kaburns1214 Mentor Group 2011 Part 2 - CLOSED (Page 4)

Training derailed a little again.  Started with new strength trainer 2 weeks ago and I think strained my hip flexor.

Ran a total of 4 painful miles last week.  Front left hip flexor pain, hurts to walk and run.  Doing alot of stretching, rolling, anti inflams, etc.  No activity since last Thursday.  Needs to get better quick, Wisconsin 1/2 mary in jeopardy right now with only a 9.5 mile long run 2 weeks ago.

You never really know how each of these parts of your body is critical to movement until they are hurt!

Thoughts???

HELP

I have had a stress fracture in the toe next to my big toe.  Felt just like you describe, like the joint needed to be popped back into place, right where the toe meets the foot.  But I never popped my toes (like I do my fingers) so it might not be the same thing.  But it sounds like it could be a stress fracture.  I ran on it for a duathon, short 2 mile run before and after the bike, but put weight on the outside of my foot vs. landing normal.  I don't recommend, but for the short distance it got me through and then I took time off to let it heal.

Hope it's not and that you have a great race!

That's just about in the same exact spot.

I'm going to just not run this week and try and let it "rest". Then run the race and see what happens. It's bearable pain, but still there for sure.

So, I have a question (maybe more of a comment) for those that track calories.

I've been using Livestrong MyPlate to track all my calories from eating, plus logging exercise calories burned from my Garmin/HR.  As I said in my intro I struggle to lose weight, but this year I am determined to lose 10 to 15 pounds before my IM in September.

So the tracking has been working, I've lost a few pounds.  But I'm curious how many calories my body really needs.  Livestrong has a feature to log your age, sex, height, weight, and then activity level and it estimates how many calories your body needs.  You can also set a goal for weight loss so I put a 1 pound loss per week, so it adjusts the calories by 3500 per week for the weight loss.

I was using that daily calorie figure (but had the activity level as sedentary because when I put active I was not losing any weight), and then was also adding in the calories I burned exercising for total daily calories.

I decided I wanted to have an RMR test, which I had done yesterday.  Surprisingly the test showed the amount of calories my body needs is more than what Livestrong showed.  Probably because I set the activity level to sedentary, but still I was surprised.

The interesting thing was the guy that did the test (well known and respected in our community) had a different take on calories burned while exercising.  Prior to this test I was using the base calories I calculated on Livestrong, adding in the calories my Garmin showed I burned during daily workouts, and then consuming just about that amount.  Some days were a little over, some under.

But this guy said to use the base range from the RMR test (which by the way was calculated based on my current weight and goal weight of 15 pounds less, so it's adjusted for a slow steady safe weight loss of about 1 to 1.5 pounds per week), and then if I exercise for over an hour, add in about 200 calories per hour while exercising, plus a recovery shake or something similar after the workout.

I found that interesting.  Instead of consuming what you need (base plus burned) eat base range and fuel appropriately during exercise.  Which should net to somewhat similar to what I'm eating now since the base now is higher, but the burned calories will not all be used.

Does that make sense?  Has anyone had this test done?  Do any of you track calories consumed as well as burned?  How do you track burned calories?

Back from Boston - no not the Mary - the ABA Business Law Section Spring Meeting, even better.  Got some training in, but mostly seminars and meetings.

Had a physical last week, aparently I have an umbilical hernia which requires surgery.  Anyone have any idea of the recovery time here?  How about if i delay surgery?  Is that dangerous?  Of course, I will ask the surgeon who will give me the typical doctor blather and I will have to cross examine him/her to get the actual story.  I have Rev3 in 6 weeks or so and do not want to either miss it, get injured, have my stomach explode, not be able to train or otherwise have an issue.  Anyone have any experience with such things?  (will also post in tri forum).

I have to update my logs for the last week.  Weather is FINALLY getting better here in lovely CT.  Plan a bick friday (good friday is good for us jews because the office is closed, long ride saturday, long run sunday, bunch of junk miles until then.)

I've used both the daily plate and fitday to track cals and macros in the past.  I like the tracking system better on fitday, but the database of foods is better on the daily plate.  I find myself making many more "custom" foods on fitday.  The Katch-McArdle formula seems to be the most accepted way of estimating your maintenance kcals.  You'd need to know your body fat percentage though.  Aim for 500 or so cals under the number it spits out for cals.  You can then play with your macros to see what gives you the best performance to weight loss ratio.  When I was a lifter I found really low carbs high protein and fat worked best for me in weight loss.  Now I find moderate carb/protein intake and low fat works best.

Okay so this past weekend was a 2 day charity ride from Houston to Austin.  Long rides each day, but 2 days away from all responsibility was very nice. 

Day 1 we, rode on team FedEx and with a good friend, started out of a local high school stadium.  There were 3 separate starting points since there were about 30k people doing this ride.  Leaving with 10k of your closest friends was a mess to say the least.  You have riders at just about every experience level and every grade of bike on this route from mountain bike to $8k road and tri bikes.  I pretty much stayed on the right for a while to get a feel since I've never ridden with this many folks.  About halfway to lunch we started passing people.  Lunch came at about mile 40.  About mile 47 while passing slow groups I looked back and Jason wasn't there any longer.  I'm in much better shape and he said if I felt like dropping him to feel free.  Latched on to a pace line to the next rest stop and waited about 10 minutes.  When J didn't roll in I decided to see if I could hammer it to camp for the first night.  Averaged 18ish for the first day.  Caught some cramps about 6 miles out of camp but worked through it. 

Camp was fun.  Showered, hit the massage tent, and ran into some other Sigs that I haven't seen in 10 years.  We slept on cots in a large tent.  Temp got into the mid 40s which I wasn't really prepared for.  Waking up to the sound of peoples teeth chattering is odd to say the least.

Day 2 seemed very easy.  Maybe because I eased off and just stayed with J.  He had bad hammy cramps day 1 and I really didn't want to hear about him in the SAG wagon while I was rolling onto the UT campus.  There were 2 options on routes for day 2, the "Express" route and the "Challenge" route.  We opted for the challenge route and glad we did.  There were some nasty climbs, but you got to bomb the backside of the hills at 50 mph so it was well worth it.  Rolled into Austin at 1ish.  I've never been in Austin during the day and sober and really didn't know how pretty the city was.  Both J's and my kids and wife were waiting for us at the finish.  Really fun ride.  Will do it again next year for sure and rope some of my other friends into going too.  Back to training today.  Trainer ride this morning and a jog with the jogging stroller after work.

Have one, Dr said not to worry unless it bothered me, he said he noticed it a couple years ago, but it shows more now that i have taken off some weight. Said not to worry unless it hurt or bothered me, of which it does neither.

i think you will be OK Jeff-y

Today is official catch-up day.  I've closed out the group.  Here are all of our members.  Show some inspire love!

kaburns1214

uhcoog

pbrown70

jarvy01

abgti

rizer22

artist

DDVMM

carrie639

grilledmonkey

karen26.2

Karen Russell

Rudedog55

Jsklarz

I eat a base range plus appropriate fuel for my workouts for a lot of reasons.  To step back there are pretty much four "levels" that you can base your diet on (I use diet ot mean what you are eating to fuel your body so it applies whehter or not you're trying to loose weight):

1. Points

2. Calories

3. Macro Nutrients (Carbs, Protein and Fat)

4. Micro Nutrients (Vitamins and Amino Acids)

When you're an athelte, particularly a long course athlete, you do a lot of damage to your body, so its more important to focus on macro and micro nutrients than on calories. 

With regard to macro nutirents, instead of having a daily calorie target, I have a daily "base" macro nutrient target and then add in additional grams of macro nutirents based on the days training level.  So on total rest days I end up eating about 90 grams of protein, 110 grams of carbs and 25 grams of fat.  If I'm going on a long bike with a transistion run I end up more in the range of 175 grams of protein, 400 grams of carbs and 50 grams of fat.

With regard to micro nutrients, I try to eat the most nutrient dense foods possible so lean proteins, eggs, low fat dairy, lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts and beans.  I generally do not eat any grains or processed foods unless its immediately prior to, during or after a workout (I always fuel during workouts and use Endurox post-workout).  I find its reallyi mportant to always fuel workouts for two reasons : (1) it helps you achieve the deseired performance level; and (2) it trains your gut.  If you do lots of biking without taking in as many calories as you should and then you try to take in those types of calories on race day, you're likely to have GI issues.  Every workout is an opportunity to practice nutirtion.

So, I guess the short answer is that I agree with the guy who did the BMR test on you and depending on your sweat test results might even consider more than 200 calories / hour during training.

Long run went really well this morning.  I started to feel a pain in the back of my left knee, so I slowed down my pace and it worked.  Practiced nutrition, too - Gu Gels.   I can't say that I love them, but I definitely felt an energy spike. 

Speed swim at the gym tonight.  It will be the first day that I put all 4 kids in the playroom while I hit the pool, and I'm really hoping I'm not called out to come get them.  Freddie is only 13 mos., and who knows if he'll be cool with the caregivers there.  It's worth a shot....

It sounds like all of you have so much going on.  The season is upon us!!  It's exciting.  I love reading the race reports. 

kaburns1214     

uhcoog

pbrown70

jarvy01  Jennifer

abgti  Steve

rizer22

artist terry

DDVMM

carrie639 Carrie

grilledmonkey

karen26.2

Karen Russell

Rudedog55    Rudy

Jsklarz    

Runing 1/2 mary question

My hip is just now beginning to feel better - fingers crossed.  Haven't had any activity since last Thursday and only ran 4 painful miles all last week.  Last long run was 2 weeks ago and only 9.5 miles.

My Wisconsin marathon (1/2 distance) is on May 7th.  Given I don't want to re-aggravate my hip, how do you know when to scratch a race?  I really want to run that one and think maybe it could be a good slow training run (if I stick to a strategy), but would it be a bad decision?   Or should I see how this week and weekend go?

There are other local 1/2's on the 15th and 22nd.

I think its a wait and see.  You don't want to do anything that is going to leave you more hurt than you started.  Sometimes that's a really hard call to make.  I would wait and see how you feel right before the race.  I would also think about what your "bail out" plan is if you start the race and then experience hip pain.  You don't want to struggle to finish the race and then end up hurt for another month.