Race Report - Davis Stampede

I did my first “race” of the year and boy was it a nice day to run! Love early spring in Northern California. After a season last year of two Ironman distance races and no events less than 4-5 hours, a race where you are pushing your limits for about an hour and 20 minutes is somewhat painful (but in a good way). I hadn’t been running much after last season and then started ramping it up recently again around mid-December and then even more when I added a March marathon to my 2011 schedule. In addition, I hadn’t done an open half-marathon for two years and didn’t really know what to expect. My PR for the distance was 1:22:15 and I did that on a flat, fast course (Shamrock'n) in West Sacramento in 2009. This course in Davis was also supposed to be flat and fast, so I figured I could come close to that. The X-factor was how I would respond after a couple of heavier weeks of running and a very short taper / recovery leading into the race.

Warmup consisted of a few dynamic stretches and a light jog with my friend Bernhard, who was also running. My strategy for the day was to go out at about 6:20 per mile and then try to bring it into the 6:10-6:15 range for the last 7-8 miles and see how that felt. Then in the last 2, I was hoping to really push. I really wanted to focus on learning how to run with discomfort, stay inside my own head, not focus on how long till I can stop, and not let any negative thoughts take over. The power of positive thinking can go a long way and I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of the mental game this time around. Push myself into discomfort and then hold it there and learn to deal with it. From a nutrition standpoint, my intention was to have a gel about 20-30 minutes before start and then have another gel about half way. At each aid station, I would attempt to get a swig or two of water or Gatorade down. For a race that’s less than an hour and a half, you can get away with less. Plus, I had recently had some metabolic testing done and know that at this approximate pace I burn 18-20 calories per minute with about 5 of those calories being from fat and ~15 of those calories being from CHO. At 15 calories per minute and 80 minutes, I knew I would burn through about 1200 calories of CHO. I should have plenty of “juice” for that effort, especially with a gel 20 minutes before hand and a good breakfast 2-3 hours before the race.

I lined up with my friend about 3-4 people back from the front line and we waited for just a few minutes to the start. At the start, I took it out fairly hard to try to get around some people and then tried to find a groove. The first time I looked at my watch, I was around a 6 minute pace – a touch fast, so I needed to settle in to a steadier effort. I started early on with my internal dialogue (“relaxed, calm, focused, strong”) and tried to focus on that for a while and just run at a “comfortably uncomfortable” pace. It was a bit windy, but the course has a lot of turns so sometimes you were going with a nice tail wind and sometimes you were right into a stiff headwind. For the hard sections into the wind, I was trying to get behind people as best as possible. But the 10k’ers turned off pretty early and the race thinned out. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide, so I just rolled along. I didn’t get passed in the 2nd half of the race, which was nice, and I gradually creeped up on and passed about 3-4 more guys in the 2nd half.

Mile splits are below. I'm pretty frustrated with the HR data from my Garmin – I thought I had that fixed, but I still get junk HR data, even after changing the battery. I think my HR was in the high 160s through most of it and then raised into the 172-175 range by the end. From a pacing standpoint, mile 2 was my slowest, and miles 3, 4, 5, and 6 I tried to remain steady in my 6:20-ish pace. According to my watch, I was a little fast, but the mile markers didn’t match my watch exactly, there seemed to be about a 5 second discrepancy. Mile 8 was slower mostly because it was windy and I was on my own and it was getting hard to maintain that pace.

1 00:06:06
2 00:06:21
3 00:06:16
4 00:06:12
5 00:06:16
6 00:06:11
7 00:06:09
8 00:06:18
9 00:06:12
10 00:06:11
11 00:06:05
12 00:06:14
13 00:06:11
14 00:01:22

Around miles 7 and 8, I was working pretty hard to NOT think about the finish and how long I had left… staying focused on the internal self-talk and staying positive about being “relaxed, calm, focused, and strong.” It worked pretty well and I maintained a steady pace. Around mile 10 and 11, I started heading back towards town and passed 1 or 2 more people. The last two miles were tough; I was breathing harder (although still mostly in an every two step pattern), my legs were starting to really fatigue, but I still hung onto a <6:15 pace. Last time I ran a hard half-marathon, I was doing about 6:20-6:25 at the end so I really wanted to hang tough those last 2 miles. I rolled back into town and a guy told me he thought I was about 9th or 10th overall (it turned out he missed a few people). I made the last two turns, continued to push hard, and rolled to the finish in what I thought was a little under 1:22. Turns out they had me at 1:22:05 for a 10 second PR (3rd AG and 13th OA). My watch had me at 6:10/mile and a 13.22 mile run so it is either a little off or the course was a touch long. Regardless, I was satisfied with how the race went – I think I dealt with the discomfort better than I had before and next time around I can build on this... In summary, a good experience racing on a beautiful day with a good result.

Metabolic efficiency - are we sugar burners?

Disclaimer: I am not a sports nutritionist.

I first heard about the concept of metabolic efficiency when I went to the USAT coaching certification clinic. One of the speakers there was a sports nutritionist named Bob Seebohar who talked about this concept of how we can potentially manipulate our bodies into burning more fat during exercise. Why would you want to do this? Well, for anyone who has done a long (3+ hours) event, like a long-course triathlon or a century ride or something else where you are exercising for a long time, you may be familiar with the idea that your digestive system gets to the point where it decides it’s not happy with anything you ingest. When we exercise, our body shunts blood to our active muscles so they have the nutrients and fuel they need to keep working. However, this means we are getting less blood to our digestive system and our digestive system cannot process what we take in (very well, unless we stay at a low-enough intensity). So as our long event goes on and we take in more and more sports nutrition products, gel, sports drink, etc., the concentration of stuff in our gut just keeps going up and up while our body continues to shunt blood to our other muscles to keep powering our bodies forward. This is when things start to go south. For anybody who has done a long event, you’ve probably seen somebody doubled over along the course (particularly rampant at Ironman events) and unfortunately their nutrition is now coming back up (literally) because their body has decided to shut down. It goes like this: no fuel getting absorbed because we are exercising and taking in too much too fast resulting in a high concentration in our gut -> we feel worse and worse because no fuel is getting absorbed -> we take in more and more gel, etc. thinking that will solve the problem -> body shuts down and eventually forces contents of gut back up. Not pretty. What’s the answer? Burn more fat during exercise. Even a well-trained athlete only has maybe 2,000 calories of glycogen in their muscles and liver ready to act as fuel for exercise. However, even the leanest person has 80,000+ calories of fat to use to fuel exercise. You can see how 2K calories won’t last long if you are burning only sugar.

So how do we change all this? How can we make our bodies better “fat-burners?” In Bob Seebohar’s book, he suggests, and presents a fair amount of evidence that you can do this by:

1) Training at an aerobic intensity

2) Manipulating the macronutrients of your daily nutrition

Item number 1 is fairly straightforward – most of your training should be at an easy/moderate intensity. Do the hard stuff sparingly (for lots of reasons). Because of this, it may be easier to try improving your metabolic efficiency during a time of year when you are not racing as much and concentrating on building a big aerobic engine. Item #2 is about what you eat on a day-to-day basis MOST of the time. I say MOST of the time because I believe that if we are too black-and-white about anything, it can backfire. This is why most “diets” don’t work. If you completely cut stuff out, then it’s no good and our nature is to end up “falling off the wagon.” What you do on a consistent basis 90% of the time is key - keeping things simple and doing everything in moderation. In Bob’s book, he describes a periodized nutrition plan where the focus most of the year is on eating fruits and vegetables, low-fat protein, and healthy fats. You don’t need as much whole grain as you think. Sufficient carbs to support your training come from the fruits and vegetables (and other sources, dairy, etc.). Only when you are in a heavy period of training you supplement with some whole grains. This flies in the face of most of what has been preached to us endurance athletes for a LONG time. The entire sports-nutrition-product industry has been created to “fuel” our workouts. However, what do you think people ate prior to Gatorade and prior to Gu? Real food. Simply eat a well-balanced snack prior to your training sessions and then do the same immediately after. This is enough. During training, particularly if it’s easy/moderate intensity, we don’t need all the extra sugar. It teaches our body to be more efficient at burning sugar. And we know that burning sugar can only last so long. If we can be more metabolically efficient, we can go longer with a lot less risk of any GI distress.

Me on the treadmill (note the mask measuring RQ).

How do we know or measure any of this? Do we have to just guess? I am fortunate to have a friend who actually IS a sports nutritionist and has the equipment and capability to do metabolic efficiency testing. Sheila Leard (www. MyNutritionZone.com) is a registered sports dietician and can perform this kind of testing. By analyzing the content of what you breathe in and out, you can understand the blend of carbohydrate (CHO) and fat you are burning at different exercise intensities. This is VERY powerful information. For example, with a marathon on the horizon, using this data, I can understand EXACTLY what intensity (for running pace and HR) I can shoot for and be confident how much carbohydrate I am going to burn through the duration of the event. I now know what intensity to run for whatever duration I am interested in. I can also devise a fueling strategy based on this and practice it in training. The test is not complex or intimidating. You can do it either on the bike or on the treadmill and simply involves wearing a mask while you ride or run. Here’s a link to a video of me on the treadmill during the test: http://qik.ly/BE8pH3Nk3uESI5yqf4KsQsJ. You do an easy warm-up and then progressively increase the treadmill speed at set intervals, all the while, monitoring what’s called the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) via the mask and your heart rate via a heart rate strap/monitor. The RQ is the ratio of CO2 expired to O2 inspired and tells us how our body is handling the exercise intensity, by either burning mostly fat, some of both fat and CHO, or mostly CHO. The point where it changes to mostly CHO is called the crossover point. Ideally, you want to stay below this for much of your training, and combining that with daily dietary manipulations, you can teach your body to be more metabolically efficient.

My results, zoomed in to see the range of interest.

My results were very informative. In the plot, you can see I was burning a decent mix of fat and CHO up until we took it from 8 (~7:30 min/mile) to 8.5 mph (~7:00 minutes per mile) at which point my body transitioned to burning mostly CHO. Not only that, now I KNOW how many calories I burn per minute and what the blend is between fat/CHO at each intensity. Perfect. I can come up with training and fueling plans optimized for my upcoming races! It takes out the guesswork and makes me confident I can achieve the goals and performance targets I have set for myself! I am very excited about this concept and continue to work on the dietary changes myself. With two toddlers at home and a busy life, I will admit, it is tough, but like I said, I try to do well MOST of the time. I am also very excited about this concept and using the metabolic information with the athletes I coach. Fueling in endurance sports is definitely a trial-and-error process, but this testing helps take the guesswork out of it and the athlete and I can work together to come up with a fueling strategy more specific to their race circumstances and goals.