He Said, She Said: Marathon Nutrition

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He Said

When I made the decision to leave behind my career as a research analyst for the U.S. Department of Transportation, I began looking for jobs in healthcare and landed a position working on a clinical trial with a kinesiology professor.

Given her background and expertise in exercise science and her personal interest in athletics, I shared stories of my marathon experiences with her and happened to include that I preferred Coke to Gatorade during long runs. “Ugh, that’s the worst thing you could do!” she disgustedly told me. Actually, no, I had figured out through trial and error that my body best tolerated plain old Coca Cola Classic over any other liquid with which I experimented, so I would argue that drinking Coke was the best thing I could do for athletic performance.

Sometimes, quite often actually, approaches that seem most sensible on paper do not function the best in real life. That is why guidelines are nothing more than their name suggests and should not be treated as gospel. Guidelines are helpful because they give us a place to begin, but I always emphasize to runners the importance of experimenting with various nutrition approaches during training to determine which eating and drinking strategy functions best for them and therefore will be used on race day.

In truth, marathoners take all sorts of different approaches to fueling themselves before and during marathons. Gatorade and water are supplied to the masses at various points along the Boston Marathon route, but the elite runners skip those tables and have their own hydration stations where each of them has a custom-made concoction waiting for him or her in labeled bottles. Some runners, for example, drink flat, non-alcoholic beer. A friend of mine used to eat gummy bears during marathons. Another friend made it through the running portion of his Ironman triathlon by alternately consuming oranges and bananas. As for me, I ran most of my marathons fueled by Coke and pretzels.

When Joanne and I first began dating, I was in the midst of a demanding dietetic internship, and I dealt with the stress by going for long runs on the weekends. Although it was clear that she found my behavior a bit odd, only she could tell you which struck her as weirder: the fact that I chose to spend my Saturday afternoons going for 20-25 mile runs, or the fact that I spent my Saturday mornings driving around and stashing bottles of soda and bags of Oreos in various hiding places along my running route. Just because gels, goos, sports jelly beans, and salt tablets exist and work well for some athletes does not mean they will have everybody running their best.

Commonalities do exist among the various approaches that people take, such as the importance of replacing the carbohydrates, electrolytes, and fluids lost during running, but numerous methods of achieving these nutrition goals exist, and that is where the importance of individualization enters the paradigm. Therefore, when you see or hear of another runner taking a different approach to his or her nutrition than you take to yours, remember that multiple “right” answers exist, and stay true to what you know from experience works best for you. Remain confident: Your training, both the running itself and your nutrition experimentation, has gotten you this far, and it will get you to the finish line, too.

 

She Said

April is one of my favorite months of the year. The winter is over (At least it should be!), little green things start sprouting out of the ground, and the promise of warmer days is ahead. Having been born and raised in Massachusetts, I have also come to associate April with the Boston Marathon. As a little girl, I would walk down to Route 16 with my mom, and we would cheer on the runners as they jogged past us. I was always amazed at how these individuals could just go and go and go. And how many of them there were!

From time to time, the subject of marathon running comes up in my work with patients struggling with eating disorders. Many of my patients are exercise enthusiasts who often have to cut back (or completely avoid) exercise in the early stages of ED recovery. As the individual makes progress in his or her ED, the subject of when he/she can start to exercise again will often come up. Of course, when figuring out whether to clear a patient for exercise, the primary care physician really needs to make the final call. Often this means that the patient should be having his or her vital signs taken regularly, and if his or her blood pressure, heart rate, and weight are routinely found to be in the “healthy range” for a good period of time, he or she may be cleared for exercise.

The word “exercise” can have a number of different meanings depending on whom you talk to. For the average person, perhaps going for a 30-minute walk 3-4 times per week would be exercise. But more often than not, for the person dealing with an ED, exercise usually means much more intense activity for more extended periods of time. That’s where the marathon piece comes in. I have had a number of patients state that they would like to resume (or start) running, not with the intent of managing their weight, but to strive for some goals. Usually, it will start with training for a 5K race, then a 5-miler, then perhaps a 10K. In and of itself, these races aren’t a problem vis-a-vis eating disorder recovery as long as the individual is competing and training due to the love of running rather than trying to control weight.

Sometimes I will have a patient announce the plan to run a ½ marathon with the goal of running a full marathon eventually. This is where things can get a bit dicey. As anyone who has run a marathon can attest to, the act is not an easy one. Although I have never run one myself, I have had people tell me it’s a lot like childbirth – after a period of time, one “forgets” the physical agony and only remembers the joy of finishing. In reality, running a marathon takes a huge toll on the body and can be quite grueling. For someone whose body is recovering from a life-threatening ED, training for and running a marathon can put a lot of stress on an already stressed body.

In general, I would suggest that the individual really delve deep into why he or she wants to run a marathon. Is it for the thrill of accomplishment, to check something off on one’s bucket list? Or is it a sanctioned way to exercise excessively, “permitting” the individual to eat with abandon and maintain or lose weight? Personally, I believe that someone needs to be in recovery for a significant period of time before attempting such a demanding physical endeavor. That period of time depends on a number of factors: How long has the individual struggled with an ED, and how long has the individual been in recovery? Has he/she maintained a healthy weight, heart rate, and blood pressure for a significant period of time? Is the patient’s mindset healthy or weight-centered?

If the individual is determined to be healthy in mind and body and the treatment team supports it, I think someone in recovery from an ED could in fact train for and run a marathon. However, it would be advisable for this patient to continue to engage in regular therapy and see his or her doctor weekly to make sure his or her marathon goals aren’t interfering with continued ED recovery. In addition, this patient should consult with a registered dietitian who specializes in both EDs and sports nutrition to make sure that he/she is getting in the right amounts and types of fuel and hydration needed for running a marathon. As long as the above conditions are met, there is no reason why someone who has struggled with ED couldn’t run a marathon.

Day 366

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of my surgery. Because my spirits were so dismal in the days immediately following the operation, on day 11 I began writing a log of the small daily victories that marked my healing and recovery. While I was initially unsure how long I would keep it up, I have maintained the log to this day and have no plans to stop, not when I still have so far to go.

One year ago tomorrow, I strapped on my back brace, leaned on a walker, and shuffled slowly from my hospital room to the nurse’s station and back, flanked by my wife and a physical therapist. Due less to pain and more to my fear that the operation had not worked, I cried the whole way.

Going into the operation, I was under the impression that I would not need a brace. When I found out the surgeon was prescribing one, I angrily and defiantly informed the nurse that I refused to wear the contraption. Over time though, I became attached to it. While the brace was at first just a literal support, over time it took on a figurative role as well, sort of like my version of Wilson the volleyball. During the first two months of healing, my brace and I walked for hours and hours together, and during long walks when I was otherwise alone, unsteady on my feet, unsure of my present, and scared of an uncertain future, my brace was always there to keep me upright and give me the courage to keep moving forward.

On day 67, we walked the entire Boston Marathon route together. Shortly thereafter, my surgeon told me it was time to stop wearing the brace. Truth be told, I was sad to jettison my sidekick. Finding the brace by surprise in the house triggers a similar fondness to randomly running into an old friend in the grocery store.

My surgeon was astonished by how quickly I progressed in the first few months after the operation. “You will be back to your crazy workouts in no time,” my physical therapist told me last summer. Turned out she was way off. As I wrote on day 197, we are only somewhat in control of our destiny and life does not always unfold the way we might expect or wish for ourselves.

Setbacks have been plentiful. Activities that my surgeon said should be fine at the time, like swimming, remained intolerable until seasons after his timetable indicated. Some of the bone grafts were unusually slow to heal and for a couple of months we faced the legitimate possibility that they might never fuse. Once I got the green light to resume weight training, I hurt one shoulder, then the other, and had to leave the weight room once again while I rehabbed them. Raking leaves in the November twilight and rushing to finish before darkness, I swiftly walked into my leaf blower, broke my big toe, and ended up in a walking boot. My most recent MRI showed a bulging disk at the surgical site, a highly unusual complication, and the radiating pain down my leg has returned. What can I say, Robert Smith taught me a long time ago that life is neither fair nor unfair.

Before the surgery, I expected that my healing would plot out a linear trajectory with each week being better than the previous one, but quickly I realized that was unrealistic and a setup for disappointment. Real life has its downs, but thanks to good fortune, hard work, and help from many people, it also has its ups.

Although my ultimate goal remains to resume playing competitive tennis and I am working hard in a physical sense to make that happen, simultaneously I am doing my best to prepare myself emotionally for the possibility that it may never come to fruition. Although I remain light-years away from returning to the court, accepting the latter feels much harder – and much less likely – than ever achieving the former. Past opponents and fictitious foes have contract court time in my dreams and we battle it out several nights most weeks, and my wife does not know that I often tear up when I watch her own matches from the sidelines.

Recovery does not end once the surgical site heals. Despite all that has happened in the past twelve months, in some ways I feel like I am still at the beginning of the journey with a long and unmapped future ahead of me. One year ago, I was bawling on a hospital gurney awaiting my turn in the operating room. Today, I went for my first run outside in 18 months. It was slow, short, uncomfortable, and really, really difficult. And it was totally and completely awesome.

Day 67: Marathon

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Boston Marathon starting line, Hopkinton

Selfie of my feet at the Boston Marathon starting line, Hopkinton

A little over a month ago, my surgeon gave me permission to slowly ride the recumbent exercise bike and perform basic upper-body resistance movements with light hand-held weights. The doctor’s clearance for new exercises is mandatory, but so is my body giving me positive feedback in response to said activities. Unfortunately, I only had one of the two. After a few times of giving these exercises a try, my back pain seemed to worsen, so I put the bike and weights on hold and returned to exclusively walking.

Because several walks in the range of 12 to 16 miles felt fine and left me feeling like I could have done more, I decided to go a bit farther today. Early this morning, my back brace and I took the first commuter rail train of the day out to Ashland, where I met the taxi that then dropped me off in Hopkinton, right at the starting line of the Boston Marathon. 7:28 later, I walked across the finish line in Copley Square.

Boston Marathon finish line, Copley Square

Boston Marathon finish line, Copley Square (Photo courtesy of a tourist who was nice enough to take my picture after I told her I had just finished walking the entire route)

The Best Way I Know How

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Q: Hey, whatever happened to your stated intention of running the Boston Marathon this April to raise money for the victims of last year’s bombings?

A: Back surgery put an end to those plans. Although I am disappointed that I am unable to participate in the race in the fashion that I envisioned, my intention to form a fundraising team to benefit the victims had nothing to do with putting myself in the spotlight and little do with running. Rather, I was just trying to help in the best way that I knew how.

My ability to run might be temporarily on hold, but the spirit of my intentions and my desire to help the victims still holds true. Out of all the important charities that are fielding marathon teams, at least two, The One Fund and Team Collier Strong, directly grew out of last year’s tragedies, so I have thrown my support behind them and the One Run for Boston event.

As time elapses after an event that once gripped us so tightly, new stories and circumstances phase it out from the forefront of our minds. Most of us have the luxury of moving on, while those directly impacted by the event follow a much different trajectory. To the credit of people all around the world, The One Fund successfully raised millions of dollars for the victims in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. However, because their costs are ongoing, so should our support.

In addition to our financial support, Joanne and I look forward to cheering on runners as they finish the Haunted Mile and make their turn onto Beacon Street. Back surgery or not, I can still help in the best way that I know how.