CHAPTER TWELVE
The late Dr. George Sheehan, one of the gurus of our sport, said: ‘It is a good thing to be an athlete at forty, but when you are seventy it’s essential.’ This was a typical Sheehan remark – funny, apparently controversial, but actually founded on good sense. Most people outside the running world would consider it ridiculous for a man of seventy to consider himself an athlete, but Sheehan’s point was that the seventy-year-old athlete really knows his body and takes good care of it.
We have to tread a careful path between extremes. We should be concerned about our health, but not worry too much. We all know the hypochondriac runner, who is never happy unless he has found some interesting complaint from which he suffers – and which he forces the rest of us to suffer. Extreme self-obsession makes you a very boring person. We should be relaxed about the way we live, but not careless. It makes no sense to train for weeks for an event and then rule yourself out by straining your back the day before.
Running should add to your life, not restrict it. The person who is fully fit can cope with life better, eat and drink what he likes and generally enjoy life more than the unfit person.
Remember the old saying – ‘if you don’t want to lose it, use it’. Exercise is good, sloth is bad – except when you have done your exercise and you can really enjoy being slothful without feeling guilty. The runner will run up the stairs rather than use the lift. Over any distance under a mile, the runner will go on foot rather than drive – the difference in time is marginal.
You arrive in a new place and unpack your bag. You’ve had a tiring journey and there is an hour to go before dinner. Do you lie down for half an hour and then go to the bar, do you go out and walk a mile or two, or do you get changed and run for three or four miles? The answer you give is an indicator of your physical, rather than historical, age.
‘Sometimes I would run home from my office at 10 pm after a long day, and it would take me 3 miles to clear my head. How can you enjoy your running when you are under the hammer at work and at home?’
KEVIN SHANNON
Running keeps you healthy
The things which makes you a successful runner – will-power, dedication, the determination to improve – will also make you a successful person in your professional life, and thus may well lead to a conflict of interests. If you are ambitious you want to start earlier, work a bit later, put in that extra visit, and this leaves you less time for running. You will say: ‘I’ll just run a bit more tomorrow, or the next day, or at the weekend’, and then another commitment comes up and you miss the whole week, so you are left with more running to do to catch up, and less time to do it in.
The first thing we would say is: ‘Don’t be afraid to run.’ If the President of the USA can find time for a daily run, so can you. If a business does not realise that a fit disciplined employee is a lot more valuable than a Mr Blobby, then you are in the wrong business. A good firm should provide somewhere to change and shower, so that you can fit in a run before work or in the lunch hour.
What you will have to do is to strike a compromise between the intensity of your work and the intensity of your training. When things are really hectic, you may have to cut back to two short runs during the working week, but with plenty of running at the weekend – and an eye on your diet – you can stay very fit.
Let your running be your therapy. There will be times when you want to go out and push yourself to work off frustration and times when you just want to run peacefully and think about nothing at all, so ignore the schedule – retaining your sanity is more important.
What is important is continuity. Keep it going. Even running twice a week will keep you fit and is much better than letting it go completely. When you retire you will have plenty of time for running, but it will be much harder to get back if you haven’t run for the previous decade.
It is not true that ‘you are what you eat’. Primarily, you are what you are –depending on your genes – and secondarily, you modify your body by your level of activity.
If a pair of identical twins were eating identical diets and one was, say, a professional cyclist, riding for five or six hours a day, while the other spent most of the day in front of a computer or a TV screen, the cyclist would be lean and fit with big leg muscles, while the sedentary one would be soft and pudgy, with more sub-cutaneous fat, weak muscles and an under-developed cardio-vascular system. With the same genes and the same food intake, one would be eating just enough and the other would be over-eating. The most important thing about food is that it provides the fuel for the energy you consume. If you take in more than you burn up, you get fatter. If you burn up more than you take in, you get thinner.
The next most important thing about food is that it provides the building blocks for repair and development, as well as for the enzymes and the hormones which control our development and maintain a constant internal environment. Hence, a lack of something in your diet may upset your equilibrium or prevent you recovering quickly after a hard effort. The lack of certain nutrients may weaken your immune system, making you more likely to pick up infections when under stress.
The third important thing about food is that it must taste good. Eating is one of life’s greatest pleasures and working up an appetite by running makes it even more pleasurable. Moreover, If you don’t enjoy your meals then you probably won’t eat a balanced diet. This is not a cookery book, so you won’t find any recipes, but the best cuisines are those where the food is freshly produced and freshly cooked. The shorter the time from garden to table, the better it tastes and the more good it does, because there are fewer preservatives and the vitamins have not been destroyed by over-cooking.
‘I follow no specific diet, but I tend to eat a lot of carbohydrate and a lot of fruit and salads. I do not eat red meat, but I eat chicken and fish. I drink very little alcohol – about one glass of wine a week! Before morning races I always have Weetabix with honey, as well as toast. I try to eat pasta for lunch and dinner the day before a long race.’
JENNY GRAY
British Vets Champion and World Bronze Medallist
Dieting without exercise is worse than useless. You probably realise that, or you wouldn’t have bought this book. We can assume that the sedentary person eats slightly more per day than he really needs. The excess fuel is converted and stored as fat under the skin. If we drastically cut down our food intake through dieting we will burn up some of that fat to provide us with our daily energy needs, and so lose weight. However, the natu-rally sedentary person, feeling weak through lack of food, will take even less exercise than usual, so his muscles will get even weaker and smaller. When the person relapses to eating his normal diet, without taking extra exercise, the extra weight is regained as fat, not as muscle.
The best solution is to increase the exercise level a little and decrease the food intake a little. There is a very simple weight-loss exercise. Simply press the lips firmly together and move the chin first to the right, then to the left. Repeat this exercise rapidly, twice in each direction, whenever someone offers you a second helping. The other easy ways of cutting down the calorie intake are:
Cut down on sugar in tea and coffee (10g of sugar is 39 calories).
Cut down on butter and marge on your food (10g of butter is 73 calories).
Cut out crisps before meals, chocolate and biscuits after meals.
Stick to three meals a day with no sugary snacks in-between.
Suppose you have put on five pounds over the Christmas holidays. Give yourself five weeks to get this down. If a pound of fat represents twenty miles of running, you need to increase your running a little and cut down the calorie intake a little.
Women have more trouble controlling their weight than men, because their energy consumption is often much lower, for a variety of reasons, but the same principles apply – burn more fuel and take in a little less.
One big advantage of being a runner is that you can eat a lot without putting on weight.For some of us it is the main reason for running!
The more you run, the more you can eat. The needs of the average sedentary man can be met by 2,500 calories a day. The calorie need for an average woman would be around 2,100 per day, mainly because the woman weighs less. A runner putting in 10 miles a day can consume at least an extra 1,000 calories a day – We say ‘at least’, because running speeds up your metabolism, so that after you have been running you continue to burn up fuel at a faster rate.
We do not believe that diet has very much to do with athletic performance. The proof of this is that you can take a World Championships field and find amongst it people of widely different cultures, with enormous differences in their dietary habits, yet the differences in their performances are measured in fractions of a percentage point. There is nothing you can eat which can make you run faster, but we will accept that a diet which is consistently deficient in certain vitamins and minerals will limit your performance. One of the spin-offs of eating a large amount of food is that one is very unlikely to suffer from a deficiency of any of the trace elements. Let’s look at the way we tackle certain prac-tical problems from the point of view of the hard-training runner who is averaging 10 miles a day.
As long as you emphasise variety, you should cover all the the necessary vitamins and minerals, and the problem may be just one of preparing and eating enough ın a day to get the necessary calories. Our rules are:
Each meal should include either fresh fruit or salad, or both.
Each meal should include a major source of carbohydrates, which can be added to as necessary.
Water should be taken immediately after each training session and some food as soon as possible afterwards.
The hard-training athlete may need as much as 4,000 calories a day and since 60–70% of those calories should come from carbohydrates he should be eating over 500g of carbohydrates a day. A large plateful of rice or pasta represents about 4oz (112g) of the food in its dry form, which is mostly carbohy-drate. The high-mileage athlete needs to eat four or five times this amount per day, depending on how big he or she is and how much training is being done. When we are in a training camp, the daily menu looks like this:
Fruit juice or fresh fruit, porridge or muesli, toast and marmalade, a banana, tea or coffee
Soup, with a lot of bread, pasta with a simple sauce, green salad or coleslaw
Fish, chicken or meat dish, with large amounts of rice, potatoes or pasta and a green vegetable; fruit salad or rice pudding, tea or coffee
In addition to this we often have a drink and a banana right after training. Most runners drink at least half a pint of water or dilute juice immediately after each training session, and when the mileage is really high they drink high-carbohydrate drinks such as High Five or Leppin, where you mix the powder in with the water.
We have made no specific mention of fibre content here, because by eating a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables we get all the fibre we need. The same goes for proteins, because in addition to the protein foods of the main course, there is an appreciable amount of protein in bread, potatoes and pasta
A big problem for the modern sportsman is that he is taken away far too often from his stable environment, where he is probably getting an adequate diet and forced to buy food, often from fast-food outlets at stations and airports. The guidelines here are:
Take a packed meal with you, so that you can get what you want.
Carry a water bottle with water or dilute juice in it, so that you don’t get dehydrated.
Carry a reserve of fruit and chocolate and/or muesli bars.
Try to eat a small meal every 3–4 hours, rather than starving for hours and then stuffing yourself when you arrive.
The bottom line is being fit
This is where it’s easy to make mistakes. Athletes, being very nervous, often don’t feel Iike eating, but on the other hand some people eat too close to the competition, then find that their food does not digest as quickly as usual.
You should finish your meal between three hours and five hours before the start time of your race. If you have breakfast at eight and your race is, say one o’clock, that is fine, but if your event is at two-thirty we would recommend having a drink and a snack at eleven. Incidentally, you can go on drinking right up to the start of your race, and in hot weather we would recommend this. Use plain water, squash or an isotonic drink, but avoid taking a lot of tea or coffee because of their diuretic effect. The right things to eat at this stage are those which are easily digested, low in fibre, with a high carbohydrate content.
Recommended foods: White bread or toast, ripe bananas, honey sand-wiches, chocolate bars, low-bran cereals such as cornflakes or rice crispies.
Foods to avoid: High-fibre foods such as muesli, fatty foods such as fish and chips, milk shakes, fried bacon
After a big effort your body is dehydrated and your muscles are low in glycogen. The first need is to replace the fluid, and we would recommend an isotonic drink here, unless you have been running a very long way, in which case a high-carbo-hydrate drink is best.
If you can put back some of the fuel within the first hour after the exercise your recovery rate will be much quicker. The enzymes which were used to break down the glycogen are the same ones that bring about the re-synthesis of glycogen, and they are present in high concentrations in the muscle cells immediately after the exercise – so take in some simple carbohydrate food as soon as you can tolerate it.
If you are running a marathon or taking part in an event which goes on for several hours, your requirements are somewhat different. For a start, because you will be be exercising at a slower rate for some of the time it is alright to have some fat in the meal at the beginning of the day -provided you have time to digest it. It is also a good thing to keep on snacking every hour-and-a-half, so that your glycogen stores can be topped up, and it is essential to keep taking fluids. This is where the commercial replacement drinks come into their own and you should choose one which has a balance of water and salts, plus enough carbohydrate to meet your energy needs, but not so much that it upsets your digestion. In a marathon, you should be taking drinks every three miles, and in a long-running sport you should take drinks at least every half-hour if possible.
There is definite evidence that you can store up extra glycogen just before a long endurance event, if you take in extra carbohydrate at the right time. In the last few days before a marathon you will be tapering off your training, running three or four miles a day instead of ten, hence you will tend to build up your stores even without eating anything special. If you are competing in a marathon on a Sunday, we recommend that the last bit of effort – a brisk six or seven miles –should come on Tuesday afternoon, and after that the runner eats only smallish amounts of carbohydrate for the next 48 hours. Excessive depletion is dangerous. From the Thursday evening, for 48 hours, he should take large amounts of carbohydrate – 10g of carbohydrate per kilo of body weight per day and large amounts of water. This will cause him to put on weight. On the Saturday he should have only a normal evening meal, so as not to upset his digestive system, and the following morning he should have a normal breakfast. The extra glycogen stored can make all the difference to the runner’s energy reserves. If you add on the amount you can take in in energy drinks during the race it means that you can run fast all the way without hitting the wall.
We do need protein, but not in excessive amounts. The recommendation for active athletes is just over 1g of protein for every 1kg of body weight, which means 70–80g of protein per day. This can come equally well from vegetarian or non-vegetarian sources. Remember that there is protein in bread, cereals and many vegetables, as well as in the traditional meat, fish, eggs and milk.
Fats are excellent sources of energy, and for that reason it is easy to eat more fat than we need. For the average person, fats should provide no more than 25–30% of total energy and for hard-training athletes the figure should be less than 20%.
For women runners in particular, anaemia can be a recurring problem, so apart from having regular blood checks, we recommend that you talk to your doctor about taking a course of iron tablets, if necessary.
We were sending marathon training advice to a runner, and all was going well, with personal bests being set at the shorter distances. When it came to the marathon, he was right on schedule until he got very bad cramp and had to drop out. It turned out that he took no salt in his diet. Sodium, Potassium and Chloride ions, known as ‘electrolytes’ are essential to our diet. There is usually more than enough salt (sodium chloride) in our diet, and if you are taking plenty of fruit and fruit juices you will also have plenty of potassium.
Most of the time, plain water will do fine, because you get the salts and glucose in your daily diet. When exercising for a long time, we recommend an isotonic drink which contains the same concentrations of salts as your sweat, with a small amount of carbohydrate. However, if you are burning up a lot of fuel, you will need a high-carbohydrate drink. You can make up your own, by mixing sugar, salt, water and juice, or you can buy one. The carbohydrate concentration should not be higher than 10%, because the stomach can’t handle it. In hotter weather you will drink more, so the concentration can be lower – about 6–7%.
Diet: a summary
Rather than become obsessed by diet, it is best to stick to a few basic guidelines, as follows:
Use your weight as a guide. You should weigh no more at sixty than you weighed at thirty.
Eat regularly, at least three times a day. If you are training hard you may need four small meals rather than three larger ones.
All meals should be predominantly carbohydrate-based (bread, cereals, rice, pasta).
Eat fruit or take fruit juice with every meal.
Eat salad or fresh vegetables at least once a day.
Drink plenty of water.
Humans evolved as omnivores. If you are a vegetarian you may find it more difficult to get all the aminoacids and vitamins which are normally present in meat, but it can be done and there are a number of top-class athletes who are vegetarians. The world’s best distance runners, the Kenyans, have a diet which is low in meat and high in carbo-hydrates, but they do drink a lot of milk.
It used to be thought that abstaining from sex made athletets more aggressive and hence made them perform better, but few would subscribe to that theory nowadays. An athlete performs better when he has a happy and stable background, and as long as he has the time to concentrate on the event. Having sex the night before a race may even be a good thing, because you sleep better afterwards.
The most popular drugs – alcohol and tobacco – will certainly affect performance, but only when used in the wrong way. Alcohol is broken down by the body, quite quickly, at the rate of one unit per hour, and if you are burning up a lot of calories in training you will not put on excess weight from drinking either One distance runner we know drank a bottle of wine every day – but he was running 25 miles every day as well. Our advice is to drink only in the evening, after training, because if you drink at lunchtime you will notice the effects. If you have at least one alcohol-free day per week, you can be sure that there will be no build-up of alcohol in the blood.
What you drink does not matter – it is the total number of units per day which counts. If you have had a lot to drink and have a hangover, drink plenty of water, because it is the dehydration which is the main cause of the hangover. Trying to ‘run it off’ without taking water will only make it worse.
Cigarettes are different, because the effects are cumulative. Not only can the tars cause lung cancer, but the rate of air-flow decreases for every cigarette smoked. The smallest air passages in the lung become inflamed, and you cannot get oxygen into your blood as quickly as a non-smoker. Smoking does not affect sprinters, because they do not depend on oxygen, but it will definitely slow you down if you are running any distance longer than 400m.
Rock and roll will do you no harm at all, unless you get beaten up at a rock concert. Any kind of dancing is good exercise, and an energetic rock or jazz evening can be counted as an extra training session.
JENNY MILLS
Age: 52
Occupation: retired teacher
Personal bests (over-50):
10 miles 67:27 half marathon 87:09 marathon 3hr25
‘My introduction to running was at about the age of eight, running after lambs and bullocks, with myself on one side, the dog on the other and father at the back shouting: ‘stop that one over there’ (usually the wiliest and fastest quadruped in the flock). I have always loved the feeling of running, because I need to expend large amounts of energy. Since I live way out in the Devon countryside and I’m not a team person I can just go for a run and enjoy the scenery.
‘I didn’t join a club until I was nearly 45, but I love the competition. I love going to races, meeting all my mates from other clubs and seeing different places.
‘You may feel that my approach is not technical enough – I just run as I feel in training and in races. I’m lucky to be able to do my running in the middle of the morning, which suits me best – I’m too tired at the end of the day to do much useful training.
‘I don’t race shorter distances because of a circulatory problem. In half marathons I just run as fast as I can and in marathons I ease off if I’m feeling tired and speed up if I’m feeling good. I’d like to reassure older people thinking of running that they don’t have to time every session, don’t have to chase PBs and don’t have to train for months on end for a marathon; just treat them as an adventure and you’ll have a brilliant day out.
‘I can’t really choose a single highlight. Out of 81 races in the past 21/2 years I’ve been privileged to come in the top three in 47 of them, and all of them gave me a thrill. I loved the Clarendon Way (off-road), the Cornish Marathon and the 5-4-3-2-1 event (not a race) organised by Salisbury fire station.
‘The Revelstoke coastal run in South Devon is wonderfully scenic and quirky. The course goes along the foreshore, up the slipway and into the pub, where you take your number off and give it back for next year. Everyone gets a medal, presented by the vicar, and that’s it! Despite the absence of prizes, well over 100 runners enter, and this sums up the sheer fun of the sport for me.
‘I feel that as you get older it is essential to keep on moving your goalposts, otherwiseyou are going to get frustrated. I have seen a lot of people suffer because they can’t cope with getting slower. They train harder and harder to stay in the same place, and eventually they crash.’