Swim, Bike, Run, Eat: Chocolate Banana Brick Smoothie

This is one of my favorite smoothie recipes...


1 large banana
.25 cups uncooked old fashioned oats
1 tbsp honey

2 tbsp dark cocoa powder
1 scoop of chocolate protein powder (I like gold standard extreme milk chocolate)
1 cup skim milk
1 cup of ice
2 cups of spinach (you won't taste it.

Mix in smoothie like fashion and enjoy.  Depending on the workout, you may want to double up the oats (but probably not the honey...too sweet!) or add some peanut butter. 

Macros-
Calories:  470
Fat 3.15g
Carbs 78.76
Protein: 37.78
Fiber 6.9g
Sodium 228.4mg

Micros-

When you run a lot you have a lot of time to think about stuff to put in your recovery smoothies.   Here's what I think about this one. 

This is all about recovery!  In my very uneducated opinion, in addition to carbs and protein you should also try to recover with foods that will assist in balancing the various things that can get out of wack through big amounts of exercise.  That really comes down to sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium as I understand it.

You can hide a bit more NaCl in this if you want it, but there is a fair bit in it already.  The banana is going to help you on board potassium.  Together your body can use these to keep the sodium/potassium pumps in your cells pumping...

Calcium and magnesium are pretty important too.  Beyond just building strong bones, calcium helps your muscles fire and magnesium helps them relax.  Short on either one?  Cramps.  Milk is about the best source of calcium you can find.  Spinach and Oats are both a great source of magnesium. 

Spinach also gets you a ton of various vitamins and minerals, some iron, phytonutrients for those free radicals you just made, and all kinds of other good stuff! 

Failure...

Tonight was heart breaking. 

My training volume has been huge lately (for me anyway), my sleep has been low, and I haven't had time to eat enough.  Well, tonight that all caught up with me.

I set out on my long run, and was feeling flat right away.  About 4 miles in I was struggling to maintain my VDOT LSD pace and I was sweating buckets.  I considered bagging it at 6 miles but I drank 16 oz of water and felt better.  I did my 2 miles of VDOT race pace (which was stupid), but again I wasn't able to hold that pace as well. 

I did pretty well until about mile 6.55, my half way point where I stopped to drink and eat a gu.  My drink break was long, and I had a hard time getting going again.

At about 8 miles, I was suffering.  I stopped to refill my fuel belt for the second time. 

By mile 10, I had to stop and take my socks off.  My feet were so soaked with sweat that I couldn't stand them anymore.  Wicking tech socks == fail.  I had to sit down for a while and recover.  There was just literally nothing left.  I've experienced "I don't want to run anymore" plenty of times, but this wasn't that.  This was, "I physically cannot run...not a 10 minute mile, not a 12 minute mile..."  I took on even more water...I was at something like 64 oz in at this point.

I walked for about 5 minutes and then started back into a jog, only to have to stop again at around mile 12.  I was sick, dizzy, foggy...  I've been to that place before and it's never good.  I ran the last half mile home.

It sucks to fail.  It happens though...and it's a good reminder for me.  That's what it feels like to walk a half marathon.  It doesn't feel good.  I need to do what it takes to make sure that doesn't happen on race day. 

At this point that looks like:
Make sleep and recovery a priority
Don't push more training in than your body can absorb
Keep your calories up

If I can't then I have no business doing breakthrough workouts and I need to adapt appropriately.  I have big goals that require big doses of training, but big doses of training require big doses of recovery protocol. Being a triathlete is about a lifestyle...you can't just do the workouts.  You have to live around the workouts.  Even when you aren't training, you're recovering, fueling, and planning.  I need to do a little bit better on that, or I'm going to have more walking in my future.  Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to a bowl of pasta and a soft bed.

In The News

Well, this is pretty exciting!  My story was published in the local newspaper.  I really appricate the folks at the pantagraph, they did a really great job capturing my story and taking some really great pictures!

Here it is:  Pantagraph Article

AIDS Walk/Run for Life -22:49

I decided to run the Aids for Life 5k the night before as an opportunity to test and reassess where I am with my running.  It was a small, low key race on a perfect morning, near home.

There isn't much to say about 5ks for strategy.  I just run as fast as I can, and try to hold on when it starts to hurt.  For the most part I'd rather run 10 miles than a 3k.  I don't enjoy running at that level of intensity. 

Things went well though.  I got 2nd in 30-30M, 5th overall, (there were only 32 runners) a new PR, and my first trophy!  I improved on my previous PR by about a minute.  I'm of course really happy about my performance, but I'm not really a 5k racer.  I do use these numbers to set my VDOT scores for my pace training, so the data is important to my overall goals. 

After a brief cool down and some food I got a 2 hour zone 3 bike in.  It was a great training day all in all.