Blog Master G

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Running: Live Longer & Eat More. A Lot More.

Friday, August 15th, 2008 · 2 Comments

 If you want to live longer and eat whatever the hell you want, start running. Or swimming. A lot.

First, the living longer. In a new study that spanned 20 years, Stanford researchers found that a group of runners were less disease-prone and more likely to live longer:

Running ‘can slow ageing process’

Running not only appeared to slow the rate of heart and artery related deaths, but was also associated with fewer early deaths from cancer, neurological disease, infections and other causes.

I’ve clocked in about 760 miles so far this year since I started running — quickly closing in on the 800-mile mark and on track to surpass 1,000 miles in my first year of running — so I think I’m off to a pretty good start. 🙂

Next, there’s the eating. For many of those 760 miles, I wasn’t eating enough. Jen was always telling me to eat more and I’d have more energy. She was right.

Now that I eat two breakfasts a day, several glasses of Gatorade, a giant lunch, snacks throughout the day and night, and a dinner portion equivalent to probably twice what most people my weight consume, my runs have been stronger and faster. I no longer feel depleted of energy 5, 6, or 10 miles into a run.

Jen should be an Olympic trainer. Why?

She apparently already knew Olympic gold medal swimming dominator Michael Phelps’ training secret — the insane amount of food he eats every day:

Phelps is now the top Olympian of all time. Here’s what it takes …

US swimmer Michael Phelps made history yesterday when he scooped a record-breaking 11th Olympic gold medal. He has now topped the podium five times in Beijing. After his latest victory, he revealed the secret behind his six-days-a-week, five-hours-a-day training regime: an extraordinary 12,000-calorie daily diet, six times the intake of a normal adult male.

I don’t track my own caloric intake, but I am curious to see how it stacks up against the average person and against Michael Phelps.

Cheers to living longer and eating more!

Right now I’m finishing my first breakfast (bagel with peanut butter and seedless red raspberry jelly, and coffee), then going to run a 5-mile recovery run, which follows the 10.1 I clocked in on Wednesday and precedes my scheduled 13-miler this weekend; I’m on target for a 36-mile week in Week 2 of my Pftiz 55/18 training plan.

With all this eating and running, the Anderson Brothers are sure to dominate at CIM.

Tags: food · running

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 jen a. // Aug 15, 2008 at 8:44 am

    hhaha, thank you– but i don’t know that i’m olympic trainer material… i just couldn’t stand watching you waste away any longer!! 🙂

  • 2 Blog Master G // Aug 15, 2008 at 9:06 am

    you’ll be glad to know, my love, that i weighed myself for the first time this morning since 7/24, and i’ve maintained exactly the same weight.

    also, case in point about eating a lot: i didn’t want to stop running this morning during the 5-mile run i set out to do, so i tacked on another 1.5 miles and made it a 6.5-mile run… and really picked up the pace to my half-marathon / marathon pace the last mile or so (low 7s pace)… so much for a “recovery run.” 🙂