Back on track... sorta

Well, after yesterday's lack of working out, I certainly made up for it today. It was my running clinic night and I knew that hills were on the menu, but I never really know how far we'll go in total. Tonight, we did five hills but our total mileage was just over 10K because we had a long run to get to/from the hills. I didn't push things too hard because I know that I have another tough workout tomorrow night.

This running on back-to-back nights thing has been a big experiment for me, because I normally don't like to (or rather, my body doesn't like me to). And it's been especially challenging because every second week I have back-to-back hard run nights with hills and/or speed those two days. So far, I've held up OK. After my race at the end of March, I'll go back to running only twice a week and increase my cycling to three times a week.

I'm scheduled to run 20K (12.5 miles) this Sunday, which is the longest distance I've done since my half marathon in November.

My training stats for this month are pretty impressive (well, the running stats are):

Running: 136.1K (84.6 miles)
Cycling: 221K (137 miles) - all of this on my trainer
Swimming: 3,250 meters (pathetic)

I also did some cross training in the form of:

Elliptical: 14.5K (9 miles)
Strength/Pilates: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Today's food was pretty good (I didn't log it, though). I had my normal breakfast, some yogurt for a snack, Lean Cuisine for lunch and some toast with natural peanut butter and some chocolate soy milk for a snack before my run. I had some leftover w/w pasta with pesto sauce after my run. And the last 1/3 of the carton of B&J's so it's now completely gone. Oh, and a glass of wine.

I'm reading this Carmichael book on nutrition for athletes and I may have to start increasing my calories. I haven't finished reading the book, but he seems to be suggesting keeping your intake of calories consistent on a daily basis during the four phases of your training year, regarless of the amount of activity you do each day. I find that a little weird, but I'm willing to give it a try. Right now, I take in the appropriate number of calories on a daily basis, depending on how many calories I expend through BMR and exercise, less 500 calories.

So, if I take the total amount of calories I burn in a week, subtract 3,500 (for a 1-lb weight-loss) and then divide the rest by seven, that should be what I eat daily. And he has a formula for how to calculate those calories based more on how many grams of carb and protein you need based on your body weight. I think I need to finish reading the book before I make any drastic changes to my diet, though.

But he did have two interesting points:

1) When you change your diet drastically, it takes your body a while to adapt to the changes as it isn't getting the food it expects to be getting. He suggests changing just one meal a day (i.e., breakfast) for a week before then changing your lunches for a week, then finally your dinners the following week.

2) Our bodies don't work on a 24-hour clock that re-sets at midnight as far as calorie consumtion and expenditure are concerned, so tracking things on a weekly basis might make more sense than daily. That way you can cut yourself some slack for those days where you go over calories because as long as it all balances out over the week (or, in my case, comes under), then you'll be fine.

Food for thought (sorry, bad pun).