athletes who tip into anaerobic mode at times, will almost assuredly find better results with a quick fuel source such as carbohydrates.

Diabetes from a High-Fat Diet?
I'm no nutritionist, but this is one thing to which I raised an eyebrow.  A low-carb, high-fat diet works well in reducing Type 2 Diabetes.  However, the doctor running the tests on the brothers proclaims the high-fat brother's fasting glucose level is rising and almost out of the "normal" range.  So, it's still normal then, right?  And, the rise in glucose is not a trend upward.  Rather, the glucose can rise and fall day-to-day.  In fact, blood glucose drops after eating a low-carb meal, so I effectively threw out this aspect of the video.

The Carb/Fat Correlation
What I found most interesting was the aspect around general eating habits.  Between an experiment the brothers did on the streets and one done in a lab with rats, one thing became more clear to me.  In the lab, some rats were subjected to an all-carb diet, others to an all-fat diet, and a third group at cheesecake.  The rats eating all carbs ate more calories by a wide margin yet really didn't gain any weight.  The rats on all fat ate fewer calories than the rats on the all carb diet and likewise really didn't gain any weight.  Now, here's what's interesting.  The rats that ate cheesecake did not eat much in any one sitting, but grazed on the cheesecake all day long.  These rats gained a lot of weight.  It turns out that cheesecake is almost perfectly 50% carbs and 50% fat. The premise is that the receptors for each type of fuel are stimulated just enough to keep us eating but not enough to stop us eating because it is this combo that allows us to derive the greatest amount of pleasure from eating.

The brothers found a similar trend in their own experiment.  The brothers went down the streets of NYC and London with boxes of donuts in 3 rows.  One row was a higher-fat donut (cream-filled), one was higher-carb (extra frosting) and one was 50%/50% (a traditional glazed donut).  Given the choice, the vast majority of people went straight to the traditional glazed donut.  While not scientific, it is telling about society's greater choices around eating and fueling.  How much of processed food gravitates toward the 50%/50% ratio?  

The Takeaway from All This
For me, this is the biggest takeaway.  Daily nutrition is most critical to how well we perform.  This is because what we eat impacts how well we absorb nutrients, how many nutrients there are to absorb, how clean our engines run and how hard the body has to work at both assimilating the fuel as well as repairing itself.  If the body is working overtime to adjust to and process what we eat, then it is spending less time repairing itself after a challenging workout or race.  When I eat more cleanly, I feel better both day-to-day as well as workout to workout.  My own rule of thumb is to shoot for about 80% of my meals being "healthy" -- balanced, home made, not processed.

To put a bow on this, as we age, we slow down.  Our internal processes slow down; our body's ability to repair itself slows down; our performances slow down.  We can do quite a few things to keep the slowing down process at bay.  One of the most important things is the choice around what type of fuel we put in the machine every single day.  Regardless of what type of diet you follow or your beliefs around organic vs GMO and so on, it really boils down to two things:  (1) eat as much food as close to its natural state as you can, which helps you minimize the consumption of processed foods; and (2) a well-balanced approach to eating will help you avoid consuming things that are closely in-line with the dreaded 50% carb/50% fat ratio inherent in much of the processed and refined foods available to us today, which lead to much of the obesity and health problems afflicting today's society.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate

Warming up.  Whether it is for our key workouts or for our races, warming up is probably the most misunderstood -- and misused -- aspect of the endurance athlete's regimen.  There is a fine balance between warming up enough vs too much or too little, hard enough vs too easy or too hard, and, for the multi-sport athlete, a good balance among the various disciplines.  For the Masters athlete, properly warming up is all the more critical.

The underlying premise is that athletes warm up way too much.  As we prepare for our key workouts and races, the body is already entering "fight or flight", which means chemicals are already being released into the body to open it up.  Ever notice that on race morning your HR is already elevated?  That's "fight or flight" at work.  In this heightened state, the body needs less warming up to be ready for "go time".  It's already piqued for survival.  All it needs is a little fine-tuning.

I've tried everything under the sun for warm-ups and these are what I now use consistently both with myself and the athletes with whom I work.  While not meant to be exhaustive, this article will provide you with some proven, effective ways to warm up for both workouts and races.  

SWIMMING
If you swim on your own rather than with a Masters swim team, there's a chance that the warm-up is a place where you skimp in order to save time.  One tried-and-true warm-up is the SKPS (swim-kick-pull-swim).  One option is do 200 SKPS, which is a 200 of each continuous, with the second 200 S done faster than the first 200 S.  Another variation is 6-9x100 SKP, with each time through the SKP getting a little bit faster.  In any case, this part of the warm-up is all aerobic.

The second part is where the "opening up" occurs.  Here, you can complete 8-20 x 25 Variable Sprint, with the "sprint" aspect being at or slightly faster than race effort.  These do not have to be all out sprints to be effective for warming up.  The progression is in sets of 4 x 25, done as:
   - 12.5 easy / 12.5 fast
   - 12.5 fast / 12.5 easy
   - 25 fast
   - 25 easy
Choose an interval that allows for 5-7 seconds rest between 25s.

Now, you're ready to move on to the main set of your key swim workout.

BIKING
Since cycling workouts and races tend to be longer, the mentality is that warming up similarly needs to be long in order to be effective.  And, with bike racing typically being very dynamic in nature (vs cycling in triathlon, which is more steady state), cyclists tend to try to hit all energy systems and all levels of effort.  In the end, this only serves to create needless fatigue.

This warm-up can be done on a trainer or out on the road.  The key to it is control.  In the example, I'm using an FTP of 300 watts (if you track power, adjust accordingly for your own FTP).  If you do not use a power meter, FTP (functional threshold power) relates to your LTHR (lactate threshold heart rate) -- effectively, your power / HR for a 40km TT.
   - 5min @ 150-160w
   - 5min build by increasing watts each minute by 20w increments (170-180, 190-200, 210-220, 230-240, 250-260)
   - 5min @ 150-160w
   - 3 x 1min @ 270-280w with 1min @ 150-160w between
   - 4min @ 150-160w
Total time:  25 minutes

This is effective for road races, criteriums and time trials.  The whole point is to prime the pump, which this does quite nicely, without causing undue fatigue.  And, if for some reason you're in a pre-race time crunch, you can complete the first 10 minutes and then head straight to the start line and still be good to go.

RUNNING
More than athletes in the other 2 disciplines, I find that runners most often improperly warm up. Probably the worst offense is to stretch as part of the warm-up.  Stretching fatigues the muscles as it elongates them, which negatively impacts the intervals about to be run and opens the runner up to potential injury.  Save the stretching for after cooling down or, even better, later in the day as a transition to a relaxing period of time (such as prior to dinner or bedtime).

This example is to be done on the track prior to a track workout.  Certainly, it can be adjusted on time rather than distance for a fartlek run on the trails or as a pre-road race warm-up.
   - 800m brisk walk
   - 1600m aerobic jog, gradually increase effort
   - 800m build the straights to 5k effort - cruise the curves easy

Very straightforward, very effective and, all in, should take less than 20 minutes.

TRIATHLON RACE
Being one of the top-ranked Olympic distance triathletes in the world, it was critical to be ready to race -- and race hard -- from the gun.  What made sense to me was to warm-up for the initial leg of the race -- the swim.  I didn't need to warm up on the bike or jog around to prepare for the run. The heart would be pumping just fine and the blood would be coursing through the body well enough over mile-long swim.  And, the run up the beach to T1 is very frenetic and the hardest adjustment the body has to make over the entire course of the race.  You go from lying prone in the water to standing up, which spikes both blood pressure and HR so the body pumps enough blood to your brain so you don't pass out and eat sand.  On top of this, you're driving blood from the upper body to the legs as you run for your bike.  If all this doesn't wake you up for the bike leg, nothing will.

Warming up can vary to a degree, depending on whether you are starting in deep water or up on the beach and running into the water.  
   - 5 minutes easy stroking
   - 3 minutes of side-kicking + 3 strokes (6-12 kicks on one side, 3 swim strokes, 6-12 kicks on the other side)
   - 3-4 x 15-second efforts similar to the opening couple hundred meters of the race, with 45 seconds of easy stroking between
   - 2-3 minutes of easy stroking back to the beach

If it is an on-the-beach start, you can also finish up with 1-2 start simulations where you run into the water at moderate speed (not race speed), dolphin a couple times and take 10-12 strokes. Float/paddles easily back into shore and do it again if you feel the need.  This is all about orienting the mind to the race start and uncovering anything tricky about the interface of beach and water. For example, maybe there's a sharp dip in the sand when the water still appears shallow.  You would want to know this in order to adjust your approach accordingly.

If the water is frigid, the last thing you want to do is get cold so that you are shivering at the gun. You will be tight and constricted, and the opening minutes of the swim will be quite miserable as you try to pull blood from your critical organs and pump it to your working muscles through a straw instead of a garden hose.  So rather than close the body up, let "fight or flight" do the majority of the warm-up for you.  Instead, wade into calf-deep or knee-deep water, bend over, put your forearms in the water and spend a handful of minutes simulating freestyle and butterfly strokes.  It's not ideal, but it limbers up the upper body, is better than nothing and certainly better than shivering yourself into a tightly knotted up ball.

Hopefully, you see the common theme across all these warm-ups.  That is, they are shorter and easier than the typical warm-up used by most endurance athletes.  Longer warm-ups are counterproductive and serve only to burn up critical matches that should instead be saved for the actual racing.

Give these a shot and let me know how they work for you.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate

Age group athletes love to emulate their professional counterparts.  They are like sponges and want to read about how Pro X or Pro Y is training in order to achieve his/her results. So, when age groupers come across nuggets of information, they are typically quick to adopt the super secret training strategy which was just uncovered.

But, here’s the problem with just about every single article you can read out there about this-or-that workout, or “Pro X’s Top 10 Tips for Success” – it is all presented either generically or in a vacuum.  For example, Pro X swears by a certain workout.  Great!  But, why?  When does Pro X do that workout?  How often?  What does he/she do in the days leading up to that workout and in the days after that workout?  What time of year does he/she do the workout (because it’s not going to be year round, right?)?  And so on.

The same goes for “How to” training books.  Some are chock full of valuable, over-arching information.  A good number just completely suck.  What just about all of them is missing is a well-presented blueprint coupled with an overlay of workouts for that blueprint. And every single one of them is missing the contingency plan – how does the plan change when a wrench is thrown into the gears (sickness, injury, a prolonged layoff from training, etc.).  Age group athletes are starving for guidance.  They want the confidence that how they are training will help them achieve their goals.  They want to be able to rest at night knowing they are not wasting their time.

So question:  Why do so many knowledgeable people avoid going “all in” with their guidance via blog posts, articles and books?  It’s simple, really.  Either, these purveyors of knowledge are simply receiving a penny for their thoughts (getting paid) to write a few words about some subject; or they are loathe to part with some of their secrets; or they want to provide just enough info to appear credible so that athletes will want more from them.  To me, all of these reasons, and more, are all flawed. 

As a life-long elite athlete myself, in swimming, then triathlon and now Masters cycling, and as a endurance athlete coach for the past 25 years, like many of my counterparts, I have a huge wealth of knowledge I can share with athletes.  And, the athletes are grouped into 2 buckets – those with whom I work; and those with whom I do not work.  Regardless, I’ve decided that I’m here to help anyone who has a question.  Obviously, my top priority is to the athletes with whom I work.  However, I am very happy to sit down with any athlete and help him/her weed through a lot of the head scratching.  Because here’s the thing:  not every athlete wants or is ready to hire a coach.  And that’s OK.  My time is valuable as is my body of knowledge and experience.  But I refuse to sit in an ivory tower like many coaches do and refuse an athlete meaningful guidance just because he/she is not an ORION Training Systems client.  I even talk to other Masters cyclists against whom I compete.  Why not, really?

My expertise is in helping Masters endurance athletes (40 years old and up) continue to improve as they age or, at the very least, battle valiantly with Father Time.  In a number of cases, athletes I work with in their 50s are racing faster than they did a decade or more ago.  Why?  Because I’m right there with them.  I understand how my body absorbs and processes stressors – physical, mental, emotional – and I know when my body starts to bend and even break.  I understand how the balance between volume and intensity, hard days and recovery days shifts as we age and move farther away from our prime years.  It is with this depth of constantly-updated understanding that I am able to customize programs for athletes so that they can train and race with full confidence.

There are great athletes out there.  There are great coaches, too.  There are fewer great coaches who were first great athletes.  And, there are even fewer great coaches who were first great athletes and continue to be great athletes.  If you or someone you know is looking for a coach for triathlon, running, cycling or ultra events, I invite you to send them my way.  Even if those folks just have a couple of questions.  I always welcome the dialogue.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate

 

The stresses we absorb from training are cumulative. We run hard at the track today, go easy tomorrow and are ready to go hard again the next day (usually).  But the body doesn’t forget about the abuse you just put it through. Every workout is catalogued in the muscles and nervous system.
 
This is why it is very important to insert a recovery week every 4-5 weeks in your training. I train myself and my athletes on a 5- to 6-week cycle. I know that by the beginning of the final hard week, while I might feel fine and perform well, I’m also waking up with less enthusiasm for getting out of bed and hitting it. It’s not, “Boy, I can’t wait for my recovery week.” Rather, I’m thinking, “I feel fine, but the thought of going hard today is not super.” Yet, I complete the workout and it goes well. 
 
My point is that the accumulation of fatigue is prodding me and letting me know that it’s about time to give it a rest. So, for the recovery week, I’ll sleep a little more, train a little less (and easier), and by the end of this week, I’ll be ready to burst out of the gates again - mentally, emotionally and physically refreshed. And I’ll notice a sharp uptick in the quality of my workouts versus those completed toward the end of the previous cycle. 
 
It is the recovery week that allowed for this uptick. Your fitness either increases or decreases. Very rarely does it plateau. But, if you try to increase your fitness day after day, week after week, without allowing yourself consistent, periodic breaks, your fitness and performance will begin to fall away and lead to a combination of frustration, injury or sickness.  

The insertion of deliberate breaks in training is even more important for the Masters athlete.  Those over 40 years old can work out just as hard and be just as fast as the young bucks.  However, as we age, we also need to be more cognizant of our recovery and honor what the body is telling us.  We may need more space between hard workouts and we may need to dial back our recovery weeks more than we used to, in terms of volume and any intensity we do incorporate. But, make no mistake -- recovery weeks are critical to improvement.
 
If you incorporate recovery weeks already - great job! If you don’t - try it, you’ll like it! 

Happy Training, 
Coach Nate

Age group athletes typically need to juggle a number of demands on their time: work, family, community activities and, of course, training. Given how busy we all are, on any given day something has to give. Usually, getting adequate sleep is the first thing to take a hit.

Sleep can be one of the most important tools at the disposal of the endurance athlete and can help spur improvement as well as recovery.  But why is this?

When we get enough sleep, we improve our glucose metabolism.  Thus, inadequate sleep inhibits glucose metabolism.  Glucose metabolism is critical to ensuring the muscles are topped off and ready to go the following day.  If the muscle glycogen stores are sub-maximal, you'll know it in the morning because your muscles will feel thick or you will feel sluggish or heavy.  Proper sleep also helps the body produce HGH (human growth hormone), which is essential for post-workout repair.  Deep sleep is the driving force behind HGH secretion and, thus, proper levels of this and other hormones in the body.  Inhibiting the body's ability to repair itself means you're already on the back foot from a performance perspective.

The rule of thumb is to shoot for at least 8 hours per night.  Some professional athletes strive for as many as 10 hours per night plus daily naps in the afternoon.  That’s a lot of sleeping!  It’s also not a realistic expectation for the majority of us non-professional athletes.  For myself, I find 7 hours to be adequate for most every day.  Rarely do I hit 8 hours, because my time to work out is in the wee hours of the morning when it has minimal impact on my family.  According to the National Sleep Foundation, Americans average less than 7 hours of sleep per night.  Eventually, the lack of sleep does start to negatively impact workout performance and, thus, race performance as well.

Most age groupers can probably get more sleep – whether their sport be cycling, running, swimming, triathlon, ultra-distance events like Ironman or the Western States 100 running race.  By assigning greater priority to sleep, even the busiest of endurance athletes can find ways to sleep more and start experience the positive benefits of doing so.

Some tips:
·       Keep regular hours.  Try to go to bed at the same time every night (within an hour or less, even on the weekends)
·       Turn off the electronics.  When you climb into bed, do something that helps calm you down and turn off your mind, like reading.  But, read the old fashioned way with a real book so you avoid the temptation to close the Kindle app on your iPad and start looking at Facebook or email.  These 2 things in particular amp you up and get the mind spinning – the opposite effect of what you want when you are in bed
·       Limit caffeine consumption to before late afternoon.  This allows the body to process the stimulating effects and bring you down off the buzz well before bed time
·       Avoid watching something on TV that will amp you up right before bed, like a horror movie or an exciting sporting event.  Anything that gets the heart pumping a little faster will negatively impact your ability to “shut it down” and get to sleep.  The adrenaline is flowing and it can take hours for it to leave your system
·       A little bit of alcohol is great, but limit its consumption to dinnertime rather than later in the evening
·       If you have trouble falling asleep, move.  Sometimes a simple change of environment – the couch instead of the bed – is enough to allow the body to relax and zonk out

Getting enough sleep seems to be very challenging.  Exciting things happen when we’re awake.  However, with a little discipline, we can squeeze an extra 30-90 minutes into our sleep pattern and start reaping the rewards of that extra snoozing.  Our workouts will improve and, therefore, our racing will improve as well.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate