Pick Your Poison
What’s Next? VLOG 10
All I do is Win! But You Were 17th?
What Goes Through Your Mind?
Before I get in to what one thinks about the night before a 40-mile race, I just want to remind everyone that we are still short of our goal in regard to raising money for the Disabled American Veterans. Click here to donate, anything will help our heroes who have sacrificed so much for all of us. Thank you for your generosity in advance! Peace Joe the Runner
It is approximately 7pm the night before race day, and I will try and answer, the best that I can, what is going through my mind. I kept myself busy today, preparing my drop bags, reviewing the course map, and driving out to the starting line and finally packet pick up. And now, I am alone with my thoughts. What I am feeling is a sense of confidence with humility. I’ll even call it a state of mind. So, what does it mean?
I am confident. I am confident because I trust the process and I stuck to it. I’ve run 1560 miles, climbed 95300 feet, and spent countless hours on the trails. I woke up early to run, I went out and ran in the dark, I ran when I was home, and I ran when I travelled. My diet has been very clean, no alcohol, not a lot of refined sugars, lots of vegetables and lean meat/fish. My taper has been excellent and I have been getting quality sleep. I have done my part and executed what I could control. All of this gives me confidence.
I am humble. You absolutely MUST respect the distance. What I love about this sport, is that the challenge is between you and the course and you and yourself. 40 miles on technical trails with temps climbing to 76 degrees will challenge the best of us, especially as we push to move as fast as we can without blowing up. A distance like this, you can twist an ankle, take a hard fall, bonk and vomit, dehydrate, or simply just fall apart. It has no compassion, it is what it is. It’s a canvas for us to try and paint our best picture on and it doesn’t care how beautiful or how ugly that picture is. And as the artist, while you may have a clear idea of what you are trying to paint, you will need to be flexible and adjust, because some days the course simply won’t give you what you expect. The picture you paint may ultimately look very different from the one that was in your head.
Tomorrow there will be sweat, blood, pain, tears, and vomit. But there will also be triumph, comradery, love, joy, and accomplishment. So, I’ll leave you with this. You all know I love me some Rocky, so I’ll let his timeless words take us out. “Cause I was thinkin’, it really don’t matter if I lose this fight. ‘Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. And if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.”
I hope that this post and this blog helps! To receive new post notifications, newsletters, and post previews, please SUBSCRIBE!
For behind the scenes photos and comments on my training and personal life, follow me on Instagram: joe_the_runner Strava: Joe Randene YouTube: Joe Runner
Questions, comments, feedback? Please leave them in the comments section BELOW and we can have a discussion!
Triple Lakes Final Update VLOG9
The “Carb Bomb”: Overnight Oats
3 Reasons that Drama is Not My Mama
“You have to want your dreams more than you want your drama.” – Jen Sincero
When you write and share your message with people, there are times when you have to write something and then leave it alone to fester. You need to let time do its work and see if when you revisit it, if it is valid and relevant or if you just wrote something that ultimately isn’t useful and should just be left alone. Sometimes it’s simply because you’re scared that what you wrote is not high quality or that it will get a negative reaction. THIS is one of those posts. I actually wrote this on May 2, 2017 and its been sitting there ever since.
After reading it again, I realized that I left it because I didn’t want to offend anyone. But, ultimately, if you are going to help people, then you are going to have make yourself, and those people uncomfortable from time to time. Well, this is one of those times.
So, before you read this, I want to say in advance, this is my opinion and I do not mean to offend anyone, but I do feel strongly that this can help some people. If you read it and your good, awesome! If you read this and you get to thinking, even better.
I was reading a book by Jen Sincero, You are a Badass at Making Money, and I came across this quote of hers: “You have to want your dreams more than your drama.” I instantly thought of this post that I had just been letting sit. You can apply this to your running goals AND your life goals. So, I am going to roll the dice and publish my thoughts around one of the biggest hurdles to success for anyone, including myself. Drama…
Time
Time is the only true commodity that you cannot buy more of. When you leave this earth, it’s over, and no one can be sure when that time will come. Knowing that I only have a limited amount of it, I work very hard to keep the drama in my life to a minimum. It reasons that if I only have a limited amount of time, and I want to spend it doing awesome stuff that is productive, rewarding, and fulfilling, I can’t fill it with petty arguments and dealing with situations that are usually completely avoidable. I’m too busy trying to kick ass to worry about petty bullshit. This means that I minimize my exposure to people who create or participate in any drama as well, because if you get sucked in, the outcome is the same… NEGATIVE.
Stress
Have you ever been around someone who always seems to have bad stuff going on, or is always talking bad about other people? It’s a bummer, and it is downright stressful. Everything that I have read about stress, is that it is possible that it’s worse than smoking or being obese! Think about that for a minute. Being stressed can do more damage to your body physically then something that causes cancer or diabetes! Think about that the next time you are going to overreact to a comment someone made, or you are getting ready to hang out with that friend who always seems to have crazy things going on in their life!
Predetermines Failure
This is a hard one to swallow. Other than the Kardashian’s, I have not met anyone who has a ton of drama going on in their life that becomes successful. In my job as a leader, I have terminated numerous people for being chronically late to work, and they all say the same thing the day they are terminated. It usually goes something like this: Me “Employee A, we are terminating your employment today because you were late to work for the 7th time in the last 12 months.” Employee A “You’re firing me because I had a flat tire, that’s not fair!” At this point, I try and explain to the person that we are not firing them for the flat tire they had today, it’s because of the other six incidents AND the flat tire today. How does someone show up to work late so frequently? Drama. They are not taking care of their crap and it ends up biting them in the rear.
It’s really that simple, drama is a drain on your time, money, energy, and well-being. If you don’t believe me, think about the drama that you are creating in your own life and take control of it for a few days. Make sure that you get to bed early, that you pay your bills, try not to overreact to other people that upset you, etc. Next, think really hard about the people you are spending time with that love to drum up drama and always seem to have a problem, and then cut them out of your schedule for a few days. Don’t talk with them, visit with them, or look at text messages and social media. Simply collect yourself for a few days. If you really do this, tell me that you don’t suddenly have more time, more energy, and less stress in your life!
Trust me, if you stop letting drama run your day, you’ll be a lot more productive and that is always a good thing.
I hope that this post and this blog helps! To receive new post notifications, newsletters, and post previews, please SUBSCRIBE!
For behind the scenes photos and comments on my training and personal life, follow me on Instagram: joe_the_runner Strava: Joe Randene YouTube: Joe Runner
Questions, comments, feedback? Please leave them in the comments section BELOW and we can have a discussion!
Recovery Process – Science and Art
In the last blog post “The Four Inputs of Recovery”, I spoke about the four areas that cause the need or impact the length of recovery: base fitness, activity intensity, nutrition/hydration, and rest. In this post, I want to address the recovery process itself and how you can determine the duration of your recovery. Unfortunately, this is not an exact science, but again, understanding the process will allow you the opportunity to create a successful recovery plan.
Recovery is tricky because you need to recover during your training, and after your races. Depending upon your race schedule, you may have time requirements that force you to minimize your downtime as well. In fact, you should plan your race schedule with recovery in mind, if you want to avoid injury and perform at your best. That in and of itself is another blog topic! For now, let’s focus on the recovery process after an intense training session or race. I look at the recovery process itself in three parts.
Nutrition
Assuming that your nutrition is fairly clean in general as you are preparing for a race, I’ll discuss nutrition during your run and immediately after your run. During your run or race, if you take in the proper amount of protein, electrolytes, and carbs, you will help to minimize the amount of damage that you do to your body and create the foundation for a quicker and higher quality recovery. As an example, if you do not hydrate well and ignore your carb intake during a long run, the potential to bonk or significantly deplete your glycogen levels and dehydrate increases a great deal. If you put your body in to a great deficit, obviously you will need a longer recovery and will need to make sure that you get the electrolytes, carbs, protein, amino acids, and nutrients back in as quickly as possible. On the flip side, if you do ensure that you are replacing all of those essential nutrients sufficiently during your run, you will probably recover much quicker. Check out this post on nutrition during your runs here: Handy Little Hydration and Calorie Guidelines by Distance.
After an intense run or race, it is crucial to get some carbs and protein down within 30 minutes to an hour. Your body is craving those things and this window will allow your body to efficiently process the protein and start to help with muscle repair. I know some people who prefer to do this via foods, like a banana with peanut butter on toast, or some type of whole wheat pasta with chicken. For me, I like the convenience of a recovery drink. I use SIS REGO recovery powder and one serving provides 23 grams of carbs, 20 grams of protein, and a bunch of amino acids and electrolytes. I am not sponsored by this company, but I can tell you that compared to most other recovery drinks I have tried, these taste the best and have provided the best recovery for me. Flavors are chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla.
Rest
There are two types of rest in my opinion. There is “active” rest, such as walking, yoga, and low intensity cycling, and there is “non-active” rest such as massage, sitting with your legs elevated, icing, baths, and sleep. Both are very important.
In regard to active rest, after an intense effort, your body may feel sore due to lactic acid build up, and moving in a gentle manner, can help to flush the lactic acid and improve circulation. This will aid in the recovery process as improved blood flow delivers oxygen to your healing muscles. The majority of the time, after an intense effort, I feel much better if I move around, then if I just sit still. My favorite “active” recovery is simply walking. This is usually a great opportunity for me to take a nice long walk with my wife and spend some quality time getting some exercise and catching up on the day’s events. Good for the body and soul!
Non-active rest is just as important. Doing things to reduce inflammation, such as icing or soaking in a bath, go a long way towards you feeling more relaxed, and recharging mentally. There is always a lot of discussion around these types of activities and you can throw yoga and massage in to the discussion as well. There are camps of people who say there is no scientific proof that stretching and massage help runners recover, and there is a group of people who say that it absolutely does. Here are my two cents on the matter. You have to try these types of activities out for yourself, and if it helps YOU, then it helps. I find that all of these activities help me and I enjoy them. That in and of itself goes a long way.
Finally, there is sleep. For the most part, you won’t find many arguments here. The overwhelming majority of people agree that sleep is the time when the body recovers, and as athletes that are pushing the limits of their body, this is absolutely essential. I try and get at least seven hours of sleep on average per night. There always seems to be things that pop up and prevent me from achieving this goal, but honestly, that is on me. When I am disciplined enough, I seem to get this in just like I do my runs.
Duration
The ultimate question! How long? The worst answer. It depends. Sorry, but this is the truth. It depends on all of the factors that we discussed in the last two posts. General nutrition, level of intensity, rest before, during, and after. Etc. But here is the thing. You have to experiment and learn your body. One of the greatest things that I have discovered over the last three years is that through this process of becoming an ultra-runner, I am extremely in tune with my body. I know when I need to eat more or less. I know when I am tired but can still train, or exhausted and need extra rest. I even know the difference between a minor niggle that I can train through and an injury. Some people seem to be able to get by with very little rest, while others need more time, and that is OK. Work on figuring it out and stick with what works for you.
I have a thumb rule I’d like to share though. If I have to choose between an extra work out or extra rest as a race approaches, I always take the extra rest. Here’s why. I would prefer to show up at a race well rested and as injury free as possible, then toe the line injured and have to try and figure out how to get through the race. At that point in the game, your fitness level is either where it needs to be or not and one more workout won’t change that, but an extra day of rest may well be worth it.
Conclusion
While everyone is built different and may require different recovery periods, the levers are basically the same. So, if you review the last two posts and really get a grip on what causes the need to recover and the components of a recovery, you will have everything you need to ensure that you create a successful recovery plan FOR YOU. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments based on how you feel, as you learn more about your body, you’ll get better at knowing its boundaries and needs. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me for questions or suggestions on this topic!
I hope that this post and this blog helps you achieve your dreams! To receive new post notifications, newsletters, and post previews, please SUBSCRIBE!
For behind the scenes photos and comments on my training and personal life, follow me on Instagram: joe_the_runner Strava: Joe Randene YouTube: Joe Runner
Questions, comments, feedback? Please leave them in the comments section BELOW and we can have a discussion!