Wait on the weight?

Well, i've been having good workouts, and eating super nutritious, but my weight's not going down.  After pondering this for awhile, i decided to just let it be.  One of my big goals was to get down to 170, as this would enhance my stair speed a good deal, but if i'm having great workouts, building fitness, and eating super healthy, i should accept it.  Perhaps i'm just making up for all the years of atrocious eating habits, finally building the muscle i need to be a serious athlete, and generally healing.  Fine.  I'll keep mixing fasting into my regular plan for general brain and body health, and to keep my weight in check, but i'm going to eat healthy but what i want to, work out hard, and let my weight go where it may. Maybe when i hit my fitness goals, i'll try to edge my weight from 180 to 170.  I assume if i'm fit enough to roll out of bed and run a quick 10 miles every morning, losing weight will be no big deal.  Also, even if i don't do quite as well in the races as if i'd reduced my weight, i'll probably do better than last year, and in the long-term it's better to get genuinely healthy, and sort out any food issues.

I did make a new PR with my interval workout yesterday.  Six two-minute intervals at 162 steps a minute, double stepping.  50 second off between each interval. Here was my heart rate data:

I actually felt i could have gone a little harder, though that last interval was pretty tough.  I may try to reduce the rest intervals to 45 seconds next time.  My goal is to reduce the rest intervals as much as i can before US bank.  In a perfect world, i'd like to do those 12 minutes double stepping at 162 S/M with no rest, but that's not likely going to happen soon.  But if i get close, i think my goal of US bank in 12 flat is not too improbable, as to reach my goal i "only" need to climb at 140 S/M and the steps at US bank are significantly shorter than the stairmaster.  I'll also start practicing some real stairs wearing my 40 pound weight vest.  My work building has 300 steps which is somewhat more than 1/6 US bank, so if i can climb it 6 times at 2 minutes per ascent, carrying 40 extra pounds, getting back down the elevator as quickly as i can, i'll also feel more confident about US bank.

Aside from these two interval approaches, i'll mix in some easy runs ( 10 miles at 8:00-9:00 pace ) as well as tough 10-15 minute pulls on the stairmaster.  If i have time, maybe i'll do some of my 1,2,3 hour stairclimbs, but honestly, i'm going to de-prioritize those.  I simply don't think i'll have the time or the physical recovery resources!

And i'll be doing lots of yoga, of course. That's changed my life so much, i could never imagine giving it up!

Checking in on my goals, and my performance compared to last year at this time

I realized US bank is a mere 10 weeks away. Last year about a month out, i had a panic attack, so i wanted to get my ducks a bit better lined up before this opening of the stair racing season.

Last night i looked though my journal and scraped out a training log from pre-race.  This is from my regular journal, so it's not that detailed, but believing myself to be in better shape than this point last year, i thought it made sense to use those as a baseline.

My notes indicate that i did 18 minutes at 140 steps a minute, but i suspect that was with 4 breaks, as that seems out of reach.  It was also single-stepping which left my legs unprepared for double-stepping the real race.  2 months later, when i was in much better shape, i did 135 for 13 minutes, double stepping, and it was tough.

Nonetheless, i decided i'd go for 140, double stepping, for 13 minutes.  I was also not quite as rested as those workouts.

I was fine for the first 4-5 minutes, barely touching the handrails.  6-8 it stated to feel tough, from 8 on i was gutting it out.  Finally, at 10:30, my side cramped up pretty badly, and i hit stop, breathed and rubbed my side for about 25 seconds, and resumed climbing to get in my 12 minutes.

Base on my intensity guage, i think 135 for 13, my last workout before my best-ever climb, would have been do-able with about the difficulty my journal depicts.  So i think i'm about as fast as my peak last year.

Also, my journal says that 2 weeks out i was weighing in at 188, which is heavier than i thought i was. I'm 180 now, and i have more muscle, so i should be faster for the same fitness level.  Back then, my legs would give out, now my cardio is limiting me.

Based on that, my cardio engine is probably 95% of my peak last year,  10 weeks out from my first race.  If i got it to 100% of last year's, and held my weight at 180, i'd do us bank in 12:30 - 12:45.  But my goal is to reduce my time from 13:20 to 12:00, so there is still a lot of work to be done.  Ten weeks could well be enough time, though!  Instead of obsessing on that goal, i'll focus on doing the right things every day!

Making progress, got to make more!

It's been awhile since i've checked in!

My diet has been generally better.  I've been cutting out a lot of the processed food, and am relying much more on vegetables, fruit, and legumes.

I would think this would result in more weight loss, but in the past 6 weeks i've gone from 181 to 179. But i think i've put on a few pounds of muscle at the same time, so i guess there has been more than two pounds of fat loss.

I've been focusing more on intervals on the stairclimber focusing on making improvements at US bank and sears tower.  Most of my workouts have been flat out on the machine, for example 162 steps a minute for 2 minutes, 50 seconds of rest, flat out again for 2 minutes, 50 seconds rest, etc, until i have 12 minutes at 162 steps a minute. My dream goal is to keep reducing those rest intervals until i don't need them anymore.

My goal at US bank is 12 minutes, i could do that going 135 steps a minute.  The extra 28 steps a minute accounts for the added difficulty of real stairs and turning.

My goal at sears is 17, which is "only" 124 steps a minute.  But after US bank, i will add intervals so i'm doing 18 minutes, which will require lengthening my breaks.  But i will want to do 18 minutes of intervals at 162 S/M, then hold myself to 124 steps a minute once i get in the building.

The 5K in august feels like a distraction to me now, i'd rather be focusing 100% on stairclimbing, but i also know it's good cross training.

After i'm through with my current batch of fruit, i'm going to watch my carbs for awhile, focusing on lean veggie protein and vegetables, and do some longer workouts, making a concerted effort to push my weight down to at least 175, while maintaining my interval fitness.

Right now, i feel overworked. I ran 10 miles with Kristin and Brady, which was fun, but i'm not a distance runner, and this beat up my legs.  My 5k practice a few days later was incredibly slow ( 23:55 )

In summation, i'm making some progress, but need to work harder to realize my goals of cutting 10% off of my times.

Month plus recap: Holding pattern?

I missed this checkin by a bit!  Over a month has passed, and I must say, i'm glad i have this log to keep me focused.

My diet has been hit or miss, i've too easily let myself become distracted.  I also signed up for a 5k and so i've beeb running too.  I had 7 days hiking and vacationing, so no real HIT workouts and my diet was too much trail mix and too much alcohol.

Nonetheless, my weight is down a little bit ( 178.5 ) and i had some decent workouts after getting back.  I tried a HIT workout soon after i got back, and bonked a bit.  Trying to get back on my healthy diet.

So, feeling this blog has been a great help to me, i'm going to redouble my focus on it, and update it in three weeks, seeing if 21 days of intense refocus after vacation can make a real difference.

Goals:

* Super clean eating, no alcohol, sugar, excess fats.  Definitely work to increase my greens and vegetable intake even more.  Watch the grains.
* Focus on healthy fuel immediately after workouts. Green smoothie is best.
* Make sure every 4th day or so is some form of recovery day.
* Make sure i do at least 2 sculpt yoga classes a week for muscular development.

Summer plans

After the race season ended for me, i purposely gave myself a little break.  I was, frankly, burned out!  My last few races had been quite poor, no reason to keep pushing.  With my goal of improving 10%, my fitness plans from last year wouldn’t be good enough, so i spent a lot of time researching various aspects of fitness to devise a plan to bring my fitness to the next level.

One thing to keep in mind is that i am not only, or perhaps even primarily, a stair racing athlete.  I am primarily a Yogi, and if you want to get really bored one day, ask me how great i think yoga has been for me.   So aside from my planned improvements in stairclimbing, i plan to expand and deepen my yoga practice as well.  So my improvement plan must reflect that goal.  

Fortunately, these goals are not necessarily divergent.  Some of the things i am doing to help me become faster at the stairs will help me at yoga, and vice-versa.  

In general, cardiovascular fitness and strength will pay big dividends at yoga.  Cardiovascular fitness means i can do more classes and remain at an equanimous level. Strength and cardio means i can do a class, and keep my breathing smooth and even, and not be getting into a bad place with my pulse and breathing.  Losing weight will pay big dividends for yoga, as well as for stair racing, and will also help me to keep cool in both environments.  If i can be zen while torturing myself on the stairs, certainly i can be zen in yoga class as well.

Where these activities might be in conflict is mostly in time and flexibility and time.  I typically have spent a lot of time in the gym doing submaximal workouts to build a cardio base for the stair races.  These took away time i could have used for yoga, and also seemed to tighten me up more than my sprint workouts.

So, this leads to the “exercise” part of my big change from last year.  My basic stair training workout will be short, intense sessions.  Most of my races are going to be 10-15 minutes, a few of them should be under 10 minutes.  So most of my training sessions will be 10 minutes or so, and a long one might be 20 minutes.  The power hours did me no favors, and i can simply forget about them and focus on my speed/power in the shorter races.  Instead of hours on the stairmaster, i’ll do hours of yoga.  Better for my mind, better for my flexibility.

Several articles i read seem to indicate that the best sort of overall health/fitness routine is lots of easy activity ( gardening, walking, yoga ) with brief bouts of intense exercise. And, in particular, you can do fine with sprinting workouts  Here is an good article on sprinting, it can increase fitness and burn a lot of fat in a little time.

Part of the reason for the long workouts was to burn fat.  I’ve lost a lot of fat over the past few years, but there is still a bit to go, and it’s been increasingly stubborn. But i’ve come to the conclusion that the long workouts are just not the right approach, except maybe when there’s a football game i want to watch, and i can do it from the stairmaster.  That aside, an hour on the stairmaster is 1000 calories if i push it, and 1000 calories of high-calorie food can be ingested in a few seconds.  It’s more time efficient to just not eat that food.  

So i need to keep my calories down.  I’ve had the most success over the years doing so with various intermittent fasting protocols.  I know a lot of people are convinced that you need to eat often to keep your metabolism up, and that fasting will ruin your fat loss and muscle gains, but almost all the research shows the opposite.  Here is an excellent article by my friend PJ.  Martin berkhan has thoroughly debunked most fasting myths with links to lots of great research.

Two summers back i lost 10 pounds in eight weeks doing the warrior diet, which is essentially fasting during the day, working out, and having a big dinner.  I lost no muscle, and it was incredibly easy.  I gave it up for a few reasons.  One, because it was hard to get in the intensity of cardio i wanted.  Two, because it was often socially challenging--people think it’s weird when you skip meals.  Three, because it was hard to get in enough clean calories at that one big meal, even when i was trying to lose weight! I still do this on my solo vacations, and it’s great.  You can get in an extra hour of two of sightseeing when you’re skipping breakfast and lunch, and you are paying for one overpriced vacation meal instead of three.  

Now, i’m going with eat stop eat, in which you fast 1-2 times a week.  This is also called the 5/2 diet.  Basically 1-2 times a week, you have a normal/smallish dinner, then don’t eat again until the next dinner, so you go 24 hours without food.  Unlike the warrior diet, you have a full 24 hour fast, and you don’t go into the fast stuffed with food.  So autophagy ( the body’s clean-up and repair mechanism ) gets fully activated.  You are also forced to run on stored bodyfat for some period of time, especially if you are active during the fasting period.  

My basic plan is that i have a set weight ( for me 179 pounds ) and when i weigh over that on the scale in the morning, i fast that day, except if i fasted the previous day--this is unlikely to be a problem, as i am never “over” after a fasting day.  If i want to drop weight, i follow the same rules, and lower my set weight every 1-2 weeks, so i’ll be fasting more often.  Even if i am trying to GAIN i fast once a week, just for the health benefits.  

As for what i’m eating, my research has led to me adopting a much more vegan diet.  In particular, i am no longer that worried about my protein intake; i think it’s difficult to eat too little protein.  There are superb athletes ( such as Michael Arnstein ) eating the 80/10/10 diet, 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein, 10% fat.  I don’t know if i’ll get that extreme, but if people can perform superbly on that little fat and protein, i obviously don’t have to struggle to include it at every meal.  I also think that while diet may matter less for optimal athletics than many people think, plant-based eating is the right choice for both our health ( cancer & neurodegenerative risks ) as well as for the environment & ethics.  Meat, egg, and dairy farming creates more co2 than our transit systems, causes loss of countless acres of forest & wild land, and most food animals are suffering intensely.  So not more omelets for me when i am on the road, to make sure i get my protein.  I’ll be fine having salads, oatmeal, fruit, nuts, etc.  Here’s what i would think of as a perfect eating day. Not that i think i’m that disciplined in general...

So, the short of it, here’s my summer plan:

1) Fasting to maintain or reduce weight, and to protect against neurodegeneration and cancer.

2) Going entirely plant based, going low fat, moderate protein.  Perhaps 70% carb , 15% protein, 15% fat, and not worrying if i get closer to 80/10/10. A perfect day of food might look like this:

3) Short, intense stair workouts 2-3 times a week.  ( only on non-fasting days )

4) Lots of yoga, especially at the end of fasting days. Focus on skills and workout recovery.

5) Intense weight session ( design courtesy of Alex Workman ) about once a week--definitely not on a fasting day.

6) Easy cardio as recreation--bike ride, run, but just use it for pleasure.

As of this morning, i was 180 pounds, and my most recent hard workout was 151 steps/minute for 10 minutes, with one 25 second break at 80 steps/minute about 6:30. I'm going to really focus for this month, and reassess how this plan has affected my weight/climbing speed before a vacation to Tennessee. So i'll update this june 8. See you all then!

The 2012-2013 race season is over, and looking back on it, i’m pretty happy, though i think i definitely burned out towards the end, and didn’t put in a hard enough effort in some races.  In particular, i think my hancock, stratosphere, and big climb results were pretty lame.  

BUT i did hit my goal of increasing all my times generally by 10% which is pretty great.

Race	2011	2012	improvement
sears	21:02 ( 1262 seconds )	19:21 ( 1161 seconds )	8%
aon	14:45 ( 885 seconds )	12:55 (775 seconds)	14%
hancock	15:32 (932 seconds)	13:40 (820 seconds)	13%

Some observations:

1) I did better in the shorter races.  My improvement at sears was less than in other races, and i think i did relatively poorer yet in the power hour climbs.  

2) Even more so, it seems the races i did after the power hours, i did quite poorly.  Although i improved almost as much at hancock as at Aon, the year before at hancock i’d had the flu and had spent the night before throwing up, so the improvement there was not as drastic.

3) I didn’t hit the start of the season quite where i wanted to be, and trained during the season to improve my condition, which combined with races, travel, etc, left me pretty burned out and tired by the end of the season.  

4)  I definitely felt trashed by the power hours, especially when i did one six days after the other.  I definitely overestimated my ability to recover during race season.

5) I finished too many races fresh.   Late in the race, i was unwilling to pass someone even when i should have.  

So, with that mind, i am going to work all summer trying to hit the season in better shape, so i have less need to improve & lose weight during the season.  My goal is to take 10% off all of my times, which would mean:

race	2012-2013	2013-2014 (10% improvement goal)	Would have placed / what i got
US bank	13:20 (800 seconds)	12:00 (720 seconds)
Sears tower	19:20 (1160 seconds)	17:24 (1044 seconds)	21st / 69th
300 n LsSalle	9:45 ( 585 seconds)	8:46 (526 seconds)	5th / 13th
Aon Chicago	12:55 ( 775 seconds )	11:37 ( 697 seconds )	9th / 23rd
Hancock	13:40 ( 820 seconds )	12:19 ( 738 seconds )	22nd / 67th
Stratosphere	10:45 ( 645 seconds )	9:40 ( 580 seconds )	21st / 34th
presidential towers	20:43 ( 1243 seconds )	18:38 ( 1118 seconds )	10th  / 20th

What am i going to do differently?

1) Starting my high intensity workouts now, which will allow me to aim for a much slower increase in my high-intensity fitness.  Ease into the season fairly fresh

2) Work more on muscular development, and muscular endurance, My legs were used up before my cardio was.  Go way deeper in yoga poses, lift, climb stairs in a weighted vest.

3) Edge weight from 181 to 170.  Don’t attempt to lose weight during the season, even allow a pound or two to creep on during the season, if that’s what my body is asking for.

4) Focus more on between-workout recovery, eating super clean, anti-inflammatory recovery meals, lots of carbs & moderate protein right after workouts.  i had been too carb-phobic, and i think it hurt me, as i was not able to work out at a high enough intensity often enough.  

5) I need to do more tortuous workouts to build the mental fortitude to suffer and even pass someone at the late stages of a race.   With even a long race being under 20 minutes, it’s only a tiny blip in my day/week/month.  

2012-2013 end of the season retrospect

I really let this journal slide, so instead of writing up each race after it way happened, i’m going to wrap up the season with a few sentences of each:

Springfield hilton: another great event, it was awesome seeing justin and oz power up the stairs, flying past me repeatedly.  I started off slow and steady, but 40 minutes into the race, i began to feel really sick.  i slowed down a bit, and went hard on my second to last climb so could get into the stairs one more time.  I managed it, and got 9 climbs, a nice result for me.  

Hustle up the hancock: I was hoping to come in under 13 minutes, as the climb is actually a few feet shorter than Aon and i had some gas left after that race.  There was an accident on the highway so i was very late to the race, and i had a mad scramble to get to the starting line in time, but i made it just as people were starting to go.  I started off feeling OK, but 20 floors in, my legs felt heavy and stiff, and i moved into damage control mode.  I got passed by numerous people, so i felt i had not validated my elite start.  I finished with cardio gas in the tank, and my legs felt better too.  Somehow being so out of it mentally at the start ( as well as physically ) meant i had no finishing grit or sprint.  I began to wonder if the two power hours had used me up and i had not been able to recover.

Scale the strat: i got into vegas super late ( my plane was delayed ) and the check-in line was an hour.  Even though i had figured out the building splits, and many racers had used my spreadsheet, i didn’t figure out my own pace.  I went too slow, and close to the end realized i wasn’t tired enough.  I made a mad sprint, but it was too late to make up time.  Still, i was tired.  I was definitely feeling burned out, overtrained, whatever.

Presidential towers: I finished my first climb and felt pretty good, feeling relatively fresh even though i was much faster than the year before.  I stuck to my pacing track until the last 7-8 floors, then sprinted.  Tower 2, i hit my headphones,and stopped my audio track, though i ended up with almost the same time. #3 someone hit my ipod and reset my timing track, but again, i climbed hard and had a good time.  However, i began to feel really bad, sick, pukey. I took a long break after 3, but still felt really bad climbing #4.  I stuck to my pace until 20, then let myself fall slowly behind, but gutted out the last 10 floors, not letting myself fall anymore behind.  I was really happy to come in under 21 minutes ( 20:42 ) for 188 floors and ¼ mile run.  

Big climb ( seattle ) : I’d spent the previous few days hiking and running with kristin and brady in olympic park. I’m not sure if it impacted me, or i was just done with racing, but i failed to push myself very hard during this climb.  My time was not awful, ( 10:45 ) but i knew i should have been a minute faster, and i was out of the points.  

Looking back on the season, there were two sub-seasons, both of which i started out very strong, then fell off.  US bank and Aon chicago were the first races after months, and in both of those i did very well.  I managed to grind out presidential, but my last race, big climb, was just lame.  I think next season i either need to do fewer races, no power hours, figure out how to recover better, or some combination thereof.  

Overall i'm happy with the season, i learned a lot, but i know i can do better!!!