IWBMATTKY(M)T

IWBMATTKYT is the motto of The Sufferfest. It stands for I Will Beat My Ass Today To Kick Yours Tomorrow. While I am admittedly competitive, it is mostly a result of pushing myself harder so that I can...PUSH MYSELF HARDER.

It's been a few years (6) since I've trained for an early season long course triathlon. 6 years ago it was American Triple T in May. This time it's Clermont Challenge 1/2 IM and Olympic in just 3 weeks. Shit! While I don't have huge expectations for my upcoming race performance--for one thing, all my bike training will have been on the trainer--I still do not want to suck, so I've been hitting it hard since I officially began "training" on December 1:

Although if you remove the strength training hours, it's really not that much. Thank you Chicago winter for the opportunity to shovel snow! It would actually be reasonable training without all that. In these 13 weeks, I have:

• Finished the grueling Tour of Sufferlandria (week of 1/26).
• Won my AG at 2 supersprint triathlons (weeks of 2/2 and 2/16)
• Did back to back Olympic+ NothingMans (this past weekend).

Those 3 things above were crammed in the space of 5 weeks. It's been interesting riding the waves of fatigue followed by increased endurance/strength. I felt really good this weekend--much better than I thought I would--considering how much I've been doing. I usually do a 1/2 NothingMan around Thanksgiving, and when I am training for Triple T, I'll do several weekends of them. This past Thanksgiving, I did sprint/Oly/1/2 IM on consecutive days. Maybe I should have included that one more week above! That would make the training block even more impressive (to ME--I'm the only person I need to impress!).

NothingMans are opportunities to test out nutrition and pacing, which are really one and the same. Whenever someone says they had stomach issues in a race, well, it means they screwed up their pacing, too. You can't practice one without practicing the other. When I have a NothingMan (more than a sprint) on the menu, I am thinking about it and preparing for it several days in advance, the same as a "real" race, because I need to be in good nutritional (and sleep) status in order to perform well. I take my NothingMans seriously!

For this weekend, I used my old wetsuit for the swim, even though I swam in a pool. Once again, glad I did--I had a bit of mid-back soreness after wearing it Friday and Saturday, so I did some additional stretching Saturday night since I was wearing it again Sunday. It also let me get my arms used to swimming in the suit. I will wear it at least once a week up until race day.

The original plan for this weekend's NothingMans was to do Olympic distance (1500 swim, 25-mile bike, 10k run) both days, but on Friday I decided I wanted to swim 1/2 IM distance on Saturday, since I hadn't done that (straight swim--most of my swims are about 3,000 yards lately) in awhile. I also decided I would just bike 1:30 both days, because that would give me good bike volume for the week.

My pool was fucking hot both days. I was overheating wearing the suit, but it was still worth it to wear it. On Saturday, a woman in the locker room told me I should be a wetsuit model! How sweet of her to say that! I was actually worried I might not fit in the thing because I'm up a few pounds up (which I think is due to my thyryoid petering out more--will find out today), but it fit just fine. But I was a total spaz, and forgot to put on Bodyglide, so it was tough getting it on Saturday morning. I also forgot to bring a towel with me! I had just put my crap into a locker and realized I had no towel. I was like, fuck it, I'm not driving back home--I will just have to drip dry!

Once I got in and started swimming, I played games in my head--I didn't really need to swim 2100, so I just made myself a deal that if I didn't feel like I was slowing down too much by the time I hit 1500 that I'd just keep going. Well, I was fine, so I finished out the 2100. It was great to get the suit off. I changed into my biking clothes in the locker room and drove home to bike.

I was using a custom Infinit mix after the swim and for the bike and run. I'd queued up music to listen to (random older dance CDs) while I biked and ran, and had fun listening to stuff I hadn't heard in a few years. On the bike, I did my typical :30 warmup, then I did 4 intervals of mostly 1/2 IM watts plus. Getting off the bike, I did a relaxed but not lollygagging transition to get on the treadmill. After I ran for about :10 (I started out super easy), I started thinking that it would be good for me to get in 13.1 miles of running across the 2 NothingMans, so I made an executive decision to do 6.6 miles on Saturday and 6.5 on Sunday. What's a couple more tenths of a mile, anyway?

I felt pretty good running. I was actually surprised, since I'd beaten myself into submission a week ago between the warmup, actual race, and then running after that race. I kept in mind that I had to do this all over again on Sunday. I ate well at lunch and dinner, and aside from grocery shopping and cooking a nice meal (strip steaks Italian style in a tomato paste/Marsala/red wine/garlic reduction and sauteed Belgian endive/carrots), I laid around. Saturday night it was supposed to snow, and I was hoping we didn't get too much because I didn't want to have to shovel a lot just to go to the pool and swim 1500!

Here's my finishing sticker for Saturday, which was a 2100 swim, 32.5 mile bike and 6.6 mile run:

I actually slept until 5AM yesterday, which is odd for me, but hey, I'll take it! But I didn't want to start too late in the morning, either. Since I'd failed to take my Synthroid in the middle of the night, I had to take it right away and then wait 1/2 hour until I could eat or drink anything. I washed dishes, knowing I'd be creating 4 more bottles that day, and still had to wait a few minutes before I could have coffee and breakfast. Even though I could get away with eating maybe 1.5 hours before starting, I don't like doing that, especially since I wasn't particularly hungry when I woke up. But I got on my breakfast just after 5:30, and figured I'd start at 7:30. Well, we did get about 1/4" of snow, and I wanted to get that off the driveway anyway, and figured it would be a good little warmup. It only took me about :10 to do it, but I felt like I hadn't fully digested my breakfast in order to start by 7:30.

I ended up starting at 8:05, but even then, I felt queasy in the pool, because even though this was just a NothingMan, my body reacts the same as for an actual race, and it had only been 2.5 hours since I'd eaten, so that combined with a hot pool had me feeling like I would puke at any moment. Oh and I remembered a towel yesterday, and I also remembered Bodyglide, so my wetsuit went on quite easily. I kept wanting to slow down because I SO wanted to puke, but I didn't, and I finished and got the suit off, stretched a bit, suited up to bike and headed home.

It was snowing very lightly, which was nice to look at out the window while I was on the bike. My legs felt somewhat worked over from Saturday, but not too bad. My warmup pace was a little slower than on Saturday, but then I picked it up and ended up riding faster/harder on Sunday! But then I was wondering how I'd feel on the run. Same as for Saturday, I transitioned quickly (after throwing a load of laundry into the washer), and did my warmup same as on Saturday. I was surprised that my legs didn't feel so bad, so I figured I'd try and run just a bit faster than the day before. About :43 in, I accidentally stopped the treadmill instead of a pause (to get another bottle of Infinit out of the fridge), and was like now I have to do math to figure out how much more to go. I got my shit together, and since I wanted to end the run at a full minute, ended up running 6.52 miles. So Sunday's NothingMan was 1500 swim, 33.3 bike and 6.52 run, giving me this awesome sticker:

So across the 2 days I went well over 1/2 IM distance in total, felt like I had a decent pace throughout, practiced my nutrition, practiced swimming in the wetsuit and enjoyed myself! The spoils of this were 2 glasses of this:

I can no longer drink anything but French champagne, and this was the first French rose I'd had, and it is excellent! It's still dry, but just a hint of sweetness.

I have one more "big" week of training (although today is a much needed rest day) and then I actually sort of taper--well not really--I am considering this a "train through" set of races. I'm doing a 4-hour ride on Saturday and a 2-2:15 run on Sunday, so another 1/2 IM plus across 2 days, which is no big deal really, but that 4-hour ride will probably suck at some level.

So part of me wants to change the Sufferfest motto to IWBMATTKMT: I Will Beat My Ass Today To Kick Mine Tomorrow.

Mission accomplished!

Critique my Refrigerator and Pantry

From time to time, I catch shit from people about things I choose to eat and drink, like Coke, jelly beans, Pringles, etc. But unless you've been inside my fridge and watched me eat on a daily basis, what the fuck would you know about my day to day diet?

So in the interest of full disclosure, I hereby present pictures of my fridge contents:

Above is the business part.

Top Left:

• Bottles of Gatorade. These are used during swimming, biking and running. Behind the Gatorade bottles are my bottles of Endurox R4, which has been my preferred recovery drink for 15 years.

Top Right:

• Coffeemate, low fat Hazelnut. Yes, it contains sugar. I like it.
• Behind the Coffeemate is coffee. For years I used to ship 100% Kona coffee here, and it was delicious, but I don't drink as much coffee as I used to (3 small mugs in the morning), and I am good with Starbucks or Gevalia or whatever looks good at my grocery store.
• Bottles of Infinit. These are here for the Tour of Sufferlandria. Normally, I only use Infinit for rides of 3+ hours or when I both swim and run in the morning before work. For the Tour, I'm drinking it every stinking ride because I want the caffeine and race-type fueling. I have 3 custom Infinit mixes that I use as needed--for Monday-Friday of the Tour I am using my lower calorie mix, and for Saturday and Sunday I'm using my fairly high caffeine, higher calorie mix.

Second Shelf, Left:

• Eggs, eggs, eggs! The small bowl has hardboiled eggs. I eat one for breakfast every day.
• Herring. This is a snack food for me. I like it from time to time. 

Second Shelf, Right:

• One container of brown rice.
• One container of a chicken/vegetable dish that was in my freezer, that I will eat either for lunch or dinner today depending on how I feel. It will go over rice.

Drawer, Left:

• Various protein snacks live in here, such as string cheese (sometimes Cheddar), braunschweiger (yep, I love that stuff), regular American cheese, Canadian Bacon and Lox, depending on what I'm in the mood for. The lox and Canadian bacon are for when I do a swim/run combo and I need to eat a significant snack after, which consists of an English muffin buttered with one of them on top.
• Corn tortillas (you can't see them). For when I want a bit more carbs with dinner (to soak up some sauce) or an ad hoc tortilla wrap.

Third Shelf, Left:

• Homemade banana/wheat germ muffins (in the bags). I eat one of these for breakfast every day, with a hardboiled egg. Gluten! GMO wheat! Sugar! Canola oil! These things will surely kill me!
• Behind the muffins is a big chunk of Parmesan cheese, that I periodically grate to go on top of salads or rice.

Third Shelf, Right:

• Cherry tomatoes, for salads
• More containers of brown rice. I made about 8 cups for the week, and it keeps well.
• Yogurt. This is what I consider dessert, when I want it.
• Bread. GMO wheat! For when I want toast or the odd sandwich.

Bottom Drawer, Left:

• Lemons. I use these when I roast a whole chicken. The chicken is stuffed with 2 separated heads of garlic, a halved lemon and some rosemary.
• Salad greens. I could buy the greens loose, but I'm lazy and I like the easy variety of the packaged ones.
• A small container of pignoli. For salads.
• Garlic. You can't see it, but there are 4 heads in there.

Bottom Drawer, Right:

• Coke! Because I like it during long runs on the treadmill in winter, to load up calories before long workouts, or when I've delayed a mid-day run or bike past lunchtime and need calories but can't eat lunch because then I'd need to wait even longer. On average, I probably drink 1.5 Cokes per week.

Above is the door. It contains condiments (ketchup, mayo, mustard, BBQ sauce, Chinese sauces), grated Parmesan (in the Jewel container), Starbucks espressos for emergency caffeine, almond milk (used in my breakfast muffins), a package of coffee (because it wouldn't fit in the freezer), bread crumbs, lemon juice, spare Coffeemates, Kringle Cream (it's awesome), Limoncello (it's also awesome), English muffins (which I will swap out for the homemade ones in late spring) and...BEER.

Above is the main part of my (smallish) freezer. In here are chicken (whole roaster and drumsticks), some steaks, some fish (salmon), a chuck roast, coffee, meatballs (in the Dean's containers), a Lean Cuisine (I usually eat one of those for lunch), and various containers of tasty things I've cooked in bulk and then frozen so I can use them on weekdays when I have zero time to cook. Also stuffed in there are a couple of slices of my deep dish pizza and lasagna in the tinfoil.

Above is the door of my freezer. Butter (butter keeps extremely well in the freezer), more coffee, and containers of various tasty things like pesto (I make a huge batch every August and dole it out as needed throughout the year), pasta sauces and rice toppings. And a few small ice packs.

Above are the top shelves of my pantry (it's a closet). Some cooking vessels, including a lobster pot, a tart pan and my good cookie sheets, and on the lower shelf are my flours (gluten! GMO wheat!), rices (brown and jasmine), sugars (brown and white granulated), and spare food wraps.

Above is the remaining shelves of my pantry. Lots of good things in there! Various sauces for Chinese cooking, couscous, sardines, tomatoes and tomato sauces, Chinese vegetables, olives, anchovies, beans, soups, sauerkraut, salsa, wheat germ, almond milk, ketchup, pickles, coconut milk, chile sauce, canned fruit, garlic chili paste, and there's a bunch of pasta in there.

So yes, I do eat some processed foods, I do eat some sugar (aside from naturally occurring in the fruit I eat which is typically bananas, dried figs, prunes, and seasonal fruits like berries, mangos), I do drink beer and the occasional aperitif or cordial (I have a pretty good wine rack in my dining room, too!), and I do take in engineered sports nutrition. I prepare my breakfast and dinner foods from scratch, and go out to eat maybe once a week or every 2 weeks, preferring sushi, good Italian and lately Caribbean.

I didn't take pictures of other food areas, like spices, oils and crackers. I use a lot of olive oil. Salads are topped with olive oil and creme of balsamic. I have fallen in love with the specialty Triscuits--cracked black pepper, sweet potato and roasted sweet onion. Sometimes I'll have a few with cheese on top as a snack, or have a few with dinner. I have a bag of fun size Paydays that are in reserve for long bike rides or whenever I feel like it. I have a package of Keebler cheese/peanut butter crackers that I like when doing long (3+ hour) rides. I have some jelly beans.

I cook on weekends only unless I have a day off work. Broiling a steak or fish or chicken does not constitute cooking to me. Cooking is a dish requiring prep time, at least 5 ingredients, and some watching. I've come to know a bunch of recipes in my favorite cookbooks that I make over and over. Pasta sauces are for when I'm training > 15 hours per week. Rice toppings are good any time. The pizza and lasagne are once a year deals, since they take a shitload of time to make. I'm still trying to decide if/when I will make my annual batch of green chile--it's another dish that takes the better part of a day to make, but I have no room in my freezer currently! I can now start extracting containers from my freezer, and when I have removed 4 or so, then I can make my next thing and freeze it. What happens is that by summer I have a whole bunch of different things in there to choose from, which is really nice, and they supplement grilling outdoors. In summer, I'm usually training like a beast and eating more pasta, and there are many pasta sauces I like that require very little time, and so I will make one when I feel like it (spaghetti carbonara, walnut pesto, sausage/cream, on and on!) and eat it for a few days.

Could I eat more cleanly? Of course. But I do pretty OK, I think, eating appropriately for the amount of training I'm doing, a good amount of fruits and vegetables (I have fruit for morning snack and on top of salads and in some rice toppings, and dinner features a lot of vegetables and some at lunch), a good amount of lean protein, appropriate use of starches, and I'm not a big dessert person. I do indulge in the occasional McDonald's, but that's about it for out to eat junk food. In my daily diet, most of my sugar comes in the form of sports nutrition. There's that little bit in my coffee, breakfast muffin and lunch. Sometimes I go through a phase where I'll have tuna and vegetables for lunch. It's healthier than a Lean Cuisine, but I also like a hot meal at lunch. I don't feel like I'm sacrificing. EVER. Do I think my racing would be better if I cleaned up my diet even more? Fuck no. It's important to me to enjoy life even though I train fucking hard. Good food is one of the rewards of hard training. I'm cognizant of the need to replace and top off my glycogen stores, not get fat, and time my meals and snacks based on my training. This is what works for me. Time to finish breakfast!

I love food--I love shopping for food, I love making food, and I love eating it. But I am also aware of nutrition, and I think I have it covered!

Another Challenge Met and Nearly Conquered and Crackhead Nutrition 101

So, I've been puzzled by some weight gain since August--about 4 lbs.  There is no way I could be gaining weight at the level I'm training at, while being hungry most of the time and nearly bonking during many workouts.  I asked the nurse at my doctor's office last week, and she said maybe it's muscle.  Um...NO.  I told her we need to figure this out or else I am going on a crash diet, and she shouldn't want me to do that because I will starve myself and disappear!

Still, I figured this was an opportunity to clean up my diet a little bit, so last week I started watching what I was eating--eliminating any candy, less beer, less pasta.  Weight was not budging, and it should have at least .5 lb.

On Saturday morning, I put on a pair of bike shorts that just a few weeks ago fit fine and they were TIGHT!  I was like WTF is this?  So I got on the scale, and THREE MORE POUNDS ARE THERE!!!  Clearly this is not regular weight gain, and on Friday I'd realized that I'd been drinking my sodium-laden (although not excessive for intense exercise on a hot day) Infinit a lot more than I ever have at this time of the year, and I typically get all salt cravy (cravy is a new word I just invented--you're welcome), so I thought I might be OD'ing slightly on sodium, but still...

I ordered a reduced sodium custom Infinit mix on Friday, but it hasn't arrived.  It has 32% less sodium than my "hot weather" mixture.  I am going to make one more custom formula with even less in it that I can use during winter months.

I talked with my nurse friend, Lori, about this while I was on the bike Saturday, and she suggested I just drink clear water during my ride.  But I was riding 5 hours, no way I could survive that without calories--I know my body pretty well.  So I looked at what I could switch to, and I ended up eating a Clif bar and one gel.  For the 5 hour ride I took in only 600 calories, but I had 750 in before I started so I was OK and didn't bonk, and I even did hard intervals.  But, I have so much HTFU, don't I?

I tried to eat well right after the ride, and then I had sushi for dinner with my brother Mike, and fuck, I really wanted the soy sauce, but I only let myself have a tiny bit.

Yesterday morning, I weighed myself, and those 3 additional lbs. were still there, and I rode Death Machine for 3.25 hours on 366 calories of Infinit, so I had some sodium going there AND CAFFEINE!  For lunch, I had some mostly plain pasta with barely any homemade salmon sauce, which still probably contained a good hit of sodium, but not too terribly much.

I baked some banana wheat germ muffins to begin eating for breakfast, as it turns out my beloved English muffin has too much sodium for my own good.  I even left out the pinch or so of salt in my muffin recipe because as it turns out FUCKING NO SUGAR ADDED ALMOND MILK HAS A BUNCH OF SODIUM IN IT!   Not enough to be lethal to me, but enough that it warranted not adding additional salt to my recipe.  You see what's going on here--you try and eat/drink something you THINK is healthy, but it really isn't.  Ugh...  I started using almond milk in my muffins 2 years ago as a way to reduce the fat in them, but guess what?  EXCESS SODIUM!  Fuckers...

For dinner, I had a salad with no added sodium and some sirloin steak with no salt, and then I had a Fage yogurt, which FUCKING YAY, barely has any sodium in it.  Not sure if I got enough calories, but today I only have to swim so I should be OK.

I was feeling puffy still, though, so I talked to my friend's wife, Nancy, since I know she is all over various sorts of things with her body and figured she might have some advice for me.  She did, and suggested some natural diuretic pills, which I immediately went out and bought and took one with dinner.  THANK YOU NANCY!!!

I don't know if it was the pill by itself, or the pill plus my reduced sodium yesterday, but I weighed myself and 3 lbs. is gone.  FUCK YEAH!  Now I need to see 4 more go.  It will be interesting to see what my "real" weight is--I'm guessing maybe 111--but we shall see.

So I'm now watching my sodium intake like a hawk--I still want some during training, and cut my Infinit by half so I still get some plus some calories, and Coke is OK since it isn't sodium laden (THANK GOD OTHERWISE I WOULD KILL MYSELF), and I can even do Gatorade.  I just need to keep my non-training sodium intake to a minimum.

At the moment, I don't know if this sodium episode is a direct result of the hypothyroidism, or whether it's just that since this is the first time I've trained for a winter Ironman and used so much Infinit during training that I just kinda OD'ed on sodium.  Whatever.  I will report this to my doctor today (including that I'll be taking a mild diuretic for a few days), and see how I do with less sodium during training the next few weeks.  I have a feeling I will be OK using the full-strength Infinit on race day in Cozumel since it will be hot.  I don't care if I"m puffy for a few days after that race--I just need to be sure my body can handle it, so this will require a decent discussion with my doctor.

I thought I'd reprise some of my general nutrition wisdom in this post as well. I try as best as I can to follow the guidelines for carb intake based on training hours from an older version of one of Monique Ryan's sports nutrition books.  Here's the table for low to high training hours:

And here's the table for excessive amounts of training, i.e., a Crackhead:

In order to achieve this easily (i.e., without keeping track of precise calorie intake daily) at different levels of training throughout a season, I've made some rules for myself:

• If I'm training < 12 hours per week, no rice or pasta at dinner.  Just salads loaded with veggies.
• If I'm training 12+ to 14 hours per week, I can have rice at dinner.  Gives me a boost in carbs.
• If I'm training 14-16 hours per week, I can have pasta 1 or 2 times per week at dinner in addition to rice the other days.
• If I'm training 16+ hours per week, I can have pasta as often as I like.
• If I'm training 18+ hours per week (as I have almost every week for the last 17 weeks), then I can even have things like candy, Cheetos and Twinkies.  Again, not excessive amounts, but just as "treat" foods, because at this point, it actually becomes difficult to EAT ENOUGH calories, especially on days when I train > 4 hours.

Now, you must realize that as training hours increase, the amount of carbs you are taking in DURING TRAINING SESSIONS naturally goes up, and you have to consider your total carb intake including all regular food PLUS all the training nutrition.  This is really important, and why some people (I even did this once) PUT ON WEIGHT while training for an Ironman--they think they can eat with abandon, and you really CAN NOT.  Especially a small person like me.  

Now some other things I do include:

• I drink Endurox R4 as a recovery drink on days where I train 1.5 hours or more, which is pretty much every day until I rest a few weeks after IMCOZ.  But I only use 1.25-1.5 scoops, as I am small, and the serving size of 2 scoops is calibrated for a larger person.  I have used Endurox for years.  It's expensive, but I feel better for using it, plus it has a good dose of vitamins in it.
• I use Ultrafuel before training sessions of 4+ hours.  If I'm doing 4 hours, I will use 3 scoops (300 calories), and if I'm doing 5+ hours I will use 4 scoops (400 calories).  This stuff also has some vitamins and minerals in it.  It's basically sugar with some flavor and vitamins, and is relatively inexpensive.  It was recommended to me by my very first triathlon coach, and I swear by it for preloading on heavy training/racing days.  I know so many people who begin an Ironman with maybe 300 calories in their bodies and that is just FUCKING STUPID, and they wonder why their performance suffered.  When you do this, you basically dug yourself a hole that you cannot get out of that entire day!  You burn through 300 calories maybe halfway through your swim meaning you are starting the bike depleted already.  So before a 1/2 or full IM, I will have about 800 calories in the tank before I start--400 calories of Ultrafuel, plus about 400 calories of actual breakfast plus sips of Gatorade.
• I have had my BMR measured so that I know that I am dialing in my calorie intake appropriately.  I want to get it done again, but not until we have my thryoid meds dialed in.  No sense doing it until that happens, because I will get a false reading.  The last time I was measured, my BMR was 1950, meaning when I do nothing for a day I need that many calories, and then I expend on average 500 calories/hour doing any form of exercise, so you can see that when I'm training 2-2.5 hours on weekdays, I need to take in over 3,000 calories!  If you don't know your BMR, though, your nutrition can be a crap shoot, which is why I suggest you go with the tables above FIRST, and then see how you do.  If you get it right, it becomes stupid easy to lose weight--you just drop say 200 calories per day, and in 2.5 weeks you should lose 1 pound.
• I always fuel during workouts, even if they are 30 minutes, just so my brain is happy.  The biggest user of sugar in our bodies is our brain, and it's the reason we bonk, too.  Unless you are training like 5 hours a day or something like that, you have plenty of fat reserves to power you for a long time, but your body won't switch over to full fat metabolism any time soon.  Your brain will shut down your muscles, though, in an effort to save itself when it thinks you are low on sugar.  Now, I would not recommend this to someone training only 10 hours per week.  In that case, none of your sessions are very long, and so you can go plain water much of the time.  But I would say that 12+ hours per week, you might want to always be taking in some sugar, but don't forget this counts towards your daily carb total.
• If I'm swimming 1.5 hours or more, I will switch from Gatorade to Infinit, because the longer the session, the more your body needs the calories especially if you are going to do another workout the same day.  I learned this while training for Ultraman, when I was swimming 2+ hours on most Fridays.  I also had to eat another breakfast right when I was done with those swims, because even though 2 hours of swimming doesn't burn the same calories as 2 hours of running, the fatigue on your body is nearly the same, and so you EAT.
• The calories per hour I shoot for while biking are about 35% of what I'm burning, which I can know from using a power meter.  All other ways of measuring are WRONG--so unless you ride with a power meter, you probably have no clue how many calories you are burning because CALORIES = WORK and the only way to calculate WORK is by POWER EXPENDED.  Some people can go higher than 35%, but in an Ironman I would never go higher than that, as it can be a recipe for GI distress.  Remember that the faster you go, the less calories your body can process, so slower people can generally take in a higher % of calories burned than the faster folks, and liquids are always better than solids because your body can process them easier.
• The calories per hour I shoot for while running are maybe only 25% of what I'm burning, because jostling makes it tougher for your system to digest, and during a triathlon, if you've nailed your bike nutrition, that's sufficient calories to get you through the run.  You never see pros eating fucking sandwiches on the marathon, do you?  You also don't see them chewing bars and shit--too hard to digest.  Plus they are going so fast that it's hard to digest much of anything.  So again, all liquid, unless you really want something else, and don't forget to give yourself SOME sodium on the run if your race is warm, since you WILL need it.  This is why they serve chicken broth at Ironman races.  Because some of us idiots will revert to all Coke, which doesn't have enough sodium to support the electrolytes we are sweating out.

I have guidelines for the day before and morning of a race as well--if you want that, I have a .PDF of a nutrition presentation I've given several times to athletes with all that in it, just message me on Facebook and I'll send it along.

If you are training for Ironman or I would even say half Ironman, and you think you can just wing it on your nutrition, I would tell you that you are DEAD WRONG.   This training places heavy demands on your body, and to treat it any less than the beautiful, complex, awesome machine that it is is to fuck with your karma!  Do you put crap into your car?  Do you feed your pets crap? Just as I believe that daily stretching and frequent massage fall into the category of "cost of doing business," so does good nutrition.

Even me, who thinks I'm doing everything right, can always improve my nutrition.  And so I am.  I'm going to be extra careful about sodium now, and that means the Cheetos and Pringles are off the table.  I can look forward to that McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg after IMCOZ!

Accountability

Iron Man and Tiny Spock who held me accountable during the first part of today's long run

I am blessed to know many outstanding athletes--mostly age groupers, but I count among my acquaintances a few pros as well.  The primary attribute they all share is accountability--to themselves, to their coaches/mentors (if they have one), and to their own athletes.

I have mentored many people, and right now consider myself a mentor to 3 athletes, and I am formally coaching another.  Of my mentees, one is doing another Ironman imminently, one is beginning training for his 2nd Ironman, and another is recovering from an injury but is hoping to get in a first Ironman or close to the distance next year.  All three of them know not to second guess my advice, and if I ask any of them about how their training is progressing, I get the God honest truth.  What paces/power are they doing things at, what is their nutrition plan and are they doing it, are they recovering, are they hitting the targets or not.

Right now, I am my own coach, so I am only accountable to ME, but it really helps me when I have others who feel accountable to me, because it makes me feel accountable to THEM.  Why? Because I feel like I need to show them that I take my own medicine, and that the relationships go both ways.

The guy I'm coaching is a pure joy for me to work with.  Without me asking, he tells me how the workouts FEEL and if he's hitting targets and asks me if he can move workouts around.  He's a smart guy who raced bikes Cat 1 in college, so it's a little comical that I am showing him how to bike train now.  But it's triathlon training, not bike racing. He's going to turn into a beast to be reckoned with at triathlon, and I may even need to cut him loose next year and insist he get a better coach!  It is truly wonderful for me to work with such a talented person, as it inspires me to work hard and reinforces my knowledge of the training and racing process.  Thanks, Brad!

The same is true of the 3 guys I am mentoring.  Many of my training/racing platitudes (many of which have come from my own past coaches) come to mind just at the right times, and I find them spouting them back at me which is a real compliment, and I think I'm done reminding them where they came from!  Thanks, Carl, Maz and Sol!

I have trouble relating to people who aren't accountable to themselves about their training.  That behavior makes for poor racing, injury and sets a bad example for other athletes.  I am typically quite brash with such people whether or not they accept my opinion.

But luckily, such people are the minority in my circle of friends, since accountability is intimately connected with integrity, and if you notice, integrity is in my tagline for this blog.

Today, Iron Man and Tiny Spock (I just recently acquired Tiny Spock) held me accountable while I did the first hour of my long run on my treadmill, Hal.  In this case, holding me accountable meant I would run the correct paces for my training zones based on my current VDOT, even if I felt like running faster.  So for that first hour, I covered only 6.35 miles in an hour, where the first 30' were in Zone 1, 20' in Zone 2, and then 10' in Zone 4.

Then I went outdoors to complete the workout, and covered 6 miles in 53:40, or 8:57 pace, and the gist of that time was to be 5' Zone 2, 10' Zone 4, 5' Zone 2, 15' Zone 3 and 15' Zone 2. I went a little further out before I headed back since I wasn't sure how fast I'd run home, which is why I ended up going over 50'.  No worries, my Zone 4 stuff outside was at a fast clip, and I slowed down appropriately after it.

I had a slight miss on my run nutrition today.  Since it appears I am running faster than I did 4 years ago and my thyroid is working properly again, that means I need more calories while I run.  I wasn't too far off today, but I felt hungry when I was about 10.5 miles in.  I had plenty of fluids, though.  So noted in my training log, and I will do better on next week's long run.

Accountability...Integrity...Honesty...if you don't have those things, keep away from me!

Adventures in Nutrition

A week ago, I did yet another 7,500 yard swim on Friday, and it was my 12th swim of 6,000+ yards. In building up these long swims, I have needed to adjust my thinking about them in terms of nutrition and hydration, both before, during and after.

Before I began this UMC preparation season, I'd swum 5,000 yards at a pop maybe 3-4 times before my last 2 or 3 Ironman races. This came about once I discovered the outdoor 50-meter pool a few years ago, which made it easy and even pleasurable to swim longer.

Up to about 5,000 yards (but just once a week--not like I was swimming that much each swim), I didn't need to do anything differently nutrition or hydration-wise, but that may have been that I was already doing them during an Ironman build phase, where I've already kicked up my calorie intake in general.

But I also think that you can wing it on almost any workout that is about 1.5 hours in duration, provided it's not an all out effort. If your longest workout is 1.5 hours, and you do that every day, you have a bigger margin of error on your nutrition and hydration. Here I think the post-workout nutrition is most important--you know, some mix of protein and carbs right away.

Move that time up to 2 hours and things get interesting. 2-hour workouts day in and day out seem to require that my tank (glycogen) is full when I start, and I can't have a lot in my stomach when I begin, whether it's a ride, run (especially!) or swim. If it's the only workout I'm doing that day, I can fudge on the during workout nutrition as long as I do a good job once I'm finished.

It's at 2.5 hours where things demand you do things right across the board (for me), and while I've had plenty of years to get that right for biking and running, this season is the first time I'm swimming that long, too.

I can do 2.5 hours a day, even on some work days. If it's split into 2 or 3 sessions, it just means I need to keep eating a couple hundred calories every few hours, but mostly carbs, because fat and protein will take too long to digest before my next workout (although a piece of string cheese or a hardboiled egg doesn't upset my stomach too much between workouts). Most of my fat for the day will come at dinner time, after all the workouts are done.

If I do a 2.5 hour session on the weekend, I'm careful to load up on calories beforehand, during, and I will always have a complete meal afterward.

I don't often do 2.5 hour workouts on work days, though, or at least I don't usually until I am close to an Ironman and doing 2.5 hour runs on Thursday mornings. So it's a new phenomenon to be already doing 2.5 hour workouts (swims) on work days in the winter, and I guess I'm just an old dog learning new tricks, but it's taken me a few tries to get it through my thick head that I need to be as good about my nutrition for them.

The really long swims I've done on Saturdays or days off from work trigger the same preparation as any long weekend workout, making sure I eat plenty the day before, take in maybe 600-700 calories before I begin working out, good nutrition during and after. Why I wasn't doing this for these long swims on work days I have no idea--habit, I guess!

So Thursday I made sure I drank plenty of water and other fluids, ate a pile of carbs and began my shutdown procedure (you know--like shutting down a computer for the day--mine includes preparing my workout gear for the next day and any special nutrition and loading the coffee pot) early enough in the evening so I'd sleep well. Wanting to get as much sleep as possible, I set the alarm for 5AM on the nose. I woke up, fixed one cup of coffee, had a toasted English muffin with orange marmalade (I love jam, sorry I know it's sugar, but oh well I'm not perfect), at 5:30 I drank 200 calories of Ultrafuel and then I suited up and headed for the pool with 2.5 hours worth of Infinit (573 calories) mixed in 64 oz. of water.

I started my swim at 5:55AM and finished about 8:28. I didn't quite drink all the Infinit--but I did get down 486 calories in 54 oz. of water, which is more than I have ever taken in during one of these long swims. Since yesterday's swim was all about getting the nutrition (hopefully) right, I did 10x750 (sort of--the last 3 repeats were 5x150), stopping around every 15 minutes to drink. Now, during UMC I won't want to stop that often for nutrition--maybe every 20 minutes--but this is a start.

I showered and stretched a bit in the sauna and then went home to start my work day. When I got home, I drank my usual Endurox R4 recovery drink and had 2 servings of oatmeal. Again, while I would like to go to non-instant oats and all that stuff, I can't make the time for that so it was Quaker Oats Raisin, Date and Walnut. Yum! So that was about 540 calories post-workout.

I still felt tired after the workout and really wanted to lay down for about an hour, but I couldn't do that because of work and wanting to be done by 5PM for the day. I had stuff oozing out of my eyes most of the day (damn chlorine), but other than that, I felt better than I had the week before, and this morning I feel pretty good, unlike last Saturday.

My next experiment will be in a few weeks when I will once again combine the long swim and ride on Saturday, which means I will get Friday off! It will be a train-through thing, to see if it's any worse to just do both the same day with a day of rest vs. doing the big swim on a work day. What will be key here is keeping up my calorie intake on Friday. For me, the stimulus to eat comes from working out, so if I'm not working out, my appetite just isn't there.

Now that I think about it, my appetite isn't what I would expect it to be. I'm not ravenous, but I also don't feel my workouts are being compromised, so I must be doing OK. I do know that I will start eating more pasta--it seems to be the best way for me to get in more calories without adding significant volume (which is why I don't eat it when I'm not training very much because I will overdo it). As it is, I'm a rice-a-holic, love the fruit and salads, but I need to kick it up a notch.

Once again I find it comical that the issue for me is not in doing the workouts--it's the nutrition and all the other stuff. I have never had issues being motivated to do the work. Since I think I've eaten pretty well to support my training in the last 10 years and am finding I need to work harder at it now, it makes me wonder how many people are really sabotaging their training with crappy diets. Certainly for Ironman training, it's beneficial to be somewhat lean, and if you want to be able to do any intensity in addition to volume, you had better be eating right. Although, I understand one man's idea of hobby is another woman's (!) obsession. I remember back to the first year I trained for an Ironman and did many things wrong, and I suffered because of it. I was overweight, didn't eat right (thought I could eat anything because of how much I was training), looked like crap, and sucked. My how things have changed!

Full Body Bonk

I haven't felt like I've been undereating the past week--not felt particularly starving upon waking or anything--but I suppose if I look back over the last 6 days, starting with last Saturday, I probably haven't been restocking as well as I should.

After the 112-mile ride/7 mile run last Saturday, I had Endurox R4, the big McDonald's burger and fries, a few beers, some crackers and some candy. I probably should have eaten another meal, so this would have been the start of the downfall.

On Sunday, I had a waffle then rode a few hours, drove home drinking Gatorade (in retrospect I should have had some protein right away, too), got home and made a chicken wrap and I don't remember what I had for dinner, but I'm pretty sure I didn't make up for Saturday or Sunday's calories burned.

I haven't been eating a lot of starch lately--it's been salads or a modest amount of vegetables at dinner time. I guess I've started to taper my eating even though my training isn't really tapered yet. I've been off my usual grocery shopping/restocking schedule, too, which means I'm not on my normal eating routine.

Still, though, like I said, I wasn't feeling famished or anything. Through yesterday, I'd done about 11.5 hours of training since Monday. Now that is unusual, but it came from a little extra riding and a whole lot of swimming. I had about 1/2 lb. of salmon and a little (probably less than one serving) spaghetti with pesto for dinner, 2 beers, and felt good to go. Now that was dinner for a 4-hour training day, which is not something I normally do on a weekday when I'm also working! I really should have eaten a bunch more, but by the time I ate dinner, I was tired and went to sleep.

I slept 10 hours last night, and felt good when I woke up this morning, had my usual breakfast of an English muffin and a hardboiled egg, but around 11AM I was feeling sort of hungry so I dug into my stash of Cheetos and also downed a Coke. This should have let me know that I was in a glycogen hole, because I don't usually crave Cheetos in the morning! Then I went off to the Y because it was raining, planning to do a :40 run and about 1:30 on a stationary bike (I just didn't feel like getting on my trainer and besides I could probably watch TDF replay at the Y).

As I walked into the cardio area, I could tell my legs were telling me I probably should just rest today, so I thought, what the hell, I'll just get on the elliptical trainer. Can't hurt, right? I did the :40 on there and it wasn't bad, but I could tell I was a little tired.

I moseyed on over to the Precor bike, got on, and wasn't worried about intensity, but still was doing a 10-minute ladder of resistance. When I got off the bike about :40 in to change the channel on the TV in front of me to Versus, I thought, gee, my legs feel pretty trashed considering I didn't do much today. Still, I got back on the bike, and thinking I'd still go 1:30, at about 1:10 I finally recognized that I was out of fuel no matter how much Infinit and Gatorade I was drinking.

That is, I was experiencing a grand bonk! Thing is, I'm so trained that I can usually overcome bonking (or not even notice it) that might affect someone else, or I might just miss the signs, but when it finally dawned on me, I realized that I had better get my ass home and eat as quickly as possible.

Still, I had to shower, and when I got home I immediately made myself a big wrap thing, chowed that and drank some Endurox. I figured that should set me up, right? Nope. It wasn't so much hunger that I felt, but my body was screaming for more calories. So I scrounged around and found a Snickers Almond Bar in my freezer, took it out, and after about 5 minutes, I ate that. By this time, I'm starting to notice that I feel really cold, even though it's hot out and I don't have my A/C set too low (maybe 76-78 now), but I am actually shivering, and this tells me that my body is truly fucked up (it's like the same insulin reaction I sometimes get when I down 400 calories of Ultrafuel all at once and my body is valiantly trying to pump all that sugar into my muscles) and needs me to lay down, so I get into bed with all the blankets on, still wearing clothes, and I'm cold but after a few minutes finally my temperature starts to go back up, but I stayed in bed for maybe an hour and even dozed off a few times.

Getting up, I realized I am not "fixed" yet, so I'm going to need to eat up tonight and sleep well and let my body do its thing to get me back to normal. I also realized that whatever I have planned for training this weekend is all optional, so if I'm not feeling peppy tomorrow, I will just rest, because at this point, nothing is really going to make me any faster for IMLP.

I guess I've reached that point in the summer where I'm pretty sick of the starchy carbs, but I will need to get back on some level of them, especially post-IMLP and pre-ROTPM. So I'll start counting my calories. Thankfully, next week is actual full taper, so I don't need to worry about it so much. Some years, I've lost 2-3 lbs. during the last 2 weeks before IM, but I don't think I should lose any more at this point.

So in an odd way, this was all a good thing, to remind me that I am existing on the edge, and that I need to pay more attention to my nutrition.

Have a great weekend!

The Hidden Time Costs of Ironman Training

When people talk about how many hours they train for Ironman, you usually hear numbers like 12-20 hours per week once you're about 12 weeks out from a race (as I am--FUH-UCK!). But like I always say, it ain't just the training that makes it hard. I keep track of the actual time (and mileage and assorted crap) I spend training and racing, plus sleep and stretching. But when a person is thinking about embarking upon training for an Ironman, the table below is what they really need to know before considering whether they have enough time for it. I'm sure I've missed a few things, so please comment away!

	Category	Activity	Frequency
1	Biking	Bike Maintenance	3 bikes, 3 tuneups plus 1 for Ironman, 5 trips to bike shop per season at 2 hours per trip
2	Biking	Costume Changes	3 rides per week; 2 costume changes per ride; 10 minutes per change
3	Biking	Downloading, storing and analyzing workout data	3 rides per week; 5 minutes per ride
4	Biking	Fondling…er…washing bikes	1 or 2 bikes once per week; 1 hour weekly
5	Biking	Ride Preparation	3 rides per week; 20 minutes per ride
6	Biking	Travel	1 ride per week; average 2 hours
7	Blogging	Reading and commenting on other blogs	30 minutes per day
8	Blogging	Writing Posts	30 minutes per day
9	Education	Reading tri mags	10 minutes per week
10	Education	Online forums (questionable)	15 minutes per day
11	Education	Reading occasional tri books	5 minutes per day
12	Education	Stalking other athletes' race results	10 minutes per week
13	Narcissism	Extra Shaving, waxing and assorted hair removal	3 times per week
14	Narcissism	Extra Showering	1 per day; 15 minutes
15	Narcissism	Gazing at self in any available mirror	Um…10 times per day?
16	Narcissism	Um…extra "self-care" because you're so jacked up all the time	Once or twice a day; 10 minutes if female otherwise 1 minute each
17	Narcissism	Taking, downloading, uploading and organizing pics for Flickr and Blogger	10 minutes per day
18	Nutrition	Bottle Preparation	15 bottles per week; 1 minute per bottle
19	Nutrition	Bottle Washing	15 bottles per week; 1 minute per bottle
20	Nutrition	Extra eating	3 extra feedings per day; 5 minutes per feeding (eat fast!)
21	Obsessing	Checking the weather forecast	15 minutes per day
22	Obsessing	Extra time available during tapers	3 times per season; 10 hours per taper
23	Obsessing	Thinking about it all the time	Constantly
24	Planning	Figuring out your training schedule	1 hour per week
25	Planning	Making lists of shit you need to do	15 minutes per day
26	Racing	Looking at race photos online	15 minutes per day
27	Racing	Travel	5 days
28	Running	Costume Changes	5 runs per week; 2 costume changes per run; 10 minutes per change
29	Running	Downloading, storing and analyzing workout data	5 runs per week; 5 minutes per run
30	Running	Run Preparation	5 runs per week; 10 minutes per run
31	Spending	Online and in person shopping for crap	5 minutes per day
32	Swimming	Costume Changes	3 swims per week; 2 costume changes per swim; 15 minutes per change
33	Swimming	Downloading, storing and analyzing workout data	3 swims per week; 5 minutes per swim
34	Swimming	Not swimming because you're yakking, flirting or otherwise distracted by scenery	3 swims per week; 15 minutes per swim
35	Swimming	Travel to/from pool or other body of water	3 swims per week; 10 minutes per trip
36	Timing	Changing all the extra clocks and timing devices	5 extra timing devices; twice per year; 30 seconds per device
37	Timing	Hitting splits on your watch	About 200 times per week; 1/2 second per looking at timing device and hitting the button

Sports Nutrition 101

Somebody (not saying who) thought that working out for 3.5 hours with no calories going in would encourage more fat burning. Uh-huh.

DOH! Here's how I lay it down. This is part (mostly) science, and part (also mostly) experience. I've been at this awhile, and think I carry some street cred. If you don't believe the science part, get yourself 2 books: Physiology of Sport and Exercise by Jack H. Wilmore and David L. Costill, and Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Monique Ryan (although there are other good sports nutrition books out there, but I will stand by Monique all the way). Read them cover to cover and then check back with me if you think I'm full of it. If you don't know what glycogen is, Google it and read all about it.

When you are exercising, your body needs to burn carbohydrates. It can get those carbs from 3 places:

1. Glycogen stored in your liver (about 400 calories worth)
2. Glycogen stored in your muscles (1400-1800 calories worth)
3. Circulating glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream (depends on how much is there)

Exercising at less than 60% of Max HR (WHO DOES THAT???) will burn almost 100% fat.

When you exercise at 60-80% of your Max HR, about 50% of the energy comes from muscle glycogen and blood glucose, about 50% from fat, and a small amount from protein (muscle breakdown). The percentages of carbs vs. fats depends on the intensity.

When you exercise at over 80% of your Max HR, about 75% of the energy comes from muscle glycogen and blood glucose (fat can't be utilized effectively at this intensity).

Stay with me here, I'm getting to the point.

As a person becomes more fit, their body is able to burn a little more fat during aerobic exercise. This is accomplished by spending the bulk of the training time at 60-80% of Max HR.

A couple of things should stick out to you, but in case they don't, let me point them out (they are subtle but true):

1. If you spend too much time exercising at over 80% Max HR, you are teaching your body to burn glycogen preferentially for fuel. Your body just gets used to it. This is why I preach DO YOUR EASY STUFF EASY. There's a "dead zone" that is 80-85% of Max HR (depending on your fitness) that can be a waste of time to spend any of your training time in. Better to go easy or hard. And if you are going to go hard, GO HARDCORE AGGRO while you're at it!
2. If you put sugar into your bloodstream WHILE YOU EXERCISE, your body can use it pretty effectively.
3. If you don't put sugar into your bloodstream WHILE YOU EXERCISE, your body is going to exhaust its glycogen stores faster, which won't make you a better fat burner--it will just use up your glycogen faster, and if you exercise long enough, it will make you bonk faster!!!!

See if by not feeding yourself while you exercise you could make your body burn lots of fat, then why would someone eat during an Ironman? We all have TONS of potential fat calories (I, little Yard Gnome that I am, have over 43,000 potential fat calories) available. But like it or not, our bodies are going to go through that glycogen and whatever is in our blood before it starts tapping on those mega-fat stores. Our bodies need to preserve a few things: our brains, which live off of pure glucose (see this is why the first sign of impending bonk is that your judgment gets weird, or you get dizzy) and our internal organs. Our brains would rather shut down our muscles (i.e., make you stop moving) than risk injury to the internal organs. This is the extreme form of bonk.

Bonking occurs when your body cannot meet its carbohydrate needs during exercise from a combination of glycogen and blood glucose. But it's a little trickier than that. Let's say you exhaust your glycogen stores and then dump sugar into your bloodstream. It may be too late! You need to put so much in at a constant rate (generally to tolerance--my rule of thumb is to try and take in 50% of the calories I am burning, a little more while biking) so that your GI tract is able to process it and your metabolism keeps the "switch" turned on so that you keep using that circulating blood glucose for energy. You've all read or heard about athletes whose digestion shuts down, and that inevitably leads to a bonk or else they need to stop and wait it out until their GI tract recovers.

I ALWAYS take in sugars while exercising, even for as little as a 30-minute workout. Why? Because then I am always training my gut to process those sugars and send them to my working muscles. EVERY DAY. Now, of course that means that the stuff I take in during exercise counts towards my daily calorie needs, and of course it does, and maybe that means I get to eat less "food" than otherwise, but the tradeoff to me is clear. My body is trained to utilize fuel, and a side bonus is that I am not starving once I finish a workout (well, except when it's 2 or more hours, then pretty much I'm hungry).

How many people do you know who swear by "I just drink water when I train" and then watch them after a workout and they just undid all their hard work by pigging out? Not only that, but while they were busy exercising with no fuel, their brains figured, "Hey, we're being starved here," so the body went into fat preservation mode, NOT fat burning mode.

Even if a person is trying to lose weight or lean out, I would NOT recommend that they cut back on their training nutrition. Face it, if you are trying to be smaller, then you are going to need to get used to eating less across the board. Eventually, the calories you take in during training will need to drop as well, but initially the last thing you want to do is deprive your body of calories while training, which even MORE convinces it that you are starving it, and will slow your metabolism even further!

So if I were to state "Crackhead's Basic Nutrition Rules" they would be:

1. Eat frequently. 6 or more times a day.
2. Don't eat a lot of food, by volume, at any one sitting
3. Always be sipping Gatorade or your favorite training beverage during workouts, even if they are short. Do some math. Make sure you achieve proper fluid volume (4-6 oz. every 15-20 min., or 16-24 oz. per hour, adjust up depending on your sweat rate and heat), and that you are replacing 50% or better of your calories
4. Don't forget to include your training nutrition calories in your daily totals
5. Don't be afraid to be a little hungry when you aren't training.
6. You should NOT be hungry while you are training! If you are, pop a gel or something.
7. So that you teach your body to burn fat effectively, complete your workouts at the proper intensity. Don't be tempted to turn an easy workout into a hard one--it will do a number on your glycogen stores
8. Be sure to replenish after workouts. I use Endurox R4 on days when I train 1.5 hours or more, which is pretty much daily now. I drink it after my last workout of the day. You can also drink sports drink, but I think it's important to have some protein right away, too.
9. If you are trying to lose weight or just lean out, go a little higher on your protein calories and slightly lower on your carbs (but NOT DURING TRAINING!).
10. If you want to jump start leaning out, you probably should do some strength training. Lots of cardio has a way of making you want to eat to replace the calories you burned; whereas strength training helps you manufacture muscle and just burns more calories at rest.

Train (and NOURISH) on!