Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The runner's diet
Just finished the chapter on diet in Hal Higdon's excellent book Marathon. The gist of it is that you should stick to a healthy diet (i.e. low fat, lots of complex carbs), and up the carbs to meet your caloric needs as you train harder.
Part of me hoped that it would say "once you are seriously training, eat whatever you want", but it didn't. I see I will still have to think twice about that extra piece of pizza, or that ice cream... But the better part of me finds this encouraging, in two ways.
First, this advice sounds so sensible. I don't want this marathon project to take me too far from normal life. I'm a busy guy with a lot of responsibilities, so I don't feel that comfortable going off on some wacky quest. The closer this is to normal, healthy habits, the better. In other words, this is the way I want to live anyway, only more so.
Second, this will set me up well for the reentry into normal life when the marathon thing is done. I don't intend on doing this more than once. Maybe at the most I could see myself doing a marathon once a year for a few years, but probably, this is a one time deal. So, I'm going to have to get right back into the normal routine starting November. If I were eating a box of Cheese-Its and a big bowl of ice cream every night while training, it would be hard to break the habit.
Part of me hoped that it would say "once you are seriously training, eat whatever you want", but it didn't. I see I will still have to think twice about that extra piece of pizza, or that ice cream... But the better part of me finds this encouraging, in two ways.
First, this advice sounds so sensible. I don't want this marathon project to take me too far from normal life. I'm a busy guy with a lot of responsibilities, so I don't feel that comfortable going off on some wacky quest. The closer this is to normal, healthy habits, the better. In other words, this is the way I want to live anyway, only more so.
Second, this will set me up well for the reentry into normal life when the marathon thing is done. I don't intend on doing this more than once. Maybe at the most I could see myself doing a marathon once a year for a few years, but probably, this is a one time deal. So, I'm going to have to get right back into the normal routine starting November. If I were eating a box of Cheese-Its and a big bowl of ice cream every night while training, it would be hard to break the habit.
