I hope all my reader’s have had a break over the Festive period and are feeling enthused for a fresh start on 2012, just as I am.  2011 was a tough year for me.  I knew that I would be giving up my full-time job at the end of the year moving to a more mixed role of full-time musician to bring in the money that I need with the aim of a five-day “weekend” from Monday to Friday to take me away from the desk, give me more time to be active and mobile, leave me with time to train, and remove as much stress as possible from my life.

To prepare I spent most of 2011 doing a seven-day working week as I put more effort into my music, setting myself up with a reliable income stream from it before I handed in my notice from the desk job.  Unsurprisingly I finished off 2011 incredibly ill.  There was an unpleasant bug going round the UK and both Chris and I succumbed to it before Christmas without any hesitation, leaving us both bed-bound for a couple of days and without an ability to eat much of anything for over a week.

After a break over the Christmas period I thought I would share some of the things I have planned for 2012.  This is my statement of intent for the year that this blog is going to be spruced up a bit!

Workout plan for 2012

While I would like to report on my training for the end of 2011 I didn’t actually do anything for the last two weeks, since I was far too sick to leave my bed, let alone get into the gym for the week before Christmas and was then away on a six day walking trip after Christmas.  As expected after such a long break (12 December to 3 January plus 6 days of strenuous walking) I’ve knocked back my numbers quite horribly.  The figures below compare my final December workouts to the figures I got in my workouts last week.

• Back squat: 80kg 3×3, 5×2 down to 75kg 1×3, 7×2
• RDL: 95kg 8×3 down to 90kg 8×3
• Partial overhead press: 20kg 8×3 to 25kg 8×2 (so no loss here, but it was a new exercise in December)
• Hip thrust: 145kg 2×3, 4×2 down to 120kg 8×3 (I’m not so surprised about this – when I put the weight up to 145kg I struggled to get full extension so I stopped my warm up when I hit a weight I felt I was working hard with this time – I expect this to increase reasonably quickly).

Farewell ye great and mighty hip thrust

In 2012 I would like to finally get a handle on my bench press.  I’m going to increase to 3 workouts a week but also cut the size of the workouts slightly.  Part of the reason for this is that I have gained an allotment at the start of 2012 and anticipate doing some pretty hard digging a few times each week – I don’t want to burn out.

In a few weeks time this should be taking the following format:

1. Back squat then superset partial overhead press with chins
2. Superset Bench press with a row and then hip thrusts
3. RDLs and Hip thrusts

Until I get my squat back I’ll be doing workouts 1, 3 then 1 again each week.

I’ve no doubt this will change as I progress through the year and get used to not sitting at a desk all week but I really do want to crack the bench press this year and see if I can get to competition shape by Christmas.

Figure improvements in 2012

I let myself go a bit towards the end of 2011.  I’d made a conscious decision not to strictly diet at any point in 2011 as I was aware of an unhealthy relationship with food that developed through my 3 months of really hard dieting at the end of 2010.  I wanted time to heal that ticking psychological time-bomb.  I was also aware that there would be no free meals out with clients in 2012 and this year would be naturally easier to diet (for starters, no endless supplies of cake on the cabinets at work for birthdays and successful target achievement and competitions and… you get the drift).

No more cake lying about on a daily basis to tempt me

• 15 January to 15 February 2012 – I intend doing a 30 day Paleo Challenge at the start of the year.  It’s pretty much underway now, I didn’t really make a note of exactly when it started since there was much rubbish to cut out of my diet anyway, but there might be something inappropriate on Chris’s birthday this week, so it officially starts on 15 January after the partying finishes.  I know the dates above aren’t really 30 days but as 15 February is my birthday, it seems an appropriate date to stop the challenge.
• January – March 2012 – I will also be getting some of the excess fat off my hips and glutes.  This is one of my experiments for this year though.  I’ve done enough cutting diets in the last few years to know that the only way I could previously get results was an incredibly strict and repetitive food regime, fewer than 950 calories each day, and various cardio strategies over the years.  Despite looking “almost awesome” in December 2010 at the end of my last dieting phase I could never get rid of the handles of fat on the tops of my hips.  They got smaller but never went.  Through monitoring and measuring this year I want to see if the following appear to be true:
  • The fact that stress hinders fat loss is documented in several books on our shelves, hopefully I will find that I finally can shift those lumps of fat that sit at the top of each hip.
  • Reading any bodybuilding article or book by the old school bodybuilders, there is very little “cardio” mentioned.  However, they don’t sit around doing nothing either.  I’m going to see if I can lose weight without a complete starvation diet simply through the fact that I am more mobile each day and therefore using more calories.
  • Being based at home most days should also enable me to try something else too – eating when hungry.  I will always have foods that are appropriate to hand and so I intend eating food when I feel hungry and, where possible, stopping when full.  I will also eat something that appeals and not count the calories of it.  Again, this should hopefully have a positive affect on my figure and it will be interesting to see if I am able to lose weight this way without the psychological issues that come from a regimented calorie-restricted diet.  It will also be interesting to see how much I end up ingesting each day, what foods I tend to favour and what the macronutrient ratio looks like.

The shampoo experiment

I’ve always had trouble with my hair.  It’s thin, limp and hangs in rat-tails unless it’s within half a week since I visited the hairdresser.  It also gets greasy incredibly fast – I’ve never been able to contemplate leaving it unwashed even for one day as I wake up each morning with greasy-looking hair, even if it was washed the evening before.

This first month away from work without clients and internal meetings and a strict “business-acceptable” dress code finally gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to try the shampoo-free experiment.  I can wear headscarves as much as I want and nobody needs to know what my hair looks like.  Everyone’s blog-posts I’ve read about trying this has agreed that it starts to look good after the first month, so I started this experiment on 27 December, when we left for the walking trip.  I’ll be blogging about my progress with photo evidence.

Technical research

Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time will have noticed that the quantity and quality of my technical research posts went sharply downhill towards the end of last year as I had less and less time to read up on topics.

Back to a bit of technical research

This year there are no excuses and areas I want to learn about include:

• Endometriosis – several of my friends have struggled with this and I think it is surprisingly common.  I’d like to understand more about it, both what it is like as someone with endometriosis and also what the known and suspected causes and potential solutions (if any) may be.
• Palaeolithic female figures – this is a much longer term project that could take more than just this year, but I’d like to see what I can learn about the figures of early females through skeletal structure and imagery.  It’s going to be delving back into my degree as an archaeologist.
• Women and bench press – for obvious reasons I’d like to learn more about whether it really is true that women struggle more with the upper body than the lower body when it comes to strength and, if so, why.
• Ketogenic diets – I promised someone at the end of 2010 that I would look into this and I never did.  This year I’m going to learn more about them.
• Metabolic Type diet – again, this has been mentioned to me and I am very skeptical but I shouldn’t be skeptical when I know almost nothing about them, so I’m going to at least read a couple of books and understand it better.

As I learn about these I will write about them on the blog.  However, I’m keen to research areas that other people would also like to learn more about, so please do leave a comment or send me an email through the contact form if you have other topics you would be interested to learn more about from me.

I hope you have all got similarly ambitious plans and intentions for 2012, whether in your personal life, in the gym or at work.  Please do let me know if you miss anything from the articles I used to write or if there is something you’d like me to be writing about but which you aren’t seeing.

Best of luck to you all for a happy and fulfilled year!

Related posts:

1. Why do women start weight training?
2. Setting New Year resolutions
3. Iron Lady: interview with Laura Trimble (part 1)

It wasn’t until I got away from it all that I realised quite how stressed I had been.  There has been so much stress and exhaustion in my life that it was several days before I properly started to relax so I was particularly glad for the extra week away from it all this year. 

The mountains giving me time to think and take control of my mind

Mental stress and clarity of thought

It is not going to be a surprise to anyone that mental stress can cloud a person’s judgment.  It can cause them to doubt their decisions, struggle to find a rational route through their thinking and miss obvious points of detail, usually details which would actually make their life easier.  It’s almost like they refuse to believe those details are there, as if they were looking to make life difficult for themselves.

I used to suffer from extreme levels of mental stress.  I’ve learned, through some one-on-one mentoring at work, to get some (limited) level of control over it.  For example, I can stop myself from making the problem worse when there are external stressors in my life which I don’t have proper control over. 

There was a time when I would become more and more meticulous about “having” to do the washing up and similar chores as I became more stress.  More stress in my life at work usually means much longer hours and suddenly I would be caring about getting home from work late and making myself wash up, having crying fits about the fact that it “had” to be done and couldn’t be left until the next day.  Those days of irrational thinking are thankfully past but it doesn’t mean I don’t still suffer from stress.

Mental stress impacting on performance

I’m sure many of you have noticed those days when you have had a bad day and are not in the right head space to do a workout.  The busy life schedule dictates that, despite that, you need to get in the gym and move that weight. 

If you are lucky (or well-practiced at the art) you’ll be able to leave the mental baggage at the door, but invariably if you have been really stressed, the doubting thoughts follow you into the gym.  Suddenly you don’t believe you can move the weight that you moved last week or something that is a lighter weight feels heavier than it should.

Getting control of my mental state is an area I still have a lot of work to do in.  I’ve made some progress, but this holiday revealed that all I’ve really got control over the outward signs of the stress.  The impact of the stress is still there, undermining me.

Noticing mental weakness while hiking

It was clear as we walked that my ability to get over technically difficult ground improved as the fortnight progressed.  It correlated with the return of my mental clarity and the related “white noise” of self-doubt and mental exhaustion sinking away to the back of my mind where I had some control over it. 

You can't have your head in the wrong space for this type of "walking"

When walking across or down a precariously steep slope with very loose earth under your feet and a sense that there is nothing to stop your fall for a couple of hundred metres if you slip you don’t want your mind to start telling you that you are incompetent and that you’ll slide as soon as you move.  That line of thought results in standing motionless on the side of a mountain for the rest of your life, moving neither forwards nor backwards. 

I was in danger of doing an excellent impression of a static walker on our second day when my mind was still full of “white noise”.  Having rushed over a col trying to not get caught in the hoards of hikers who had stopped for lunch at the top, we rapidly started our descent before realising that we were mired in a tough and technical descent.  Chris had to coax me down this long and steep slope as quickly as possible, constantly aware of rocks being dislodged above us and narrowly missing our heads.  We both knew that there wasn’t the luxury of time for me to get my own head in order. 

Thanks to Chris for getting me down safely that day. 

Fast-forward two weeks to the final Thursday and there I was trotting quite happily (if a little carefully) over a full day of similar terrain. 

It’s all in the mind

My ability to walk on more challenging terrain has nothing to do with my skill or technical ability.  I have those skills.  What I lack is self-belief in hose skills and I only need a bit of general mental weakness to make that self-belief leap to the front of my mind.

The same applies in the gym when lifting weights.  I know I can do the movements and I know I’ve moved those weights.  What I need to do is trust my body to do the right thing – if my mind interferes it forces my body to do incorrect motor patterns, “protecting” me from perceived dangers that I don’t face.

This is definitely an area for me to work on over the next 12 months.

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: the impact of stress
2. Blog-watch: stress
3. Lessons learned: mental strength

The research

I’m not going to replicate everything that Scott has written and steal his thunder.  Instead it would be valuable to read his article before carrying on with this the rest of this post.

Scott Abel’s article The Self-Destructive Nature of Willpower: The Willpower Rebellion

The highlight of the article is some research of willpower done by Roy Baumeister.  Subjects fasted for at least three hours and were then separated into three groups.  Groups one and two were both given plates of chocolate chip cookies and radishes with group one being told they may only eat the radishes and group two allowed to eat anything on the plates.  Group three were the control and were not given any food at all.  After an extended period of time the groups were given some “simple” geometric puzzles to solve (which were not actually solvable).  Group one, who had exercised willpower to not eat the cookies when hungry, gave up on the geometric puzzles before those in groups two and three.

Could you manage a mental challenge after looking at this and resisting it for a few hours

The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that group one had exhausted their mental energy, reducing the capacity for other mental tasks.  Scott notes that this experiment has been replicated with other tasks and provides the same results each time.  Despite the tasks being unrelated, there appears to be a limited pool of mental energy available for use as willpower.

Willpower or motivation?

I’ve not previously distinguished between willpower and motivation but Scott’s piece has made me reconsider my standpoint on this.  It might explain why I sometimes have “epic failures” in relation to my diet and workouts while at other times I seem to be fine.

Training – fully motivated

Going into the gym, no matter how exhausted I am, is something I am usually good at.  I would put this in the motivated category.  I am motivated to beat previous repetition or weight records and I always have my core motivation – a desire to build bone density so that I can be active in old age. 

I rarely have to overcome a desire to miss my workout and willpower doesn’t feature.  I just get on with it.  Training has become a habit.

I’m also better at listening to my body when it comes to workouts.  If I feel out of sorts, usually with some an illness coming on, I notice the signs.  I’ll still do my workout, but I’ll adapt it a bit to work within the bounds of motivation.

Still motivated to train, no matter how tired I am

Dieting – mind over matter?

My diet is a whole different story.  I love food, the flavours, textures and scents with different foods. 

I find a calorie restricted diet tough with this love of food.  800 calories a day requires careful planning to ensure that it has sufficient protein to leave me feeling satiated and the best blend of vitamins and minerals possible.  With a busy lifestyle I end up developing just one or two days of meal plans and sticking to them.  I lose the variety I enjoy and boredom sets in.  A weekly cheat or re-feed day can help and weekly measurement sessions can also assist, provided I can see a reasonable amount of progress, but willpower is vital.

Willpower exhaustion in action

Scott’s concern is that Figure Competitors and extreme dieters are setting themselves up for a long period or lifetime of mental problems.  It may be an inability to maintain a realistic or healthy diet once they stop dieting but it could affect other areas of life, including relationships, training and careers.

Last summer I had a simple example of the condition that Scott is drawing attention to.  I was trying to keep my diet clean but felt like I was fighting an uphill battle.  I’d been “keeping an eye” on my caloric intake for a few months and had kept strictly paleo before a couple of weeks eating what I liked while I was on holiday (Alpine huts are not paleo-friendly).  On my return I tried to go back to strict paleo and calorie restriction again.  Unfortunately I’d pushed the boundaries too far and I cracked.  I wrote about my experience afterwards.

A couple of weeks after the return from holiday I reached my mental limit.  I was feeling listless in every area of my life, including work and home life, and it finally impacted on my workouts.  I had to abandon my training workouts and replace them with something completely different for a month.

In hindsight I don’t think it was anything to do with the workouts.  I think it was a complete exhaustion of my mental control.

Learning lessons

Reading Scott’s article and considering my own experiences over the last few years, I have a few personal learning points:

• Establish significant dietary changes in small steps – build up carb restriction and paleo changes slowly, don’t change everything at once and create daily situations of denial.  Instead create new habits for life.
• Don’t keep a form of severe calorie-restriction going long-term.  Have a fixed period for hard dieting and then be less restrictive on the types of foods permitted afterwards, using a food plan like Alli McKee.
• If undertaking a fixed fat-loss period be aware of loss of mental energy elsewhere and, if it starts to impact noticeably in other area take a few days off the diet.

Those lessons are very specific to me.  I’d be interested to hear if others have noticed similar exhaustion of willpower and what lessons you would take away from this.  Do you even agree that there is a limit to how much willpower and mental reserve you have?

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: weight loss mind-games
2. Iron Lady: interview with Laura Trimble (part 1)
3. Blog-watch: the impact of stress

We were walking through the Lake District, following Wainwright’s Coast to Coast route from St Bee’s on the east coast as far as Kirkby Stephen on the west side of the Yorkshire Dales.  We did the rest of the route (Kirkby Stephen to Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast) last September.  We walked for five days during which we made our way through about 88 miles.

For some reason the walking was tougher than usual.  I suspect it was because all the things going on in my life have combined with poor weather so that I’ve done almost nothing resembling cardio for several months.  Exhaustion combined with rough terrain underfoot and narrow paths meant that long stretches of time were spent concentrating on our feet and walking in single file without the usual discussions that usually accompany our walking weeks.  Instead it was a week for contemplation.

Here are some of the week’s observations and thought.

Diet

As usually happens on these weeks, we eat what food we can get our hands on which are affordable and sufficiently filling.  It means a week of rubbish, including:

• bulking up on large amount of potatoes
• servings of gluten foods (battered fish or steak pie is usually reliable for filling pub dinners while breakfasts when sleeping “in” frequently include lots of toast and cereal to get enough food),
• sometimes sugar (not just breakfast cereals but also hot puddings with custard at dinner when the meal hasn’t been filling enough). 

Dehydration on hot days also means I’ll throw back a pint of diet coke when we first reach a pub, since it is impossible to fit in sufficient water to rehydrate at the same time as trying to consume all the food needed to fill us up.

I now have 14 weeks until the next walking holiday.  Unfortunately that holiday will be in the Alps where avoiding gluten will be impossible.  We’ll be in the mountains at Alpine Huts where you take what is on offer or starve.

I wasn’t very strict with my diet in the last few weeks before holidays and subsequently felt horrible and gained some body fat but I am determined to be clean and stick to the meal plans for these 14 weeks.  Hopefully it’ll make me feel a bit better again and also improve my figure too.

Soft tissue work

We took our portable rolling kit with us (one baseball and a short stretch of plastic waste pipe for rolling legs).  We found that, compared to usual, our recovery overnight was much better than usual.  We weren’t as stiff as we might otherwise be each morning and were able to set off after breakfast without hobbling.

This has cemented the knowledge that, when you are putting your body through the wringer, ongoing soft tissue work is worth every minute you can spare for it.

Getting in the cardio

I’m going to start coming home via the work membership gym on non workout days and spending a brief bit of time on an elliptical machine during this 14 weeks stint.  I don’t want this same level of discomfort in the Alps.

Maintaining glute strength while walking

We’d had this great plan to do single leg elevated foot glute bridges each evening to ensure that our glute strength didn’t disappear like it usually does during walking holidays.  We failed.  We were just too trashed at the end of each day to start doing tiring exercises.

I’ll have to find another way to address this issue next time and I’m waiting to see what my squat workout on Wednesday tells me about my remaining glute strength.

The benefits of strong glutes for steep hills

Years ago I used to suffer from knee pain on the hills.  On one memorable mountaineering trip I had to bail after the first few days because the pain was so bad I could no longer safely attempt any ascents.

Fast-forward a few years and a lot of glute-strengthening exercises and I’ve now got minimal knee pain.  This week’s walks had some particularly tough (nd consecutive) climbs and descents and I would be lying if I didn’t confess to a little soreness.  However, every time my knees started to throb I would concentrate on “cracking a walnut between my bottom cheeks” and suddenly the pain would go again – simply by reengaging my glutes.

The pros and cons of barefooting

Due to the duration of this walk we took our boots instead of Vibrams.  However, we were very aware that the knots in the soles of our feet were worse at the end of each day as a result of the boots squeezing our feet.  I also noticed that, having now spent much of my day to day life in Vibrams, I was struggling on rough ground.  I’ve lost the knack of “balancing” in my boot on top of knobbly stones so that I went over my ankle a few times.  Perhaps I should still walk in boots sometimes to keep the skill.

At the other end of the spectrum, we received instant relief from tortuous foot pain during the final 2km of the last day’s walking when we hit the final stretch of road and took off our boots, tying them onto our backpacks and walking down the road in socks.  I hobbled for the first few paces but quickly found that the tightness across the ball of my foot loosened out and, by the end of the 2km, the knots in my left calf which had been crippling me at times since a particularly steep climb on day two, had completely gone.

What are my goals?

Finally, I started to think about my goals.  Long distance walking (endurance) and competitive powerlifting (strength) will always be opposing goals.  Over the next few months I’m going to be thinking long and hard about how I might make these work together since I would ideally like to keep both.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-five (fat loss: week seven) – holiday
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week fifty (fat loss: week twelve)
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week eleven (holiday and active rest)

This is in no way an exhaustive list of all the sites which I read, but should give you a good flavour of the sorts of things that I track on a daily basis through my RSS feed.

Paleo and Primal Diet sites

• The Paleo Diet – This is the blog connected to Loren Cordain’s site and therefore provides information from one of the original “founders” of the Paleo Diet.  While many people are aware of the site and it’s useful FAQs and similar information, I don’t think everyone is aware that the site also runs an RSS feed with copies of the main research pieces from the weekly newsletter as well as detailed answers to questions that are posed to Loren Cordain and his team.  Worth keeping an eye on for Cordain’s latest research.
• Robb Wolf – Where would we be without Robb Wolf?  Most recently shooting to stardom from the publication of his book “The Paleolithic Solution”, Robb hasn’t been writing as many posts as he used to (although the repository of information on his site is always useful when searching for information) but he does put out a weekly podcast on the blog.  During the podcast Robb answers questions from his mass of followers and has some entertaining chat with his co-star Andy Deas at the same time.  Robb’s background is as a scientist and personal trainer (he owns a gym).  From that background Robb is always careful to give detailed and technical responses to questions which is helpful for those of us who want to understand why something is the way it is rather than just accepting that a certain food is “bad” or that a particular activity will help or hinder long-term goals.  Giving this extra detail also helps in adapting his advice to work for you as an individual with your own specific circumstances.
• Mark’s Daily Apple – I suspect that most people who read this blog already follow Mark Sisson.  Mark advocates a primal way of life and the information on his site ranges from recipes, often contributed by his readers, through to detailed studies of particular primal-living health topics covering a wide range of issues.  With the number of recipes available on the site now, Mark’s Daily Apple is often a good place to start if you have a certain type of food in mind (eg. pancakes or beef casserole) and want a recipe to start you off.
• Free the Animal – This is the blog of Richard Nikoley and a list of Paleo and Primal diet sites would be incomplete without this.  Richard Nikoley is a success story of how applying these diet and fitness principles can improve health and assist in significant weight loss.  Richard keeps a close eye on what is going on in the online world of primal and paleo diet and is often the first person to raise awareness of a new issue or debate (most notably bringing attention to Denise Minger’s China Study research and subsequently getting everyone talking about it).  To add to that, Richard has some pretty strong views of his own and isn’t afraid to share them, resulting in some entertaining and lively debates in comments sections of his more controversial blog posts.
• Modern Paleo – Just a brief bit about this site.  While I don’t often read it, I do find their weekly question feature interesting.  Once a week a paleo-related question is posed and the comments are open for anyone to comment, effectively creating a focussed forum board for people to share their ideas and views on the topic for the week.

Low-carbohydrate diet sites

• Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Blog – Jimmy Moore is well known in the low-carbohydrate community and has done regular television and radio appearances to bring the low-carbohydrate lifestyle to the masses.  He does regular audio interviews with people which get posted up on the blog.  His blog is also a useful springboard for other sources of information when you are looking for more resources on a particular topic.
• Whole Health Source – While this is not specifically a low-carbohydrate diet blog, the author follows a fairly low-carbohydrate diet and certainly seems to avoid grains and similar high carbohydrate gut irritants as far as I can tell.  The site is written by Stephan who studies the neurobiology of fat regulation which means that there are plenty of real-life examples related to success stories from his research and details of things that he has seen work for numerous people.  As well as being quite technical at times and containing some personal research (most recently I was really taken by the white potatoes research which he did), the blog provides an opportunity for me to search for other examples of things which have and haven’t worked for a significant number of other people.  It effectively extends my n=1 experience base and gives me ideas of alternative diet approaches to try.

General health and technical science sites

• Hyperlipid – The blog of Petro Dobromylskyj (known as Peter), this should probably be classified as a nutrition blog written by an amateur in the field of nutrition.  However Peter comes from a scientific and well-studied background as a well-respected veterinary anaesthetist.  From this background he has developed a keen eye for detail when reading medical reports and studies and a thirst for asking difficult questions which he takes the time to research and comment on.  As a result the quality of the information available on the blog is fantastic.
• Zen to Fitness – I love this blog.  The articles that feature are often on topics which align very much with my own approach to life (or at least the approach which I am striving towards) – that of having a relaxed, calm and de-stressed approach to what I do (like I said, it’s what I’m aiming for, not necessarily what I always achieve) while getting maximum enjoyment from life and remaining happy and healthy in both mind and body.  Getting a regular post from Zen to Fitness reminding me of these sorts of things is generally a good way to keep on track.
• Dr John Briffa’s Blog – Dr Briffa is a plain-speaking medical practitioner in the UK with years of experience of treating people with common sense approaches to health and wellbeing.  In fact, my employer gets him in to speak to employees on those topics.  While he doesn’t follow or advocate a full primal or paleo or even low-carb approach to life, he does write a lot of good sense on the blog and has the benefit of having seen what works and what doesn’t work with his clients.  His site is therefore usually a good place to start when you are trying to find answers to diet-related questions.
• Neuroanthropology – It’s not diet related or even specifically health-related, but this site brings together all the current research going on in the neuroanthropology arena which covers a wide range of issues, topics and areas.  As well as detailed information about specific research they also put out a weekly bumper-sized summary of all sorts of things and I challenge anyone not to find something that catches their attention each week, whether it is about human development, how the brain works or why we are wired the way we are.

That’s it for the second instalment of blogs and sites that I read regularly.  There will be a follow up strength and conditioning list next week with some of the sites I read which aren’t female specific and which therefore didn’t make the cut last week. 

In the meantime, are there any other diet or health-related sites which you particularly recommend but which are missing from the list above?

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: Diet-related links association
2. Blog-watch: strength and conditioning blogs (non-female specific)
3. Blog-watch: gut health and fermented foods

6.  Learn to be a difficult customer.  With the Christmas client-entertaining season I encountered a new challenge.  Large dinner functions as well as plenty of lunches and dinners at pubs and restaurants.  Having been brought up to always eat everything that was put in front of me and not to be a fussy eater (and also being a generally shy and retiring type when it comes to situations like ordering food) dealing with these scenarios involved a complete change of mindset for me. 

I learned that most restaurants actually deal quite well with the situation of being asked to prepare something “without the …” and I was frequently reminded of the diner scene from the film, When Harry Met Sally.  I did get some uncertain double-checking from the waiter in one particularly exclusive restaurant when he brought out my no-chicken Caesar Salad without dressing or anchovies (so just a bowlful of dry Cos lettuce with some croutons and parmesan shavings scattered over the top which I then left in the bottom of the bowl).  I’m not sure he could believe that I was prepared to pay £8 for a bowl of lettuce. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnlm2e3EN78

Everyone also seems to be used to people with small appetites, especially women but also men.  In fact, most clients I ate out with didn’t have a problem when I left some food on my plate with the declaration of, “that was an enormous helping”.  I even managed to leave all the pasta on my plate at an Italian restaurant where I’d order chicken breast in a tomato sauce on a bed of tagliatelle.

7.  Develop “allergies”.  Set dinners were more difficult to deal with.  My best form of defence for these was to claim I had allergies.  I would email the event manager in advance with a list of foods I was “allergic” to (usually wheat, gluten, sugar, dairy) and explaining that I was quite happy to have plain meat or fish with vegetables.  This had the effect of cutting out the foods I knew would add the most problems and calorie content to my meals, as well as keeping me much closer to a traditional paleo diet than I would usually manage at these sorts of events.  This had a dual benefit.  Firstly, it meant that I got simpler meals with fewer hidden calories (although melon starters, fruit puddings and potatoes featured a lot so that I still had to employ the “I have a tiny appetite” approach).  Secondly, I also had to remain compliant when things like cheeseboards were passed round because I’d usually had to explain to everyone round the table near the start of the meal that I was allergic to these foods and that was why I was being served something different.

8.  Learn substitute quantities of basic replacement foods.  When you are eating out at a restaurant there is a good chance that your usual foodstuffs aren’t on the menu.  However there is nearly always chicken and a few other meats and fish which appear in simple salad and “meat with vegetables” format on most menus.  While my personal daily menu is turkey and tuna, I have also done the calculation on Fitday so that I know how much chicken and pork equates to a tin of tuna (calorie-wise) or my breakfast portion of turkey.  I can then stay as close as possible to my correct calorie count while eating out, yet again applying the “tiny appetite” rule once I’m reaching my limit.

9.  Use personalised key measurements as well as weighing scales.  An error that a lot of people make is to only weigh themselves and then feel discouraged if the scales don’t move one week.  Unfortunately, bodyweight is dependent on so many factors in addition to body fat, including how much you last drank (and when you drank it), when you last had a bowel movement and how many hours it has been since your last meal.  It is far more accurate, and encouraging, to have a set of key measurements that you also track. 

I select my key measurements by where I know I carry most fat: my waist; upper glute area; centre hip; lower bottom/glute area; and the top of my thigh (I just measure my right thigh).  If I was only measuring my waist I would have become disheartened some time ago as it barely moves during some weeks.  Look at yourself objectively in the mirror and establish which places carry the most fat.  Select 3-5 measurements with the main focus on those areas and track those alongside your weight.

Measure more than just your weight (dark blue line) to see genuine progress

10.  Tell your friends and get “public” buy-in.  One of the biggest contributors to my success this time round was revealing my progress graph on the blog every week.  In the past I have shared this once I’ve finished a diet but the pressure of knowing I would have to explain myself to the world in any week when I didn’t make progress was enough to keep me compliant when my eye wandered to the bar of dark chocolate sat in the fridge.  While not everyone has a blog, I think most of us have a group of people we see regularly.  The people you see at work, your family, friends who you go out with.  Get their buy-in to your diet (if they don’t believe you should be dieting they’ll endlessly be trying to tempt you away from it) and ask them to actively challenge you.  Share your progress measurements with them so that you’ll have to tell people when it isn’t working and don’t ignore them when they ask if you should really be eating that biscuit which is halfway to your mouth.

That’s it for my top ten tips.  As I said, they aren’t the usual tips on how to stick with your diet but they are definitely things which have helped me get through so many months of hard dieting with minimal slip-ups along the way.

What other tips and tricks do you employ to help you stay on your diet?

Related posts:

1. Top ten tips for sticking to a diet (part 1)
2. Top ten tips for writing a weight loss diet
3. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part two

Actually, “pretty strict” probably doesn’t do it justice.  At the start I was eating 970 calories a day and by the end I was on about 850 calories a day.  When that’s all you’re eating, you get very particular about eating the foods that you know will leave you feeling satiated and which will also meet your nutritional needs.  For me, that involved turkey and tuna as well as piles of broccoli (sometimes raw), cabbage and lettuce.  I generally consider myself to have strong willpower, but even so there were definitely some methods I need to employ to ensure that I remained 100% compliant and subsequently saw so much fat loss success. 

Plain salads - portable and low calorie

With so many people starting out the New Year with resolutions to lose a bit of fat, I thought I would put together some top tips (in no particular order) on how to stick to your diet.  Five tips this week and a further five next week.  They’re a bit different to some of the usual tips and should probably be read in conjunction with other lists of diet-compliance tips but hopefully they’ll help you get the most out of your diet.

1.  Plan your meals in advance.  I struggled to know where to start with this list, but I have to say that this has been my biggest saviour.  Fitday is the perfect place to start as it gives you the opportunity to play with different combinations and quantities of foodstuffs until you reach the perfect calorie and macronutrient combination.  Once you have your perfect menu, use it.  Do not diverge from the plan.

2.  Keep it simple.  I have a low tolerance for spending hours working things out in Fitday and a high tolerance for eating the same things every day.  I therefore created a single one-day menu for me and then repeat, ad infinitum.  In comparison, when I put together a diet menu for my sister, I created an entire week of varying menus.  Twice during the thirteen weeks my tolerance for the same meal started to wane at which point I took a half hour to play about on Fitday and change my dinner slightly.  You may not be able to tolerate eating exactly the same thing every day but I can’t recommend enough having a simple meal plan, even if it involves a week’s worth of menus which you repeat each week. 

There’s a second part to this simplicity point.  Aim to keep your meals easy to prepare.  While you may sometimes be able to take time over preparing your meals, diet compliance requires meals that can be prepared quickly and efficiently on busy days.  If it takes too long there will be temptation to find an alternative which you won’t have carefully calculated.  If you do that then there’s a good chance you’ll eat too much of the wrong macronutrients.

3.  Write a shopping list.  Before you go shopping use your menu plan to write a detailed shopping list.  Not just what you need but how much of it.  Take this to the shops with you and stick to it.  Do not buy anything that doesn’t feature on the list.  Even if there is a fantastic special offer or reduced tag on something that you would usually eat.  If you’ve bought it you’ll almost certainly eat it.  If you think you can take it home and then spend hours playing about on Fitday to work out a menu to use it then think again.  What you end up with is unlikely to be as good as the perfect menu you had previously identified.

4.  Prepare food in advance.  One of my biggest aids to staying on my diet was the amount of preparation that we do at the weekends.  We have always taken some time at the weekend to make up all our lunches for the five working days of the week, boxed up in individual plastic boxes.  It takes about half an hour to make ten lunches (five days and two people).  To this I added roasting my turkey and cutting it up into bite-sized pieces.  It meant that each evening I could come home from work, dig my mini-tupperware out of my bag, place it on the scales and rapidly weigh out and box up the next morning’s breakfast portion.  Suddenly I had two meals, measured, boxed and ready for me to be 100% compliant.  There was no excuse for getting either meal wrong.

A week's worth of snacks for two people, packed up and ready to go

5.  Design your meals to be as portable as possible.  One of the other benefits of cold salad for lunch and cold roasted turkey for breakfast was their portability.  While I love having fried or scrambled eggs for breakfast, they generally require me to be in the house to cook them.  By selecting a cold, portable breakfast I was able to reach into the fridge each morning and grab both meals, even when I was unexpectedly pulled onto a special work project which required me to leave the house at 06.00 several times in December to go to London.  Just because my schedule changed didn’t mean I couldn’t stick with the diet. 

Given the simplicity of my dinners as well (tuna, cabbage and broccoli) I was even able to take a tin opener with me when I was working away in hotels for a few days and buy my tuna in supermarkets while finding a substitute for the vegetables (raw broccoli ended up being my vegetable substitute – I got very tired jaw muscles during those two weeks).

That’s enough tips for one week – the final five will follow next Wednesday.  Hopefully these are all things that you can easily implement in the meantime if you are in the early days of a new diet for the New Year.

Related posts:

1. Top ten tips for sticking to a diet (part 2)
2. Top ten tips for writing a weight loss diet
3. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part two

When I started out on this series there were several key problems, such as poor hip mobility.  Since I’ve been on holiday for the last week I thought I would use this last post of the 2010 series to summarise how things went last year, the strength and mobility improvements I saw and setting out next year’s plan.

The lifts

I worked hard at my lifts this year.  I‘ve tried split routines and full body workouts, both three and four workouts a week, a Westside-type split of max effort and repetitions (which frustrated me immensely when I found I was doing most exercises on a 2 week rotation and couldn’t get a decent sense of progress).

It has been a mixed year for squats.  I’ve seen some great improvement to my depth, thanks to an increased hip mobility, and the weight has definitely got bigger.  However, I have also had to completely drop the weight back and gradually build it up again from 50kg at least three times during the year thanks to busy times at work or strenuous holidays which have impacted on thoracic or hip mobility.  This has undeniably impacted on how much improvement I’ve seen to my squat, but I would like to think that, on the other side of that coin lies the fact that the weight I can now squat should be very much “in the bag”, having built it up so many times.

I can’t get at my December 2009 records right now but here are a few key numbers from my February-April period compared (as closely as possible given the different exercises I was doing) to what I was doing at the end of 2010.  To make them as comparable as possible I’ve done an estimate of the 1 rep max for each set/rep combination where I can.

• Back squat: 5 rep max with 58kg (11 Feb) ca. 65kg 1RM / 5 x 5 with 69kg (20 Dec) and 5,5,4,4,4 with 70kg (23 Dec) ca. 82kg 1RM
• Hip Thrust: 10 x 5 with 50kg (14 Feb) ca. 62kg 1RM / 5 x 4 with 102kg (23 Dec) ca. 118kg 1RM
• Deadlift: Sumo: 10 x 1 with 85kg (7 Feb) and Standard clusters: 5 x 4 with 65kg (28 Feb) ca. 75kg 1RM / Standard deadlift: 1 rep max test 87kg (17 June) – I’ve not done deadlift since then, instead concentrating on deadlift assistance exercises like Good mornings and glute-ham raises.
• Good mornings: 10 x 5 with 30kg (22 Feb) ca. 37kg 1RM / 3 x 5 with 70kg (18 Dec) ca. 82kg 1RM
• Military press: 10 x 3 with 20kg (9 Feb) ca. 22kg 1RM / Dumbbell one-arm overhead press: 5 x 4 with 14kg (18 Dec) ca. 16kg 1RM
• Pull up: 5 rep max with 1.25kg (13 Feb) / 3 x 5 with 5kg (23 Dec)
• Bent over row: 10 x 4 with 30kg (6 Feb) ca. 35kg 1RM / Pendlay row: 5 x 5 with 46kg (15 Dec) and 5 x 4 with 47kg (18 Dec) ca. 55kg 1RM
• Bench press: 5 rep max with 35kg (6 Feb) ca. 39kg 1RM / 1 rep max test 42kg (15 June) – I’ve not done bench press since then, instead concentrating on assistance exercises targeting the weakness like dumbbell overhead press and weighted press ups.

Overall it seems that I’ve seen some good strength improvements in both the upper and lower body, with particular improvements in the glute and hamstring area and in my lats and upper back.

Figure improvements

No summary of the year would be complete without a mention of the figure work I’ve done.  There have been four fat-cutting sessions during the year, starting with a four-week blitz in January and ending with a 12 week concentrated effort in the months leading up to Christmas Eve.  As you can see from the graphs below, I’ve seen the best improvements during the longer 12 week session but in all cases (except, perhaps, June) I seem to have found successful ways to cut the fat.  More importantly, I have still managed to improve my lifts at the same time so I’m hoping this means that there has been a bit of swapping fat for muscle during the course of the year.

Summary of 2010 fat loss sessions

 What’s new for 2011?

For 2011 I’m taking a new approach.  I’d like to keep the figure I worked so hard for towards the end of 2011, but I am also aware that (i) my glute mass is upsettingly small in proportion to the rest of my figure; and (ii) I’d still like to keep working towards my powerlifting goals, concentrating on the deadlift this year after such a monstrous year of squat and upper body focus.

To this end, I’m going to be seeing if it is possible to chase two apparently opposing goals at once through careful diet partitioning and a new routine approach.

2011 workouts

For my workouts, I am going to focus on the lower body with two alternating total body workouts, three times a week, that use one of the Hepburn methods for gradual (but consistent) strength gains.  The technique for the main exercise is to start with 8 sets of 2 reps, adding a rep each workout until you are doing 8 sets of 3 reps, then increasing the weight and dropping back to 8 sets of 2 reps.  After this first set/rep scheme you then drop the weight with the same exercise and do 3 sets of 6 reps, again adding a rep each workout until you reach 3 sets of 8 reps – the same number of workouts to get to 8 sets of 3 reps – before similarly increasing the weight of this scheme to start again at 3 sets of 6 reps.

My main exercises will all be lower body (Back squats and Romanian deadlifts) and my assistance exercises will all be supersets of 3 x 5 reps with the upper body (Pendlay rows with dumbbell one-arm overhead press and weighted press ups with weighted pull ups). 

To attack the glutes I will then finish each workout with a bodybuilding-style approach of high reps, since my hip thrust numbers from 2010 show that there is clearly plenty of strength, just a lack of muscle volume!  I’m thinking of doing 8 reps and starting out with 4 sets, adding a set each workout until I get to 12 x 8 reps before increasing the weight and starting again at 4 x 8 reps.

2011 diet

To match my strength and hypertrophy goals for 2011 I’m going to do some carb loading (probably with banana and yoghurt) just before each workout and follow workouts with an extra large beef mince meal.  However, to protect my figure I’m going to try sticking to my pre-Christmas diet menu at all other times (yes, the one that equals 850 calories a day).

Hopefully there will be enough calories round the workouts to enable the hypertrophy but keeping calories, carbs and dietary fat low the rest of the time will prevent me turning into a blimp this year.  However, I’m going to keep measuring weekly to keep an eye on whether I’m gaining fat or still losing it so that I can get the calorie level right.  There’s going to be some trial and error involved here.

Here's to a sunny and succesful 2011 and to learning plenty as I go through it

So that’s it.  The end of an interesting year during which I’ve learned a lot about me, consolidated some great knowledge about cutting fat, gained quite a bit of strength, and increased my confidence enormously.

Here’s to 2011!

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week fifty (fat loss: week twelve)
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week fifty-one (fat loss: week thirteen)
3. Powerlifting progress 2011: week fifty

Laura Trimble

NJAMWorld:  Nutrition is obviously an important issue for all athletes and you’ve told me in the past that weight loss is something that is particularly relevant for you.  Please would you expand on why weight loss is important for triathletes / Ironmen and tell us about the approach you take to your nutrition outside races?  Do you go for the high carbohydrate approach preferred by many endurance sport participants, or have you tried using a fat-adapted technique?

Laura Trimble:  Absolutely, I know a big area of focus for you and your readers is nutrition and how to balance an optimal diet with training and working.  I think the majority of endurance athletes want to be as lean as possible when racing.  Certainly this is the case in Ironman and marathon racing and makes the biggest difference on the run. 

I have always been fairly active and don’t tend to find my weight fluctuates a huge amount, but I made a conscious decision this year to try and lose 2-3kgs which I really felt would help my running.  Having never tried specifically to lose weight in the past I felt that I had some ‘capacity’ to do so and I didn’t feel that racing at a slightly lower weight would hinder my swimming and cycling.  This wouldn’t necessarily be the case for an athlete who is already very lean!

I didn’t make any huge changes to my diet, but a combination of eating less, cutting out snacks, replacing large portions of pasta, rice etc with more vegetables, and generally focusing on eating healthily and never really being full were simple enough for me to keep to.  Over a few months I found the weight came off gradually.  I think in future I’ll take a more scientific approach if I want to lose more weight which would probably be more difficult to shift – like the process you are going through now – but for me this year I found the simple rules worked fine.  I do eat a lot of carbohydrates as I usually train twice a day, also having a desk job means it is easy to graze on snacks and I always tend to have some fruit or nuts/seeds on hand to avoid being tempted by anything else!

I should also point out that I have known a number of top-level amateur and professional triathletes who follow the paleo diet, which I know you follow.  I haven’t tried this myself yet although it is certainly something I will consider in the future.

NJAMW:  If you do try it, I’d love to hear how you get on with it and if you notice any changes to your performance.  So, eating outside the race is one thing, but what nutrition do you take in while racing to keep going for so long without causing digestive interference to your performance?

LT:  Deciding what to eat and drink during the race is the other major challenge when racing Ironman and I have tried various different things in racing and training before reaching what I think is the best plan for me. 

I have found that when racing at a very high intensity I am unable to digest solid foods, so I tend to take on carbohydrates through energy drinks and carbohydrate gels which can be easily absorbed.  I try and follow a well-known formula which is to take on approximately 1 gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight per hour – this works out at two energy gels and around one bottle of energy drink per hour for me on the bike.  On the run I continue taking one energy gel every half hour and also take on coke (flat, not fizzy!) which is provided at aid stations and lots of water.  In Hawaii there was also ice provided at aid stations which was definitely needed in the fairly extreme heat! 

Race nutrition is definitely an area I’m still working on as I haven’t got it perfect yet, inevitably racing at high intensity and only consuming liquid carbohydrates for 10-11 hours isn’t great for the digestion and it does usually take around 24 hours after the race before I’m able to eat any solid food again!

NJAMW:  That’s something I’d not considered at all.  I can’t imagine putting my body through something so extreme that I can’t eat solid foods for 24 hours afterwards.  Talking about putting your body through extreme conditions, this next one is something I’ve always wondered about.  I know that marathon runners often take Immodium (or something similar) just before a race to create a slight state of constipation and avoid any unpleasant accidents during the race, but how do you cope with standard bodily functions during a race as longs as an Ironman?  Do you resort to some sort of medication?

LT:  I personally haven’t gone down this route, although I know many marathon runners and Ironman athletes have done so.  It is also fairly common although not especially pleasant for people to admit to “peeing on the bike” or indeed on the run.  For me I tend to find that a loo stop before the race and then another in transition before the run is sufficient!  I haven’t tried any medication either before or during a race; you’d certainly want to try this in training to make sure it didn’t disagree with you or cause any other problems.

NJAMW:  Thanks for clearing up that little mystery for me!  So, I know you’ve been doing all of this while holding down a full-time job.  By day you are a banker but bankers, like lawyers, work notoriously long hours.  How do you manage to juggle all that training you mentioned before with your work?

LT:  The short answer is, with difficulty, and lot of getting up early!  I start work before 8am and usually finish around 8-9pm or later, so it is often difficult to fit the sessions in, especially the longer sessions which come with Ironman training.  I do find that before work is the best time to train, as this is your own time which generally can’t be interfered with, whereas if you leave training until later in the day there is always the potential for other things to come up.  I usually have a second training session during the day which I try and fit in either at lunchtime, early evening if working late or after work if I am able to finish around 8pm.  My training week is also skewed towards the weekend as I do the majority of my training at weekends – so in a typical week I might have 8 hours of training at the weekend and another 8 in the week, which I am usually able to fit in with a bit of forward planning!  You also definitely need to be flexible.  I have been known to cram 3-4 sessions in on one day in a particularly busy week, probably not recommended!

NJAMW:  That’s crazy talk!  I thought I was struggling to fit my few hours of training round my work commitments but now I’m thinking there is a whole lot more I could be doing.  I can definitely agree about pre-work sessions being reliable though – I’ve found I can commit much more reliably to my swim sessions on my way to work.  Having frightened us all with how many hours of training you are doing on top of long work hours you’d better tell us what a typical training week would look like on- and off-season.

LT:  My training does vary throughout the year, but a typical training week in the off-season, or “Base” period of training (which covers most of winter training when planning for a summer season) might be the following:

• Monday:  Endurance swim, 3-4k; Weights, various including squat, leg press, lat pull down etc
• Tuesday:  Bike, technique or short intervals; Steady run, up to 1hr
• Wednesday:  Swim, usually 100s or 200s; weights or short recovery run
• Thursday:  Tempo bike, 45-60mins at race effort
• Friday:  Easy swim; weights or run including strides set
• Saturday:  3-4hr bike
• Sunday:  1hr bike; 1-1.5hr run

In the on-season, or “Build” period, i.e. high volume weeks in the build-up to racing but before the taper, I usually have some higher intensity sessions with more work at or above race pace.  A typical week in say May or June might be the following:

• Monday:  Endurance swim, 3-4k, e.g. 8 x 500m or 3 x 1k
• Tuesday:  Running intervals at above race pace, e.g. 6 x 800m; recovery bike
• Wednesday:  Swim, usually 100s or 200s, weights or short recovery run
• Thursday:  Tempo bike, 90mins at race effort followed by a 20-30min run at IM race pace
• Friday:  Steady / technique swim; weights or run including strides set
• Saturday:  5hr bike + 1hr run
• Sunday:  2-2.5hr run; recovery bike

How do you train for this sort of chaos? Laura is in there somewhere...

NJAMW:  Ok.  Now I am definitely feeling under-trained.  But at the same time, this sort of training followed by such long endurance races must raise some big injury risks, not just a slight case of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).  What sort of injuries do you find you have after Olympic Triathlons and Ironman races and how long does it take you to recover from a race?

LT:  I have been lucky in my career so far that I haven’t suffered from any serious injuries.  Usually after a race I am able to start swimming and cycling easily within a week to 10 days, and run easily within 2-3 weeks.  Unsurprisingly it is the running that does the most damage to your body and takes the longest to recover from – I usually find it takes about a month before I feel I am running strongly again.

NJAMW:  That really surprises me.  I’ve always imagined that big endurance racing results in horrendous injuries. 

Let’s move onto something a bit more female-specific.  I saw from your race write-up from Ironman Austria 2010 that you often heard the comment of “it’s an Iron Lady!!” from the crowd. How do you feel being a woman involved in a sport that is quite male-dominated – is there any additional pressure on you?

LT:  I certainly don’t feel any pressure from being a woman in a male-dominated sport.  Ironman is so popular that there are still large women’s fields in each event and each race is extremely competitive.  On the plus side you do get more attention in races when you are closer to the front of the field, as was the case in Ironman Austria where I finished 14th in the women’s race.  There are also some amazing female professional athletes who are great ambassadors for the sport, such as Chrissie Wellington, Julie Dibens and Rachel Joyce from the UK to name but a few, and I think as these athletes continue to race at the very top level this can only encourage more women into the sport.  At Hawaii this year there was a 75-year old woman (and 80-year old man) competing so it is certainly an inclusive sport for all ages!

NJAMW:  Being able to do something as extreme at that ripe age is definitely something for me to aspire to with my overarching longevity goal.  Are there any specific challenges that you face as a woman when undertaking these endurance events in order to handle the challenges that you put your body through?

LT:  None specifically that I can think of.  I think many endurance sports actually level the playing field between men and women and certainly the very best women compete with a finish well up the field with the professional men.  I believe this is also the case in ultra-running where some women can out-race the men as their superior endurance can overcome any genetic disadvantage due to size or strength.

NJAMW:  I’ve often heard (and noticed from personal experience with the long-distance walks and bike rides I do with Chris) that women have a better ability to handle long endurance efforts. 

Looking forward, have you enjoyed competing in Ironman races this year and do you think you’ll continue with them next year?

LT:  I have really enjoyed competing in Ironman races this year.  Racing any Ironman, and especially your first, is a huge challenge and I do feel a great sense of achievement to have completed an Ironman and achieved my goals for this year.  Being able to describe myself as a multiple-Ironman and Hawaii finisher still seems unreal to me!  I’m not sure about my plans for next year yet – I definitely have goals to stay in the sport and to go back to Hawaii and finish higher up the field, I just need to decide the best way to improve across the sports and reach my potential. 

At the moment I am having a short break from training after Hawaii and I’m not currently planning to race another Ironman next year.  I intend to work hard on improving my swimming and running technique over the next few months as I think those are the limiting factors in my performance at the moment.  I may also race over some shorter distances over the next year or two to really refine my speed while continuing to build on my endurance before returning to Ironman racing in a couple of years when I hope to reach the top-end amateur (maybe even lower end professional….) level!

NJAMW:  That’s a great goal to aim for next.  It’s going to be really exciting watching you progress after a strong first Ironman season and with such high-level goals in your sights.  How can people carry on following your progress?

LT:  Thanks Anna, I have a blog which is at www.lauratrimble.co.uk which I try to keep up to date with my training and progress.  I’m also on twitter @TTLaura

NJAMW:  I’ll definitely be following those and I’m sure a few other people will too.  Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview and best of luck for the future.  I really hope you’ll come back in a year or two and let us know how you’ve got on with the new goals.

LT:  My pleasure, thank you for inviting me!

Related posts:

1. Iron Lady: interview with Laura Trimble (part 1)
2. Interview with Alli McKee (part 1)
3. Interview with Alli McKee (part 2)

Some time ago, thanks to Facebook, I linked back in with Laura Trimble, someone I was at school with.  Over the last few years Laura has been doing some amazing things in the world of Triathlon and Ironman.  Having had a brilliant season in Ironman this year, she was invited to take part at the Ironman World Championships this year at Hawaii – a great success in a sport that really tests your mettle. 

Laura has very kindly agreed to do an interview for the blog which will come out in two parts so that we all have time to digest her excellent experiences and advice.  I hope you all get as much out of Laura’s interview as I already have.

Laura Trimble

NJAMWorld:  Congratulations on completing the Ironman in Hawaii recently and for your blistering qualifying time in Austria which got you there – a massive achievement!  I’ve been following your progress and watching you go from strength to strength.

Let’s start with an introduction.  For those who don’t know you, please would you introduce yourself and explain a bit about what you do?

Laura Trimble:  Hi Anna, thanks for the introduction.  As a fan of the blog it’s great to be featured!  A bit of background about me: I’m 28, married to Andrew (also a triathlete), I live in London, work full-time and in my spare time I’m a reasonably good amateur triathlete.  Having tried various different sports when I was younger I decided to give triathlon a go in late 2008.  I hired a coach, took part in various sprint, Olympic and half iron distance races in 2009 and after some success I decided to step up to racing Ironman distance this year.  The ultimate goal for almost any Ironman athlete is to qualify for the Ironman World Championships which are held in Kona, Hawaii each October.  I had watched this avidly on TV the previous few years and a distant goal of mine was certainly to get there one day.

NJAMW:  World Championships is a really serious long-term goal for anyone in their early years of a new sport, though I’ve already given away in the introduction that you’ve already achieved it…  So, since you mentioned it, let’s get the basics out of the way first.  For those who haven’t come across it before, what exactly does an Ironman competition involve?

LT:  An Ironman race consists of a 2.4 mile (3.8km) swim, followed by a 112 mile (180km) bike and a 26.2 mile (42.2km) run, or marathon.  The sections are done in that order and the only break is the “transition” where you change into the appropriate kit for the next section, usually only taking a few minutes!

The original Ironman race took place in Hawaii in 1978 and was the idea of naval commander John Collins, who effectively looked at the hardest swim, bike and run races on the Island at the time and decided to combine them into what was considered the ultimate test of endurance.  It has been a global event with 24 Ironman races worldwide this year, all of which offer the opportunity to qualify for Hawaii.

Each race has a cut-off time of 17 hours, as well as mid-race cut-offs of 2hrs 20mins for the swim and 10hrs 30mins for the swim and bike.  The world record for men is 7hrs 50mins and for women is 8hrs 19ins, set by the astonishingly good three-time World Champion Chrissie Wellington in Germany last year.

NJAMW:  Wow!  I knew the distances were long, but I hadn’t realised quite how far.  The longest bike ride I’ve ever done was just over 100 miles and I did that in touring-style over about 5 hours (plus some breaks on top of that).  When we were at school together you were always involved with the team sports.  I’ve been wondering how you got from school sports to Ironman competitions.  Since this was your first Ironman season, how did you end up competing?

LT:  I’ve been a sports fan for as long as I can remember, and as you say I had a go at all sorts of different sports at school, spending most of my time playing lacrosse and netball in the winter and athletics in the summer.  Unfortunately this didn’t include swimming which I detested – had I known the hours I would have to spend getting my swimming vaguely up to scratch this year and the massive advantage those from a swimming background have over most triathletes (who tend to have a cycling or running background), I’d be telling my 11 year-old self to start putting the work in in the pool!

I went to university in Oxford in 2000 and like all freshers there I pretty soon ended up rowing.  [NJAMWorld: Freshers are new first years at university, for anyone who doesn’t know the terminology.]  This really defined the next few year of my sporting career.  University rowing led to club rowing with Vesta Rowing Club in London and I spent a happy couple of years there culminating in racing at Henley in 2008.  That year was also the first year I really took part in a structured, high-level training programme, including a winter of weights and long rowing outings, and I am quite sure this made a huge difference in my endurance base and helped me to make a fast start in triathlon the following year.

In 2005 I started working in banking for HSBC, and after a few years juggling being part of a rowing squad and working long hours I came to realise that moving to an individual sport would give me more flexibility to plan my training around my reasonably long work hours.  In the meantime, my (now) husband Andrew, who has a less sporty background but is always up for a challenge, had signed up for Ironman Austria while at law school in 2005, and I spent an enjoyable (and long!) day supporting him as he raced his first Ironman in Klagenfurt in summer 2006.

By 2007 I was determined to learn to swim and have a go myself.  I signed up for a couple of half-ironman races and had sufficiently good results to qualify for the GB “Age-group” (amateur) squad for the ITU Long Distance World Championships in Perth in October 09 which gave us the opportunity for a fantastic holiday and my first experience of wearing the GB vest.  After a successful season I made the decision to step up to Ironman.  I entered Ironman South Africa (in April) and Ironman Austria (July) and set about doing the long rides and runs over the winter that would get me into the shape I needed to be in the following year.

As you mentioned at the start I had a great season.  I completed my debut Ironman in South Africa in April, despite having to take a ferry to Spain with my bike and fly on from there due to the flight chaos caused by the volcanic ash cloud!  I had a fantastic race in Ironman Austria in July, finishing in 10 hrs 33mins which was above my expectations and third in my age group of W25-29 (finishing positions are measured based on people in the same 5-year age category).  Thus earning a qualifying slot to the Ironman Worlds in Hawaii in October!

NJAMW:  Do you know, until you mentioned it I don’t think I had registered that you never opted to swim when we were given the choice, despite the fact that swimming was my personal preference and I was always in the pool when I could be.  You’ve stayed remarkably quiet about cycling in all of that, yet I noticed that in the “About” section on your blog you say that “it really is all about the bike!” Tell us more.

LT:  Well, as I mentioned earlier I don’t come from a swimming background and I’d really always thought of myself as a good runner.  As I began spending more time cycling it quickly became clear that my background in rowing had given me the muscular endurance to cycle at a high level.  Somewhat to my surprise I found myself more competitive in the cycle leg than even the run leg, and as it represents approximately 50% of the Ironman it is certainly an area where you can make up good time.  As a slower swimmer it also helps to have a good bike leg, so I always enjoy the first hour or so of the bike when I can overtake many of the stronger swimmers!

Laura Trimble showing that it really is all about the bike

NJAMW:  I imagine it gives you a good mental boost to overtake plenty of people partway through the race.  Staying on the theme of the mental aspects and stating the obvious: Ironman is definitely an endurance sport, since a standard race lasts between 8 and 17 hours.  How do you stay mentally focussed for such a long period of time and what do you think about while racing?

LT:  That’s a good question, and staying mentally focused is definitely one of the most challenging aspects of an Ironman for me.  There are a few ways I try and deal with this.  First of all, I think a great technique is to break the race down into smaller sections, not just into swim, bike and run but into shorter segments which are easier to visualise.  Many Ironman races are on a lapped course (for example Ironman South Africa consists of a three-lap bike and three-lap run) and this is an easy way to break it down into sections of no longer than 1-2 hours.  Similarly on the swim course there are buoys which are usually every couple of hundred metres.  Within these shorter sections there will be distance markers on the course which break things up, and there are usually landmarks or particular features (e.g. hills) which help break the course up and give you different things to focus on.

In terms of what I think about during racing, to be honest there is almost always something to think about in connection with the race, whether it is the people around you (for example if you are overtaking someone on the bike or trying to keep with a group in the swim), your nutrition plan (if you eat or drink at certain time intervals), and for me it is often my heart rate and power (on the bike) which are the key factors which determine my effort level during a race.  I use a Garmin 310xt heart rate monitor which is linked to a Quarq powermeter on my bike.  I have target heart rate and power ranges which I have refined during training and which I know represent the right intensity for me to race at.  Usually I spend the first couple of hours of a race trying to keep these down at an acceptable level!

The other aspect to coping with the mental challenge is to replicate the conditions of a long race as well as you can in training.  Obviously you can’t (or shouldn’t) try and replicate the entire Ironman in training, but key sessions such a long swim, a 5 hour bike followed by a 1 hour run, or a long run of say 2-2.5 hours do help replicate the tiredness that you will undoubtedly feel during the race.  Having experienced these situations in training definitely helps you cope and you can draw on these experiences in the more difficult parts of the race.

NJAMW:  That’s some serious training hours you’re talking about there.  Let’s get a bit more specific.  What race preparation do you do in the hours, days and weeks leading up to a big race, both physically and mentally?

LT:  Broadly speaking I tend to “taper” before Ironman races for about 3 weeks, where I gradually step down my training hours but keep some high intensity training to keep me fresh for the race.  I usually average about 16-18 hours a week when I’m training hard.  This would step down to say 14, 12 and then around 6 hours the week before a race.  Around 3-4 days before the race I usually do sessions involving 3-4 90-second sprints, both on the bike and run, and I usually swim part of the swim course so I can see where the start and finish are and how you enter the transition area after the swim.  You get little (if any) fitness benefit from the training in the last couple of weeks so it is all about keeping your muscles firing and trying to balance your fitness and fatigue so you are free of any fatigue but have not yet begun to lose fitness.  Many great athletes and scientists have done research on the optimal taper.  In practice I think it is different for everyone, but the broad principle of lower volume and short, high-intensity sessions is, I think, agreed on in most places.

*****

On that note, as we all start sweating at the number of hours Laura is putting into training, I think I’ll call a halt for this week and post up the rest of the interview next week.  Next week includes more detail on Laura’s training schedule as well as some details about her approach to nutrition, so stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Iron Lady: interview with Laura Trimble (part 2)
2. Interview with Alli McKee (part 1)
3. Interview with Alli McKee (part 2)