Miles, More Miles, And A Lot Of Meat
It's the day after Christmas, and as I sit here writing, we have less than three months to go until the start of RUN2HEAL, my 3000-mile journey to prevent and treat child abuse. So how's the training going?
It really couldn't be any better.
Run Training
As you may know, I am embracing interval training, which some call "The Galloway Method," as that is how I expect to complete 30 miles a day, broken into two, 15-milers, one in the morning and one in the evening, 5 days a week, while on the road. The interval schema I have chosen is 3/1 which is 3:00 running, 1:00 walking, over and over and over again to promote active recovery.
I have trained and tested the protocol extensively, on very long runs, focusing first on the 15-mile time, and then on how my body feels as I continue to complete greater distances. The latest test took place at the Jacksonville Marathon, December 17, with a longtime running buddy.
The goal is always completing 15-miles in under 3 hours (5 miles an hour) with general ease. We rolled into mile 15 of the Jacksonville Marathon in ~2:40, and feeling pretty good. The question, naturally becomes, "how often can I do this over and over and over again?"
Nutrition
I am 1000% convinced that a keto lifestyle is the fountain of the youth. Every style of nutrition has passionate proponents and opponents, but that doesn't interest me. What interests me is that I
- Perform better
- Recover better
- Feel better
- Think better
- Behave better
- Look better
I will be 48 years old this year and I feel like I'm 22. I have studied keto extensively, and while I could spew a handful of thought-provoking comments about the nutritional lifestyle, I will leave you with this - abundant amounts of sugar make me sick-feeling, inflamed, lazy, and worse, on the crash, I crave more. It's a vicious cycle, that pretty much all of America is trapped inside.
I ran the entire 26.2 miles of the Jacksonville Marathon without ingesting any additional calories at all. None. I relied on ketones for energy, both from food and my own body fat.
Once you lose the intense cravings for sugar, the most evident and difficult constraint of a keto lifestyle is the American food culture itself. We are a culture where crap food and convenience far outweighs health and nutrition and finding fresh, high-quality food is a difficult daily challenge. Thank goodness that once you get off of the 3-5 meals a day, carbohydrate roller-coaster, you don't need to eat nearly as often.
Goals
So here we go - It's crunch time. I will continue to run long in bursts and work to train myself to be functionally fit across a number of modalities. There is such a difference between training for day after day of significant work vs. one significant effort or event. My body needs to be ready for anything and I plan to continue training in varied ways, from bike rides to burpees, calisthenics to climbing, surfing to skateboarding, and everything in between. Just keep moving.
Naturally, I want to show up as fit as possible, but a little under-trained in terms of run training. Showing up over-trained and sick of running would be a very bad idea.
What do you think about my strategy? Let me know in comments, below.