I ran the Rock n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon this weekend. To say I ran it would be a joke… I made it through. It was humid, hot, whatever… I’m not blaming this one on the weather, or the equipment.
I did not eat breakfast race morning. I always eat breakfast race morning.
I left my gel in the car.
The start line had NO FOOD, and the bathrooms were ill-equipped, at best.
Lovely.
So I get to mile 4 and finally find a bathroom that has what I needed. Great. Back on the course. I’m starving. My body is starting to tell me that bad things are going down, and I know I need to figure something out. I can taste salt in my mouth, and around mile 7, I start getting that oxygen-deprived feeling in my ear like I get at the end of Fran. Not cool. There was not enough Cytomax and water and banana people to get me through this one. And the Cytomax and water was giving me side stitches, which made running even more fun.
I needed real food, which I never got for the whole race, and I paid for it.
There are many lessons here… certainly some around preparedness and the need to establish a “race ritual” and follow it. But I think the biggest lesson here is there’s a fine line that you need to draw between a strict paleo diet and the ability to fuel during a race.
I can’t very well pull out some deli meat, 9 almonds, and some berries at mile 7 for a snack. So I can’t let myself get so far to the real food side of the world that a gel would hurt. But I do need to find a more paleo-friendly gel, because my next 13.1 is going to not suck like this one did.
Thoughts? Grok didn’t have a D-tag stuck to his shoe and he wasn’t timing himself in the hopes to run the 13.1 miles out to the river and back faster than he ever did before. Eric did, and was. And failed.
Everyone has a bad race or two. This is my first, and I want to never have one again.
Holy shit. I haven’t posted in a long time. My bad. My renewed mental focus is clearly due to my first week of the The Label Says Paleo challenge.
I’m going to write the end of this post first, and then I’m going to come back up here and write my original post.
Ok, original post time. There are so many things I want to say, so I think I’m going to limit this to one topic and make more posts (I swear) over the coming weeks.
About 6 weeks ago, I was supposed to start training for the Rock n’ Roll San Antonio 1/2 Marathon. I only needed 6 weeks because, well, I CrossFit, and I know I can run 13.1 miles. It was just a matter of how long it would take to do so, and whether I wanted to PR that race. Then… life kicked in. One bachelor party in Vegas. One trip directly from Vegas to Uruguay. ACL. Swine flu (serisouly, I got fucking swine flu). Recovering from swine flu brought me to 3 weeks out from the race. Then I had a confluence of shitty scheduling on my part (see end of post). Fast forward to 2 weeks out. I decided that with 2 weeks left, it was time to start training.
I went out on a Tuesday morning and did the CFE WOD. 10k, 85% effort for the first 5k, 95% effort for the second 5k. 47:something. Not bad.
Continued my regular CrossFit regimen. 3-on, 1-off. Strength and metcon mixup (which I going to organize soon).
I went out and ran a 10-mile race last Sunday. 1:17:something. 7:41 pace. That puts me spot on for a 4-minute PR for the Rock n’ Roll.
3 weeks of training, folks. 3 weeks. Why? Because I CrossFit. Because I focus on strength and muscular endurance, 13.1 miles at a pretty decent clip isn’t so hard. It just takes a while. Combine this with some proper CrossFit Endurance protocol, and I know I’ll see huge PR’s in my future. Maybe I can get that 25mph bike pace that I need to start placing in Duathlons.
Tomorrow (and I know no one has read this in weeks, so I’m going to assume that no one will show up because of my blog, but if you do, holler!) we’re hosting a free community workout at the Austin High track. We’ll show you some run efficiency skills and drills… breaking running into the “first principles” that Christopher McDougall so eloquently describes when he talks about his book. Then we’re going to put you through a light CFE WOD, some 100s, hopefully using your newfound skills.
Here’s the kicker… are you ready for the kicker?
We’re going to continue these free track workouts. Wednesday mornings (6am) and Thursday nights (6pm) in December, over at the O’Henry track. I’m coaching the Thursday nights and one Wednesday morning… December 3, 10, and 16. Show up. Improve your running. Add some quality to your miles, not trash miles. No. more. garbage. miles.
See ya at the track!
–e
Now for the blur… quick recap since I last posted on my blog (sad, I know. I shouldn’t have to do this)
I participated in the LiveStrong Challenge 5k and 45-mile bike ride, raising over $300 for the LiveStrong Foundation. HUGE thanks to my supporters for donating to a great cause!
I rode a Team Time Trial for the first time on November 2. The Tour de Grune 27.3 miles is pretty tough — hilly, chip seal, some crosswinds. Fun ride, but we didn’t keep the 22 mph pace I wanted. Next year. Moving on…
I ran the Run for the Water 10-miler on November 8. First distance longer than 10k since February, and it went well considering that I haven’t run.
All kinds of cool shit is happening with CrossFit Central Endurance, Pure Austin, The Label Says Paleo… it just keeps coming.
I’m a Nuun Ambassador. Hell yes, Nuun!
I’m starting to see the power of tribes and the communities that can be formed. Mind boggling.
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.
Five or six days per week mix these ele- ments in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.
Regularly learn and play new sports.
This year, I’m going to try something I haven’t done before… racing bikes. You say, “but Eric, don’t you do triathlons and duathlons and stuff?” To that, I say, yeah, but it’s not really racing bikes. You can’t draft, there’s no paceline or peloton, it’s you and your bike, an individual effort. I want to try racing a road bike with other people around. It looks fun (until someone crashes).
So on November 1, I’m going to do a Team Time Trial at the Tour de Gruene, with my buddy Rich (who has no blog… so I can’t link anything to him. we’re working on that). Lance rode this last year, and I think he’s coming back this year, so it’ll be awesome to see that. I just hope we can maintain about 22mph average for the 27 mile distance… we’ll see!
I’ve been traveling a bit lately for work, vacations, Level 1 certifications… and whenever I travel, I always visit a local CrossFit affiliate. I usually just shoot an email off to someone who coaches there, and then I just show up. Here’s the summation of my experience:
Every time I go, the coaches and athletes are super nice.
The movements are exactly the same, the standards vary a little, but it’s remarkably consistent.
Warm up and cool down are always different, and that’s ok. This stuff isn’t boilerplate.
And just to back it up, I’ve been to a bunch of affiliates (in no particular order):
It makes sense that the experience is always good and the workouts are always tough. I read Seth Godin’s Tribes a while back, and CrossFit is actually mentioned in there as an example of a tribe. We work out together, and that’s just the beginning. We eat and drink (too much) together, we travel together; the community is so much more than working out and getting your ass kicked.
It truly is open source fitness.
Signing out from Salt Lake City (where I visited CF Park City three times this week — thanks to Chris and Eric for the awesome classes!)…
In light of my renewed focus on nutrition, I thought it would be a horrible idea to fall into the tried and true tradition of Easter brunch at one of the many restaurants in Austin. Instead, I invited a few friends over for an attempt at Paleo Easter. On the menu:
Lemon tarts, also courtesy of the Performance Menu (see earlier post)
All in all, the paleo pancakes pretty much rocked. We messed around with various toppings: dark chocolate chips in the pancakes (awesome), raspberry topping (awesome), heavy whipped cream topping (awesome again)… all three combined, amazing. Ryon did an awesome job with the eggs and bacon; I screwed up the flipping of the first couple pancakes, and handed that job over to Ryon, who then rocked it.
I did my first intermittent fast from 5pm Saturday through 1pm Sunday… about 20 hours. I even ran 5k Sunday morning, while still fasting! I can say that my performance didn’t degrade at all, I just need to remember to drink a lot more water. I think I’m going to start a weekly IF protocol, just not sure which day — in true CrossFit style, I’m going to keep it interesting and just fast whichever day seems most appropriate.
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