Nutrition and Workout Notes (Offseason Week 1)

First off, let me just note that I’ve been working on Centurion Six this week, but I’ve not had quite as much time with it as I would’ve liked, and as a result, I don’t particularly like the product I’ve got.  So I want to tighten it up a bit before I start posting it again.  I figure, as long as I’m on break and the publication schedule is out of whack anyway, I may as well take some time with it and come back with something that doesn’t suck.  Hopefully you guys don’t mind.

Anyway, I’ve been on my diet for a full week now, and if you’re wondering, yes, it’s working exactly as it was designed.  I was down exactly one pound this week, measured as before immediately following my weekly spin class.  That put me at exactly 195 lbs—a bit on the heavy side but within my normal weight range.  I feel like I look a little thinner, too, but I've no idea if that's just my imagination, or if it's possible to see the loss of a pound if you're looking closely enough.

Final thought on nutrition--yes, I'm still drinking beer.  Good beer.  I just tend to think of it now as a starch and use it accordingly.  In ancient times, beer was called "liquid bread".  If you think of it that way, I think you can leave it in your diet.  But you have to realize that it's got to substitute for something, preferably something that would've already been part of your nutritional base load.

My baby is back.  Oh how I have missed her.

My offseason workout schedule looks basically like this:

Monday – Short Run

 - 2 to 3 miles

Tuesday – Weight Training

Wednesday – Short Run

 - 3 to 4 miles

Thursday – Off

Friday – Weight Training

Saturday – Brick Workout: Spin Class + Short Run

 - Spin class is about an hour.

 - Short runs tend to go between 20 and 30 minutes.

Sunday – Long Ride (90+ minutes)

‘Course, I managed to strain a ligament in the bottom of my foot this weekend, probably my plantar fascia, during spin class.  I made the mistake of wearing my favorite Converse All*Stars to spin, which I figured would work fine given that spinning is a zero impact activity.  But the Converse have very flimsy soles, meaning that I basically spent an hour balancing on the balls of my feet while in the pedals, and that left me sore.  And then Sally and I went running immediately after class.  Not smart. 

And now my left foot is so sore that I can barely walk.

Fortunately, I got my foldie back from the bike shop today, so it won’t be all that difficult to stay off my feet. Well, I won’t have to walk any in the City with a sore foot, at any rate.  And then, too, I can still ride my road bike because my regular bike shoes are plenty stiff, which keeps strain off my foot.  But I’ve no idea when I’ll be able to run again—and the pain is bad enough that right now I want my foot to stop hurting a lot more than I want to go running.  Hopefully that won’t last long.  In any event, it's likely that I'll be substituting rides on the foldie and additional weight room sessions for runs for the next few weeks.

That said, my point in posting this is to show how you might try to set up your own off-season workouty program.  I generally use the offseasons to try to get stronger physically and to try to work on the weaker disciplines of my race.  This particular offseason, I’ve been planning to focus on cycling—convenient, given the injury—but you could easily add a day or two of weights and/or swimming to change the focus for your own needs.  

Regardless, while I think the offseason is an important time to train, it’s also important to get away from the grind of endurance training.  For me, I’ve really enjoyed being back in the weight room.  It’s been a welcome break from the frustrations and pressures of this past season, and my body feels different when I'm training with weights than it does when I'm training purely for endurance and racing speed.  I've been enjoying that difference an awful lot.