Spring Cleaning Tips For Endurance Athletes

"The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't."  -Marie Kondo

Spring cleaning is the common practice of giving your home and property a thorough tidying at the end of Winter.  It's also a great time to identify and correct minor, seasonal problems that could end up causing more significant issues, frustration, and expenses down the road.  While this is the perfect time to dust the furniture, it's also a great time to metaphorically "dust" your training program.  Here are the Top 5 Spring Cleaning Tips For Endurance Athletes.

#1:  Stop Trying
It's been said that "trying is lying".  When our response to a challenge is "to try" we create an outcome vagueness that gives us an excuse for coming up short.  Subconsciously we have already determined that we won't make it, and when we don't it really won't be our fault.  The "trying" mindset focuses critical attention on unknown factors that potentially prevent you from attaining your goal.  Don't "try", rather intend to commit yourself fully to the challenge by engaging the process with effort.  Effort is something that is applied, not tried.1

#2:  Slow Down
One of the most common mistake endurance athletes make is performing their "active recovery" training units too hard.  Training intensity may be monitored using heart rate, pace, or power.  Active recovery units are designed to add sport-specific training volume and enhance maximum lactate steady-state by increasing Type 1 skeletal muscle fiber function without the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal stress.  For optimal benefit these training units should be performed at less than 85% of threshold heart rate, pace, or power.  

#3:  Tighten Up
Strength training is critical to performance for endurance athletes.  It's fairly easy to get to the gym during the long cold dark winter months but as the daylight hours lengthen and the weather warms up we tend to commit ourselves less to the practice.  It's reasonable to reduce the volume of training in the gym as the amount of sport-specific activities increase, just make sure you are still performing a total body routine at least twice a week.  If on the other hand you haven't been to the gym in months, now is a great time to commit yourself once again.

#4:  Cut Back
Every endurance athlete has an optimal performance-based body weight.  Very few of us are at that weight at the beginning of Spring.  Too little time spent outdoors in the wintertime may result in a relative Vitamin D deficiency.  This can often lead to seasonal disturbances in mood.  These seasonal mood disturbances may cause us to seek out comfort foods like sweets and alcohol in an effort to balance brain chemistry.  The result is that we are often a few pounds from that optimal performance-based weight.  An excellent first step toward that goal is to cut back on two sources of empty calories including sweets and alcohol.  While eliminating them may be unrealistic for many endurance athletes, cutting back by avoiding during the week saves significant calories and often leads to positive changes in body composition.  

#5:  Find Balance...Again
Our love of endurance sports is one way we define ourselves.  Yet sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that our training and racing doesn't happen in a vacuum.  The stark reality is that our training and racing happens in the context of the rest of our lives.  Our very busy lives.  In this age of social media-based training communities it's easy to caught up in what everyone else is doing.  This often leads to us feeling insecure about the amount of training we are doing and causes us to overextend ourselves.  When the delicate balance of training and "life" is upset, our training is often sacrificed.  Now is a great time to sit down and sketch out a training plan that fits your life, rather than your life fitting your training plan.  When endurance athletes have it the other way around, it's only a matter of time that this "house of cards" comes crashing down.  

1 The Rock Warrior's Way by Arno Ilgner

The Taper: Fueling Body & Mind (Part II)

Death By Burger. 
Woodstock Inn Brewery. 
Woodstock, NH
Photo by Gianina Lindsey.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."  ~Marcus Aurelius

In the final weeks before a race of marathon distance or greater there are a number of important nutritional and mental priorities and practices to consider.  

Dialing In Your Nutrition
Performance nutrition is the concept of using food to compliment physical preparation and enhance athletic outcomes.  There are three nutritional priorities and practices to consider during the taper;

#1: Adequate Hydration
Water is the most important nutrient in the body.  It is the medium in which many chemical reactions occur, particularly those involved in energy production.  It is also largely the medium in which other nutrients and waste products are transported in the body.  During a taper your locomotion muscles (ie. sport-specific lower extremity muscles) are busy repairing and fortifying from the months of high volume work you've done.  Intracellular fluid compartments (comprising 65% of your total body water) are where this work gets done.  Maintaining adequate hydration assures that these important processes are optimally executed.  Practice:  drink enough water daily that your urine is a pale yellow color right up to race day.  

#2: Sufficient Protein Intake
The most obvious benefit of sufficient protein intake for endurance athletes is in the repair of skeletal muscle broken down repeatedly during high volume training.  But the diverse function of proteins in the body represents a number of very important considerations for the tapering endurance athlete including antibody formation (which keep you healthy), enzymes (which keep chemical reactions humming along), messengers (like hormones that help different tissues talk to each other), and transportation/storage (which assist in the movement of atoms and small molecules within the cell and throughout the body).  Practice:  make sure to include protein sources at each of your three daily primary meals.

#3:  Carbohydrate "Un-Loading"
It might come as a surprise to many endurance athletes that carbohydrates are third on this list (rather than #1).  As has been discussed before, stored carbohydrates (as liver & muscle glycogen) are an important fuel source that opens up the potential to optimize stored body fat during multiple hours of physical activity.  While the pre-race pasta-focused "carbo load" has become a ritual for endurance athletes, the time to top off glycogen stores is during the last few weeks before a race, not the last few hours.  But most endurance athletes get more than adequate amounts of carbohydrates in their diets.  Practice:  shift focus to healthy carbohydrates including whole grains, low-fat dairy, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables.  Limit simple sugars such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup containing foods.  

Sharpening Your Mental Blade
All the physical preparation in the world is worthless without the right mental approach on race day.  In the weeks leading up to an event the additional time you are afforded is the perfect opportunity to sharpen your mental approach.  Here are the three key elements to do this;

#1:  Visualize Success
All mind-body endurance athletes believe the concept of "the body achieves what the mind believes", but theory without practice is like a ship without a sail.  If you can repeatedly create a conscious image of your desired performance outcome then you will program your subconscious to direct your physical body to execute it.  Practice:  once a day create a vivid mental picture of you attaining your performance goal.  Include as many positive emotional elements as possible.  

#2:  Tune Out Distractions
Multiple hour endurance events almost always have at least one significant challenge that has the potential to derail a desired outcome (ie. weather, blisters, bonking).  Your ability to handle these unexpected circumstances is directly related to your capacity to focus.  But like many things, this focus in times of despair is a function of how effectively it is trained.  By concentrating on the effort in the moment during each training unit you can condition yourself to recognize and eliminate distracting thoughts giving you much more potential on race day to "solve the problem".  Practice:  during each taper training unit practice focus by remaining in the moment and continually taking stock of how your body feels.  Any time you are distracted by non-productive thinking; acknowledge it and then re-direct back to focusing on what you are doing at the moment.  

#3:  Stay Positive
The act of tapering can be mentally challenging for biochemical reasons previously discussed.  Either way, feelings of doubt have the potential to creep into the consciousness of every tapering endurance athlete.  This doubt can be expressed as a negative internal (and sometimes external) dialog.  Effort follows attitude and attitude is within your scope of influence.  While eliminating negative dialog is very difficult, it is always possible to identify it and strive to reduce it.  Practice:  refrain from negative internal and external dialog.  Use power thoughts like "I am physically and mentally prepared to give everything I have to this effort.".