I’ve been a runner for most of my adult life. I have been a “fitness runner” and I have competed in 10K to marathon distance events. It may sound cliché, but I consider running one of my passions. It provides me “thinking time” and I love that I don’t need much gear. I’m proud to have significantly improved my marathon personal best time this past spring at Boston by over 15 minutes with some focus, hard work, and you guessed it...nutrition training by implementing metabolic efficiency and nutrition periodization principles.
One of my A races this year was the Boston marathon (and upcoming is the New York City marathon), but I decided to give the longer course triathlon a go so that I can better “walk the talk”. As a sport dietitian and athlete, it is important for me to understand what my athletes face as physical and nutrition challenges. This applies to daily nutrition, training nutrition, and what happens when we’re working our butts off on the course headed for the finish line.
I have done my share of sprint triathlons in the past decade, which by the way, are too short for my liking! I completed an olympic distance triathlon in July with decent success, physically and nutritionally. My next challenge is next weekend’s Harvest Moon half ironman triathlon in Aurora, Colorado. I’ve continued with metabolic efficiency training during this time, using Generation UCAN as my preferred fuel source before and during higher intensity and endurance training sessions. Training has not been as hard core as I would like (you know all those other life things get in the way!), but I think adequate for me as a baseline.
You may call me a “newbie” to the 70.3 - that’s okay with me. But, I bet you want to know how I plan to fuel for the race, right? Stay tuned for my nutrition plans I will post next week and of course, I will let you know the good, the bad, but hopefully no ugly outcome!
