Eat right, run slow

An avocado a day keeps the doctor away...

I have finally got a copy of the book "Racing Weight", and it is very interesting reading. The diet part focuses mostly on eating foods that are dense in nutrition. The idea is to put as much nutrients as possible in our body per calorie. Even before starting to read the book, I started to change some of my eating habits. Trying to eat foods that are as little processed as possible. Paying less attention to calories and more attention to what good a particular food does to the body. Fortunately I am surrounded by many friends who know a lot about nutrition, and I am learning a lot from them.

Interestingly, nutrition advice among my Norwegian running friends and that among my Turkish running friends is of different type. In Bergen the discussion is mainly about foods that enhance performance, with red beets being the star of the show. I have strong belief in red beets, and in periods I use it in powder form (Stamox) before training and races. In Istanbul, though, the discussion is more about what foods are good for runners in the sense of repairing the body. There the star of the show is turmeric. It is supposed to have anti inflammatory effects and very good for joints and tendons. So I try to add it to my dishes as much as possible. I bought it in powder form, and it does not have a very distinct taste. Among other things that I have made a part of my diet are avocado and hemp seeds, full of proteins and healthy oils. I try to eat an avocado a day, and I sprinkle hemp seeds on almost everything nowadays.

When it comes to weight management, it seems that cutting down on meats, even lean and clean ones, is a good idea. There is a lot of evidence that replacing lean meats with lean fish is beneficial, not only for the weight but also for cardiovascular health in general. Also trying to get some of your proteins from beans instead of meat or fish could be wise. It turns out that our diet is too acidic, and meats add to the level of acidity in our blood. Trying to achieve a more alkaline diet seems to have many benefits, in particular for runners. Running can result in inflammations and toxins, and an alkaline diet aims to reduce these. On top of all that, with an alkaline diet our body is supposed to be able to burn fat easier.

Speaking about burning fat: I am running too fast. "Don't boast" you're thinking now. But it's not a good thing. Most of my training is too fast and too hard. I know just too well that all longer runs should be at easy pace, and hard effort should be limited to short intervals, but I have hard time implementing it. This is what a long and slow run does:

1. Burns fat
2. Does not make you exhausted
3. Does not make you hungry

A tough run does quite the opposite. You burn mostly carbohydrate, you get exhausted, and you are super hungry for the rest of the day. You might easily end up eating more than you burn. My goal now is to be more strict in sticking to my own plan for every run, and not get carried away when I am running with a group of friends.

Find out what is right for your body, and do it.

Seeking back to my roots? Or is it all in the head?

Talk to your muscles and they might respond.

Healing from an injury turns out to be a tedious and fascinating process. Even long after the injury is physically healed, you might feel actual pain in the problem area. In the end pain is simply some signals that your brains sends, and the brain turns out to work in mysterious ways.

During my therapy to heal from my upper hamstrings tendinopathy, at some point my physiotherapist Ane started to push me to start running again although I still had pain. She told me that the brain works to protect the injured area by sending out pain signals, even when the injury is largely gone. The brain seems to think “Best to be on the safe side, let’s give her some pain so she lets that area in peace”. In fact, this is exactly the reason a good physiotherapist will never order you to simply rest. With exercises like the HSR training that worked so well for me, you are convincing your brain to work to heal the area, insisting on using those muscles so that they are not just left on their own. As prescribed, my injury got better and better, albeit very slowly, and then something very unexpected happened as soon as I moved to Istanbul two months ago. The pain immediately and suddenly disappeared!

Already the morning after I arrived in Istanbul I started running with Team Instrunbul. And to my big surprise I felt no pain. It was the first time I ran completely pain-free in two years! Since then, running with them four times a week, I got faster and faster, still no sign of the pain in my butt. Other small pains came and went, something I consider normal for all runners, I had to be cautious from time to time, but no pain in the butt. I think this again shows that pain is something very strange. As I arrived in Istanbul, everything was in a new setting, there were so many new things to think about, and being excited and anxious about all these things, my brain forgot about the pain. At least that’s how I interpret the sudden disappearing of the pain.

Now, as soon as I am back in Scandinavia for a short time, the pain in my butt is back! What to make out of it??? I was running in Stockholm on Friday. The weather was dry but really cold and windy, and my butt twas hurting all the time. In fact it started giving me some signals already the day before, as I was on my way to Stockholm. Did I really do something to make the injury worse, or is it simply my brain that recalls how everything was last winter when it was at its worse and most painful? Perhaps my body, after all, functions better in its birth place than in the place where it has been living for the past 30 years? In fact, searching a little bit on the subject reveals that when running in the cold, we are actually more exposed to injuries. Now I understand better what many of my experienced running friends from Bergen told me when I was leaving for Istanbul: “it will be so wonderful to run in warmer weather”. 

One of the new things I tried in Istanbul, is going for a full body massage every now and then. It is not the kind of painful deep tissue massage I tried in Norway before. It is mostly pleasant, although some hard pressure is applied to problem areas. One thing that my massage therapist makes a point of, exactly in line with what Ane was telling me, is activating the brain to heal a problem area. He says that the aim of the massage is not to make muscles feel good, but rather find the problem points and push them so that the brain realizes that something has to be done there. He also tells me to talk to my muscles. Massage the hurting muscle lightly, and speak to it, like “Don’t worry, you will be fine, the pain will be gone very soon”. If you think this is too much Hocus Pocus, think again. It is simply making your brain aware of that particular area, and putting the brain and the muscle in connection. The brain has so many things to take care of, and it chooses the easiest way to deal with things. If you function well enough with some pain, it says “Well, that’s going fine, no need for me to put any effort to heal that” or “Let the pain stay there so that she will not push it too hard”.

When I say that pain is simply signals, don’t take me wrong. The pain is real. It is really there. But it does not always mean that something is physically wrong. Especially if it concerns an old injury, it might sometimes be that your brain just sends you these signals out of habit or because it is reminded of something. If you have a long lasting pain which nobody can figure out what to do about, you might want to ask your physiotherapist about HSR (heavy slow resistance) training. It really works wonders. When it comes to new pain though, which was not there before, be much more careful! Backing off a little bit on running as soon as you feel the pain, and taking it easy for a few days, might make it disappear again. After all, being cautious and not running a couple of weeks is infinitely better than not being able to run for many months, like I had to learn the hard way.

Listen to your body, and make your brain listen to you.

Time to add new ingredients to weekly routine

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. (Mark Twain) 

Since I arrived in Istanbul, I have been running four days a week. What has stabilized itself as a routine by now is: 10-12 km at pace 5:30 Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 12-15 km on Saturdays, and up to 20 km on Sundays. The longer the run, the slower it is. Since things are going well, I feel that I can do more, but I want to keep Fridays and Mondays run-free to rest and to separate the long weekend runs from the harder efforts of the weekday mornings. I have been wondering whether I should run on Wednesdays, too. Perhaps just a slow and not so long recovery run, but I am cautious and I don't want to get tangled in a new injury due to overuse. To get the recovery benefits of a slow restitution run, without wearing out my legs, I started swimming instead. From now on Wednesdays are swim days!

I have for the first time tested my sports watch for indoor swimming, and it works surprisingly well. You enter the length of the pool (the one of my university is 33m) and then the watch keeps track of the distance, as it detects the change of direction every time you hit the end of the pool. I am a bit slower than I expected. It took me one hour to swim 2000 m. Last summer I swam 1500m in 33 minutes at Bergen Open Water competition, but that was with a wet suit, which really increases speed. And this time it was, after all, supposed to be recovery and not too fast. The first week of my swimming gave actually more swimming than expected. Yesterday I went swimming with Polen, a running friend who is a professional swimmer. She pinpointed a series of things that I can do to improve my swimming. There are several things I have been doing wrong all these years! As soon as she showed me, it all made perfect sense. But to actually put it into practice and coordinate all body parts to work as they should, will take quite a bit of time. So, now my swimming has even a more defined goal than before.

In addition to running and swimming, I am continuing three days of Pilates a week. I like the combination of strength training and stretching it gives. Already after one and a half months I feel that my back is more straight and my right side, which has been very tight and tense since the injury,  is looser and more relaxed. My core is at least as strong as before, as there is a lot of emphasis on the abs, but I might have lost strength at other places, since I am not lifting weights the same way as before. On the other hand, I make sure to get a session of HSR training once a week, to make sure that my injury stays away. The good news is that my hamstrings tendon does not hurt at all anymore when I do these exercises.

All in all, this gives nine workout sessions a week. I try to keep one day completely free of training, but it is not so easy. In fact I should also be doing intervals, but I don't know when. Perhaps I can exchange one of the weekly runs with an interval session. At least, the very earliness of the morning runs is a great benefit to be able to fit all these things into a weekly schedule on top of a full working week and quite a bit of social activities in the evenings and weekends.

It's a busy life...