Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Not sore this time

A week ago at this time, I was really sore. After doing the same weight workout yesterday that I did last Tuesday, albeit with different set/rep counts, I'm not sore. A little tired maybe, but not sore.

Yesterday, in the coached eating program that we're doing, we had to eat vegan for a day. I spent a year (2005) as a vegetarian and had my worst competitive season in the past decade. That year, I was sick a lot in the winter, fell behind in my training for Western States and then got pulled at mile 93.5 in Western States.

I paced at the VT100 and then decided to run Halliburton Forest. I managed to give myself food poisoning there (Perpetuem that had gotten damp and fermented somewhat), and dropped at mile 65. I made one more attempt at 100 miles that year at Javelina, but I was sick and injured on race weekend, and I made it to mile 64 or so (4 loops) before I dropped. At the end of the year, I went back to eating meat and I've been racing better since then.

Was my poor racing year a direct result of the vegetarian diet? I don't know, but I don't think I want to try the experiment again. There are so many reasons that I would like to be a vegetarian or a vegan, but I just can't imagine doing it forever.

However, yesterday reminded me that I probably eat more meat and create more of an enviromental impact with my diet than I need to do. In my life, I have known some overweight vegetarians, but does anyone know an overweight vegan? It seems like it would be impossible to be fat on a purely plant-based diet, unless you lived on sugar, avocados and nuts.

Tonight, I'm going to run the 9-mile uphill route home after work. It sounds like it will be raining a bit, but not pouring.

The weather for my 20+ miler on Friday morning sounds pretty nice.

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