High Performance Vegetable & Fruit Smoothies

My sleep post was apparently so boring that most of my remaining followers immediately cancelled their feeds. 

So in this post I will give the audience what they want — the one thing that endurance athletes actually all seem to care about — discussion about smoothies.

Yes since last summer I have been making smoothies every morning.  Originally the idea was to simply trick myself into eating more vegetables  (when you are surrounded by Vegan triathletes demonizing meat and dairy, and Paleo Diet triathletes demonizing bread and fruit, you can’t help but start to feel that vegetables are the only safe food choice).   

Now in addition to improving basic daily nutrition, I learn that smoothies have performance-boosting powers*

Was my recent PB at Toda 10k due to the smoothies?

I am a sloppy and lazy cook, but even for me making a smoothie is a forgiving enough process to be almost fun.   Now I am finally adhering to nutritionists recommendation to have vegetable at every meal (the trick is to add just enough fruit to make the smoothie taste like the sweet American breakfasts I grew up with, while still tossing in a full serving of vegetables).   Moreover the texture and green hue of the smoothies just feels and looks so darn healthy that I simply feel stronger as I drink it (OK, maybe this is a placebo effect, but as more knowledgeable athletes have told me about the placebo effect, if it works -- bring it on). 

So here is my special, performance-enhancing recipe:

1. Take a totally random amount of the following ingredients: 

• Spinach 
• Carrots
• Almond Butter
• Chia Seeds 
• Bananas

2. Mix in blender

3. Serve Cold  

I will be sure to track whether my special smoothie diet leads to further race improvements. 

• Yes, that's right, my takeaway after recently listening to hours of seemingly authoritative fitness podcasts is that diet, particularly smoothies, are the primary driver of endurance sports performance.  Personally I had always thought that the key variables were genetics and training, with belief and execution playing a key role, and things like sleep, stress, and diet being merely factors that if neglected could derail the rest of your program.  But apparently it is mostly about the smoothies. 

The Sleep-Deprived Triathlete

Way back in the earliest of posts in this blog, I lamented being such an outlier in terms of sleep.  I have never met anyone who has needed (or admitted to needing) the steady 9 hours of sleep I seem to require.  For that matter I hardly ever speak to other athletes who even acknowledge needing a mere 7 hours of sleep which is allegedly well below the average minimum required.     

    

So I am the type of person inclined to read this new book called “Why We Sleep”  

The book is hundreds of pages of research extolling the need for sleep.    

This chart is particularly striking, showing how among a study of young athletes, chronic lack of sleep correlated with a massive increase in sports injury (a far greater predictor of injury than hours spent practicing the sport, strength training, stretching, etc).  

The book even goes on to link athletic performance with adequate sleep. 

The book is so vehement in its blaming lack of sleep for almost all health problems that even I, the biggest of sleep partisans,  begin to wonder if the author is over-stating the importance of sleep.  I start to look at all the chronically sleep-deprived people I see dozing off standing up on trains and worry they will start simply dropping dead around me.

One of the big takeaways from the book is that one should maintain the same sleep schedule night after night, avoiding long naps and avoiding trying to make up for lost sleep on subsequent nights.  Unfortunately, since I am one of the 30% of population with a night owl type of circadian rhythm and struggle to fall asleep in the evening, I find after just one later night to bed I struggle to revert back to the desired early-to-bed schedule.    Of course I have also always been struggling to join my militant teammates who always wish to meet at 6am for an early ride or swim.

While traveling to races has been the big challenge to meeting my sleep needs, strangely, crossing the 8 time zones over the Pacific Ocean has helped re-set my night owl pattern and allow me to wake up early.  So in the weeks since my recent trans-Pacific flight I have been diligently seeking to stick to a 9pm to 6am sleep schedule, a schedule that is absurdly out of synch with the world around me. 

I have even cut down on caffeine (switching to a decaffeinated mix in the morning and always ordering cappuccinos when at cafes).  And I have eliminated alcohol -- and more or less any social life for that matter.   

It was nice at the recent Toda 10k to naturally just wake up before 6am without an alarm clock, and have lots of time before the race start.

However each night the struggle to fall asleep is a bit harder than the previous night, and it is upon waking each morning when the effects of the previous day's training session hits me and I wish to sleep in a bit later to recover.  So with travel, and evening work events ahead of me it is a big question whether I can maintain this early-to-bed program through my A races next month.   

Autumn 2018 Running Races

Would the limited mileage of “3+2” cross-training negatively impact my race performance?  Would my bounding prove to be some fountain of youth? 

I hoped my fall race campaign would elicit some clear answers. Ideally of course I would run some amazing times and be able to evangelize for these techniques.  Or if not, I would crash in burn in a manner that generates practical, actionable lessons for all future training. However the results were inconclusive —  the usual murky jumble of variables such as race conditions, terrain, fatigue, and race-day execution. 

Here is summary of my 3 October/November events:

• Nagareyama 10k - 41 minute - On an unseasonably warm day I make a futile and foolish effort to attempt to run at my goal pace of 3:45 per kilometer (recalling the Munatsuki 10k event of several years ago where running in mid-day heat did not derail my performance).  I pride myself on not giving up, but at Nagareyama I totally capitulated.  At around the 3.5k mark I slowed down to grab water at an aid station and then didn't bother to speed back up. I consciously thought - "this is just stupid and pointless, I really don't want to suffer." Later after the race, it was revealing to witness the award ceremony and note that many of the athletes in my age group seemed to be made of much sterner stuff and clocked times around 37-38 minutes.

• Cross-country - As usual, all attention turns to cross country in Seattle running world in October, and as usual I struggle to adjust to fast starts and the soft, hilly terrain. I cannot even make the top seven in my age group for the CNW team (out of like 10 guys). 

• Toda 10k - 37:17 -  Technically this is my fastest 10k over the last two years - the 10k Personal Best for my current self.  This time (unlike Nagareyama) I managed to run faster than 3:45 per kilometer.  Granted, given the perfect conditions and flat course at Toda, I had hopes of maintaining a 3:40 pace.  I am pleased to finish 18th out of 1,551, earn a spot on the podium and join my teammates with shiny medals pictured below.  

Almost immediately thoughts turn to winter/spring races, and whether I can figure out how to break out of the plateau I have been in for so long, and eke out some improvement in my time.  

Run Training Summary - 2018

My run volume has dropped by some 40% during the past eight months since I shifted into “3 + 2 Cross-Training” (compared to the 300 kilometers per month I was hitting in 2017):

  

"Easy" runs have frequently been replaced by swimming or cycling, meaning that some weeks entail only a hard interval workout, a hill repeat session and a long-run.  While there is certainly a question of whether this affects race performance, the bigger issue is whether I enjoy the easy runs versus the cross-training?  

10k Obstacle Course Race

I finish 2^nd in my age group in last week’s Spartan Obstacle Course Race.  I attribute much of this success to the fact that the elderly don’t seem too terribly interested in participating in these Spartan-type obstacle events.  Only 18 of us over-50 age group athletes show up (among the 1,000 or so participants overall) -- a significant under-representation as a percentage of the larger population. 

I continue to find this disconnect puzzling given that explosive movements and balance and strength are precisely the things that I’ve been told to work on and try to retain since turning 50, as I mentioned in my post last year when I entered my first obstacle race - an easy team sprint event. Yes, competing in a Spartan race may seem like an extreme way to go about maintaining a strength conditioning program – why not just be motivated enough to go to gym 3x a week and plow through a training circuit like every normal, middle-aged guy?  In my case, after years of focusing my exercise effort around a year-long schedule of triathlons and running and cycling races, I overwhelmingly prioritize sessions that directly prepare me for an upcoming race - it creates so much more meaning and purpose.   

Not that doing bench press reps was necessarily the most race-specific training for this particular event. Rather trail running ability was the single most useful skill-set on last week’s course (which was held at a ski resort and had us running up and down ski runs).  In recent trail races in Vietnam and Hong Kong, I have lamented how poor I have fared when competing head-on with trail running specialists – technical descents have been simply embarrassing as I have to get out of the way of mountain-goat-type-runners dropping past me.  Against the "gym rats" at Spartan I was at least holding my own as we descended the grassy ski runs.  

I fared reasonably well on the obstacles themselves last week – slightly slower than many of the guys around me, but then I am so accustomed to doing strength work in the most deliberate and precise manner possible, and so hurrying through many of obstacles seemed unnatural.  At least I was able to burst into a run reasonably quickly coming off the obstacles. I found the wall climbs, and vertical wall traverses to be such interesting challenges and a fun break from the pure cardio events.  

I was suffering a terrible cold going into the race.  I say this only to note how much being in a race (the flood of adrenaline I presume) can block out the impact of an illness. Every endurance athlete has likely experienced this.  As you can see in the adjacent picture, I don't look particularly chipper as the race starts.   But at this event my cold symptoms shut off light a light bulb just as I hoisted myself over the first steep obstacle.  I guess if you were caveman and the saber tooth tigers attacked you couldn’t just call it in sick – you need to be able to compete at near 100% for the duration of the event. 

I had presumed this would be my last Spartan obstacle course race. The event registration is so expensive.  And I hate to risk injury.  And all the Spartan Warrior military crap is so hokey.  

But after feeling increasingly strong toward the finish and receiving all the accolades for finishing 2^nd in the age group, I find myself mulling over and over whether I could improve on Saturday’s effort – using better technique on certain obstacles like the plate pull and vertical wall, bringing more concentration and urgency on a couple obstacles like the bucket carry, getting off to faster start, running on a flatter course, wearing racing flats and competing on a day when I am not suffering from a cold?

Cebu Half-Ironman

I dreaded the Cebu Triathlon.  I dreaded every aspect of it.  I dreaded swimming in choppy seas. Biking on a narrow, crowded course.  Running in mid-day tropical heat.  I dreaded the thought of all the travel and costs and logistics.


As usual in life and triathlon -- it all turned out well - I survived - I did not drown or crash or suffer heat-stroke -- I even managed 6th out of 41 in my age group, 243rd overall (out of some 2500 entrants), and enjoyed a memorable excursion to Cebu with a fun group of teammates.

  

Not that my fears were entirely groundless -- 

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In fact the swim was choppy.  The rolling start was smooth enough, but when I rounded the second buoy and turned into the waves and the current I started to panic. I didn’t help that the swells pushed a slower earlier wave swimmer into me while 3 faster swimmers from later wave swam over me.  But I reminded myself that I have done this many times before, and powered through the rest of swim, staying focused on each stroke.   While my swim time of 47:16 minutes to cover 1.9k is a shockingly long time in the water, it was still among top half of finishers.   

And the bike ride did seem treacherous - at least at first when a dog ran across my path (reminding me of a childhood mishap), and countless riders burst past me (often then slowing down).   Training primarily on an indoor trainer (if at all) means that once again I am not terribly aggressive starting the bike, though I did find myself passing a lot of riders on the later laps.  The huge screaming crowd lining the course encouraged me.   While my time of 2:58:33 was slower than my other half-ironman efforts is as good as I might expect.  

And the run was hot.  A blazing sun burned through the clouds just in time for the mostly shade-less, mid-day half-marathon.  So I took walk breaks.  Numerous proactive, carefully timed walk breaks - roughly every two minutes.  I took leisurely strolls through every single aid station luxuriating in the feeling of squeezing the ice cold sponges over me and drinking cup after cup of sports drink or ice water.  When I actually did break out into a run I was reasonably strong - my time of 1:46:44 was OK (fastest in the age group).

Total time: 5:40:39

Cebu was my longest and "biggest" race of 2018.  By "biggest" I mean most talked about, most expensive, most anticipated and entailing the most travel.  But by "biggest" I don't necessarily even imply that it was my "A race"  -- the race that the well-coached endurance athlete would structure their training around.  Normally a triathlete's longest race will also be their A race -- it works best that way with tapering and recovery.  But my training leading up to Cebu included a lot of obstacle course drills and my key weekly workouts continued to mostly be shorter faster run intervals, just like the rest of the year.   At least I did manage some long, enjoyable bike rides in the mountains this summer with the TiT group, so it is certainly not the case that I went into the half-ironman "cold"  

Lake Whatcom Triathlon

I need to do a couple triathlons each year to force myself to swim and bike a bit. So for 2018 I enter the lovely  Lake Whatcom Triathlon in Bellingham, Washington

(plus next week's dreaded Cebu Triathlon)

Lake Whatcom is a friendly, scenic local event.  The event is only in its second year and a couple hundred triathletes participated.  The locals are concerned about the 70 degree temperatures, but I found the weather cool and crisp and the Pacific Northwest lake is clean and refreshing  

My time for the Olympic Distance event is acceptable:

Swim -    28:38 --  105th - Nice improvement over my recent triathlons 

Bike -   1:18:48  -   50th - Slower time on reasonably fast course 

Run -       44:36  -  14th -  Faster time on slow course (winding trail with stairs) 

Transition 1 consumes a startling and amusing 4 minutes as I struggled endlessly to tug my wetsuit over my timing chip ankle strap.  I find myself with time for a long, philosophical discussion with the lackadaisical triathlete next to me at the bike rack covering topics ranging from existentialism  to how our transition time is going to look on the  results breakdown (we weren't the very slowest athletes in T1, but very close).

My bike time was significantly slower than my Olympic races a few years ago.  Most guys would point to fact of using their "B bike" and obsess over the extra ounces of bike weight.  I was more concerned over the lack of bike training again this summer, as well as not having any fast guys around me after starting in the last wave and being a slower swimmer.

Nonetheless this was one of my rare opportunities on a bike over the past couple years so I try to push a big gear and overtake people as best I can.

I seem to have dropped a notch in terms of competitive drive on the run - at least relative to the suffering I have pushed myself to experience on previous triathlon runs.  At Lake Whatcom, I felt pretty light and comfortable scampering around shaded trails that twisted over stone bridges and up and down hills and stairs in a gorgeous, old city park.  

Despite all my various issues and excuses, the effort is good enough for me to end up on the podium 

I finish 2nd place yet again (see my last 3 or 4 race reports to read about other 2nd place finishes) -- and again it is not an issue of being out-kicked by the winner.  This guy in my age group who finished ahead of me blasted through the short swim a startling 10 minutes ahead of me and I didn't manage to make up any ground on him the rest of the event.  

Living in the Present (May Race Reports)

On May 13th I run 38:41 at the Fuji-Susono 10k, bettering my time from a year ago by over 30 seconds, and even improving on my time from 2-years ago by 6 seconds. 

A 6 second improvement may not sound like much, but I am encouraged just to be running at the same level as in 2016, after 19 months of compromised training and races.  

I figure that on a flatter course this effort would be roughly a couple minutes faster – 3 minute adjustment on the 4k of climbing offset by the minute or so I gained on the downhill.  

And yesterday I run 17:48 at a 5k time trial on the track. The organizers provided pacers a minute apart, and I chose to stay with the18-minute pace guy.  I diligently stayed right behind the pace guy every step until the final lap when I suddenly found the strength to run a 74 second 400 meters.   

As far as I am concerned at this point, I set my “Personal Bests” this month.  I deem these times my "personal bests” since they are my best races in the last 2 years.  

Anything prior to May 2016 is not worth thinking about.  I am trying to live in the present. Early 2016 is long lost and forgotten back in the distant mists of time.  Moreover from a philosophical perspective the person that competed in those events back in 2015, 2014 and earlier has less and less connection to my current self and has begun to seem like a different person altogether.  

 At my advanced age it becomes discouraging if I dwell on times from the distant past. 

I managed to win this keen silver medal too

3 + 2 Training (FIRST) & April Training Summary

It is April - time to start triathlon training, and my whole

80/20 training program I talked about last month is out the window.

Now I am a FIRST 3+2 runner.

"FIRST 3+2" means three quality weekly run workouts plus "cross-training" sessions.

There is a whole book on this program too -

People feel remarkably passionate about these variations in training programs - check out this coach vilifying the FIRST program (I am endlessly fascinated that people can get so worked up about variations in endurance training). 

I suppose FIRST is not optimal for most people, but for a "Runner with a cross-training problem" as a triathlon teammate once called me, the FIRST method appears to be something of a fit. I mean if there is ANYONE on the planet that is good candidate for the RUN LESS / RUN FASTER program it is me --
- I am a triathlete focusing mostly on running races
- I have experienced more injury problems from increasing mileage than increasing speed
- I have developed efficiency after years of running
- I get bored doing too much volume training

I still cannot really reconcile the 80/20 running with any of the triathlon programs I have tried to follow-- as I have complained about in  All Intensity, All the Time post -- ALL the real triathlon workouts are intense for me, with the only aerobic training being warm-ups and cool-downs.


So here is a snapshot of my APRIL running with roughly 3-4 quality runs per week -- the long runs always included speed toward the end of the session, and most of my Tuesday runs included some bounding drills.  Notably I am  back down to only around 40 kilometers per week of running:

And here is the snapshot of the same training month with all the swim and bike training sessions included (in blue and lavender bubbles):

For the most part my body feels better on this program.

80/20 rule -- 80% easy / 20% intensity (and February/March training summary)

One of my teammates asks me if I really think that the easy runs are essentially "worthless", and that we should just focus on quality training and drills such as the bounding that I had mentioned in the earlier post.  

I tell him that my sense is that training follows the 80/20 rule - intensity (speed, quality) should be no more than 20% of weekly mileage and the other 80% should be at an easier conversational pace.  Moreover I have felt that 80% of my training benefit comes from the 20% quality sessions - and so the easy runs are not "worthless" - just generating less benefit for the time spent.  

I was under the vague impression that I had come upon this keen insight myself,  but then I googled "80/20 endurance training" and it turns out there are whole books on this subject --

I check out a digital copy of 80/20 Running from the Mukilteo Library, skim through it, and learn about the copious research going back to Arthur Lydiard suggesting that this 80/20 training ratio is the optimal formula for improved race performance. The book's author, Matt Fitzgerald, is much more fervent than I have been regarding the benefits of slower runs for depleting glycogen, releasing IL-6 and building cognitive strength.  I have been focused mostly on run training over the past year or so and ask myself whether given my prioritization of group camaraderie, racing frequently and enjoying scenic routes am I at all close to this magic ratio.

Granted, as noted in previous blog post, I have always been the most "polarized of runners" - in fact a coach had pointed to me as an example of extremely polarized training, pointing to all my markedly slow 6 or 7-minute per kilometer sessions posted on Strava juxtaposed with my intense hill repeats and track intervals at a pace bordering on race speed.  

Given my low mileage along with fact that I have been doing all those bounding drills and adding speed at end of a weekly longer run in recent months I wonder if I have started doing too much speed?

So here is a snapshot of my recent training --

 The yellow and dark green bubbles of “intensity” above entail:

- my customary mid-week track intervals - roughly 6k of intensity
- hill repeats (incorporating bounding and sprint) - roughly 2k of intensity
- longer run pick-up pace on about the final 25%  - roughly 4k of moderate intensity

So (taking into account warm-up and cool-down), I am pleased to see that at least for the moment I seem to be hitting this golden ratio, doing 12k of actual intense running out of about 55k of weekly mileage or 22%

The Frugal Triathlete

My payment software generates slick and detailed output (note that I used to work for this financial software company back in Silicon Valley), and I feel compelled to put my triathlon and running costs in US$ into this keen Sankey flow diagram:    

The main observation is that 2017 was a remarkably low budget year — a few years ago when I did an ironman I am sure that I spent at least three times this amount due to the expensive race entry fees, lots of coached group swims, and peer pressure to invest in pricy bike components.  In 2017 I only competed in two relatively smaller and less expensive triathlons in the US. 

The other observation is that running shoes are increasingly expensive as noted in an earlier post despite buying several pairs at half-price and getting a free pair from Brooks.   

Running is supposed to be such a natural, low-cost activity relative to cycling or swimming.. or golf or skiing or sailing.  (Though for lots of runners I know all the physical therapy to deal with running injuries makes the sport quite expensive indeed). 

Other notes:

• I had to add some rough estimates of cash expenditures (Japan is not like China or Sweden with respect to evolving into a cashless society).   
• I am not including certain travel costs associated with participating in my various far-flung triathlon and running events  — travel costs would wildly inflate these figures and I am sure that I would travel anyway 
• Nor did I bother to amortize the cost of my bikes since they are so old and technically fully depreciated  

Bounding drills

My 2018 training is all about bounding and more bounding 

By bounding I mean the explosive skipping exercise as demonstrated here    

I have been meaning to incorporate more “plyometric drills” into my training for a long time.  Probably since 2004 early in my second running life, I was told that easy, volume runs were of limited value and my training sessions would be better spent doing drills. I had been trying to learn how to swim and complete a triathlon, and in swim training drills are paramount, so I was receptive to the idea of focusing on strength and form. 

But I feared that the dramatic impact of bounding might cause injury, I was not 100% clear on proper bounding technique, and of course, most of all,  I just enjoyed easy runs and didn’t care.

Then last year at a Club Northwest workout, the coach Tom had us all do bounding drills and spotting my horrible form, he showed me how by thinking about throwing my hands forward such that even I could achieve adequate technique.  

Just a few months later I attended a running form clinic by Mike Trees who suggested that my easy runs were essentially worthless (for race performance improvement & general  health)*  and after videotaping me running he pointed how relatively little power I was generating each time my foot pushed off the ground (essentially my back leg was far more bent on completing each step than would be optimal).   While my overall running form was otherwise efficient after years of running, I had become lazy and I had lost power as I grew older.  

So I am embarking on a roughly 12 week experiment of 3x per week bounding drills  - mostly on uphills.   I am not expecting a dramatic drop in race times, but am curious if I can discern any improvement in power.  

So far (as you might expect) the shock of this unfamiliar exertion has just made me slower: at this year's Shibuya Ekiden 2.9k  I run 10:16 vs. 9:57 several years ago,

Kanagawa 10k fast course — 37:35  (vs. Tateyama in 37:12 at same time last year), 
and on 5,000 track time trial — 18:36 vs. 18:00 in September.  

* I am not 100% in agreement that my easy run days are totally worthless - recall that I tend toward 80%/20% training philosophy -- 80% of benefit comes from quality sessions, which constitute 20% of training volume
-- and some of volume may be cross-training in my case.