Tag Archives: recovery

Food, Health, Running

3 Months as a Vegan

I decided to go vegan almost 3 months ago. Something that my past self couldn’t have conceived. That version of myself also wouldn’t have considered giving up bread or cheese, and I gave up both well before giving up meat. My sugar addiction was much more difficult to break than giving up any of the other things, though.

The last 3 months have been great. I felt better going gluten free. I felt better giving up dairy. And now I feel even better. I’ve noticed a few things, good and not so good. I’ll start with the not so good.

I used to feel bloated fairly often when my colitis was active. I haven’t had that feeling in a long time. However, I sometimes look like I did back then. Because I’m running more, I’m also eating more. Some days I eat 4000-4500 or more Calories. That’s a large volume of food when all you eat are fruits, vegetables and very occasionally some nuts. When I eat a mixing bowl sized salad, a whole watermelon, a 64 ounce smoothie or some combination, it has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is an expanding stomach. I sometimes feel like the pictures I’ve seen of eating contests winners, belly bulging.

It’s a little funny since one of the reasons I got into running after the Army was because I thought I was getting a bit of a skinny guy gut. It doesn’t bother me so much now, because I know it’s all food, and it’ll pass. The part that I really don’t like is that after a huge meal, usually dinner, I’ve stuffed myself so full that it’s harder to breathe deeply, there’s just not room for my diaphragm to expand all the way. It’s also a little tough to bend over with such a full belly. But it usually doesn’t last too long. Maybe I should try to more evenly space my consumption throughout the day. If I’m going to have such a full gut, I’d rather it be later in the day, after going running.

Related to the large volumes of food I consume, my weight tends to fluctuate a lot more in a single day than previously. This doesn’t really bother me. It’s just interesting. When I wake up, before I eat or drink anything and after my morning constitutional, I’ve been as low as 153 lbs on two occasions the day after long runs. The most recent was Sunday, July 6, the day after running 21 mi with 4500 ft gain. After my last meal on Sunday night, I weighed 165 lbs. Over the whole 3 months, my highest weight was 168 lbs.

I’ve always been skinny, so 12 lbs certainly seems like a lot. At a bit over 7% of my body weight (calculated at either end of the spectrum), that weight loss would be enough for me to be medically pulled from some ultra’s that I’d like to do eventually.

It’s not that drastic, however, when I think about what actually makes up most of the weight. While I am eating a large volume of food, being fruits and vegetables, much of that weight is water and fiber. The fiber does it’s job and flushes waste out of my system. I rehydrate after running, but I wake up once or twice in the night to pee, and sweat some amount overnight, so there’s some lost water weight as well. I haven’t weighed all the food I eat in a day, but the daily effects on my weight don’t surprise me.

Moving on to the good stuff. I seem to recover faster. This is entirely subjective and anecdotal, but I’m convinced, and that’s all that matters. I can’t really compare to my first two 50k races, because I’ve trained much better this year.

I started eating this way about 2 weeks before my April 50k, which had 1000 ft gain. I ran another 4 weeks later with 2000 ft gain. I ran a third 4 weeks after that with 6500 ft gain. I started running again 2 days after each race. My first run after the April race was rough. For about the first mile, my glutes and calves felt like I was getting punched with every step, and felt like I was wearing lead soled shoes. My legs were better for the first run after the second race, just a little sore and heavy. After my third race, I was a little sore for a day. While my legs were kind of heavy for the first post-race run, I felt fine. By the weekend after each race, I was raring to go for a long run. I held myself back from a full distance long run to make sure I recovered, but I went longer than I had written on my training plan several months ago.

I also feel better when I wake up. For the last year or so, prior to going vegan, I regularly woke up with red, sore eyes. I’m not sure the last time it happened, but it was at least a couple months ago. Also, most of my life I’ve woken up with a generally unwell feeling. I imagine it’s not that uncommon, but it sucks and I won’t accept it as normal.

I can’t say that I’ll never eat meat again. I gave up eating animal products strictly for health reasons. The same sort of reasons I gave up gluten, followed by all grains, sugar and processed foods (there are many vegan processed foods too). Someday I may give it a try again to see if I notice any change. For now, I’m sticking with what’s working, fresh fruits and vegetables.

Health, Sleep

I Love Sleep

I’ve had an on again off again love and hate relationship with sleep. I’ve had several bouts of insomnia, lasting from days to over a year. Much like many other things, my outlook on sleep has changed a bit as I’ve grown a little older.

I’ve always liked sleeping, but until fairly recently I hated the necessity of sleep. I wished that I could find a way to sleep less without being tired. I thought I was wasting time by sleeping. Time that I could spend doing other things, not that I was being especially productive anyway, but that’s beside the point.

My ambition for running longer distances was actually a catalyst for me to change my thoughts on sleep. Several months ago, I came across Michael Arnstein, the Frutarian. I watched a number of YouTube videos of him speaking. One thing that he emphasized helped him with recovery was getting enough sleep. “Enough” for him was 8-10 hours of sleep a night, possibly up to 12 after a 100 mi race. I already knew that sleep is when our bodies do much of the repair processes. But it gave me something specific to think about in that context, rather than some nebulous idea of repair or regeneration. It’s pretty amazing to feel the difference between the evening after a long or otherwise hard run and in the morning following a full night of sleep.

I’ve been a night owl as long as I can remember. I’ve tried to fight it on a number of occasions, but I end up just cutting back on sleep to get up earlier, rather than going to bed earlier. Since making the connection between my body’s regeneration during sleep and run recovery, I’ve given up the fight. I go to bed when I’m tired and get up when I feel I’m well rested. It’s usually 8-10 hours. Occasionally, it’ll dip to 7 hours or go up to 11. It helps that I work from home and make my own schedule.

You might think, “well that’s great, Brian, but I don’t work from home, nor do I have a flexible schedule.” When I do have something that I have to get up for, I occasionally cut my sleep short, depending on the situation. I’ve also tried another of Arnstein’s suggestions a few times, taking melatonin about an hour before I want to sleep. It works OK, but not great. I count back 9 hours from when I need to get up and take .5-1 mg of melatonin. One thing about melatonin: I’ve had some crazy dreams after taking it. Apparently, people into lucid dreaming like to use melatonin to try inducing lucidity.

If I need to make a pretty drastic sleep schedule change, I sometimes take a few days to adjust. I might sacrifice an hour or two of sleep the first day. Then I’ll adjust my my schedule in stages. The Rattlesnake Ridge 50k I did last month started at 7:30 am. Accounting for getting ready, drive time and check-in, I had to get up no later than 4:45 am. Around then went to bed about 3-4 am on average and woke up around noon, give or take. Two days prior, I set an alarm for 10:30 am, and got about 7 hours. That night, I got to sleep between 1-2 am and set an alarm for 8:30 am. I took some melatonin the night before the race and got to sleep around around 10 pm. While not ideal, it worked. Next time around, I’ll give it a couple more days.

For those of you that have to be to work or school on time at the same time every day, or get your kids and family ready for their day, you can create a flexible sleep schedule enabling you to sleep until you’re well rested. Figure out your range of needed sleep. It might take a little experimentation, probably best to do on a weekend or otherwise when you don’t have to be up at a specific time. Results might be skewed if you’re going from sleep deprivation directly to sleeping to well rested. Until you narrow it down, start with 8-10 hours. Count back 10 hours from when you need to get up. That’s your bedtime. Then sleep until you’re well rested. If it’s only 8 hours, you now have 2 hours extra in the morning for whatever you want — exercise, read, have an awesome breakfast, meditate, or whatever.

I love sleep, and sleep loves me. Even though I used to think I could accomplish more by sleeping less, I’m happier getting enough sleep than having that extra time awake each day but being tired all the time. I’m not convinced I got more done over the long run anyway. Not only am I happier, I also feel a lot better throughout the day. Not being tired all the time is awesome.