Do You Take Enough Of Such Nutrients?

In the sports of endurance, our body undergoes much physical and mental stress. Complete rest (mainly sleep) and full recovery is one of the major keys to progress and performance. Nutrition is the other crucial leg in the tripod of sporting performance, if we are to continue to improve and attain our personal bests. Longevity is the goal of many lifestyle athletes, as well as serious amateur athletes.

In these processed-food-dense times, there are 12 key nutrients that can help us retard the premature aging process. These include:

1)    Vitamin D

2)    Astaxanthin (from a microalgae)

3)    Ubiquinol (Co-enzyme Q10)

4)    Fermented foods/Probiotics

5)    Krill Oil

6)    Vitamin K2

7)    Magnesium

8)    Polyphenols

9)    Folate (Vitamin B9, or Folic Acid)

10) Vitamin B12

11) Curcumin (Tumeric)

12)Vitamin A

How many of these anti-aging nutrients are you consuming? How much of your foods are natural-based? How deliberate are you in reducing your processed food intake? Defy the hands of time, and reverse your chronological clock!

10 Ways To Shock The Monkey

The inimitable Peter Gabriel. 'Shock the monkey to life...'

Do the same thing, day in and day out, and you will probably get the same results. Our body is highly adaptive, and it copes with stress by becoming stronger or succumbing to it. Dr Hans Selye described biological stress as necessary, and how we can benefit from different kinds of stressors (distress & eustress). Being adaptive is also a useful value we can appreciate even as a corporate athlete, as we work up the corporate ladder.

Here are 10 ways to inject challenge and minor shocks to your physical fitness:

1)    Reverse the flow. Begin the sequence backwards. Do your triathlon training in reverse (for instance, run-ride-swim).

2)    Do combinations of back-to-back activities. Swim, then immediately run. Or, run off the ride on tired legs.

3)    Do intervals (faster sets) within your long endurance rides and runs.

4)    Work on your core strength and stability. Never do the same workout twice, consecutively.

5)    Do strength and conditioning with resistance (free-weights, weight-stack machines, bodyweight, stationary-bike, water).

6)    Do different sports as part of your cross-training.

7)    Do more side-to-side, and rotation type activities.

8)    Add different drills and equipment when you swim (kickboard, paddles, fins, snorkel, pool-buoy).

9)    Train at different times of the day.

10) Get more sleep and quality rest. This can be a shocker for the time-crunched athlete.

Aim to do different things. Strive for variety. Be creative in your approach to fitness. Surprise your body with treats. Shock your body into new growth and development!

It Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time!

Trust my body to succumb to the subtlety of stress. I caught a mild cough and running nose a few days before the big dance. Teaching in enclosed places such as classrooms can invite malicious microbes to launch an assault on my mucous membranes. I could only ward off the influence for so long, and now I am innocently paying for it.

I recall suffering my pre-A Race bout of pre-racing, stress-related diseases such as a cough, running nose and stomach flu. Two weeks ago, I had my first case of gastrointestinal distress, and it cost me some downtime in training. I was tapering from a few long-distance runs such as the 50K and 30K, and thought I could get away with doing any more boring Long Slow Distance (LSD) sessions. My speed-work was affected by these interruptions that upset my body’s equilibrium.

This evening, in Bali I ran my first session this week after two days of intense teaching and traveling. I ran on a relatively flat stretch of beach in the Jimbaran area for 40 minutes, inserting short spurts of sprinting. I intended to exorcise the latency out of my legs, which surprisingly was not docile after Sunday’s 150-minute bike ride. I had to dodge casted fishing lines, soccer-playing kids, and couples strolling by the evasive sunset. Running a semi-wet beach was akin to trail running, with a sense of alertness to the surface I was traipsing across.

Generous shots of vitamin C-laced water later, I hope to rest abundantly and recover soon to be in relatively good shape for a good marathon. I have gathered a few serious age-groupers (such as Melvin and Han Low) to run their BQs, and I hope to have enough motivation to stay on-target and in sane pace to limbo-rock under the 3:25:00 barrier. If all goes well, I should have stories and strategies to share.

Don’t Sweat The Small Things

This was a popular book just a few years back, and it spawned many derivatives (like the Chicken Soup For the Soul series). However, it is so easy to lose sight of the essence of the theme if you did not read it.

Details are important if you want to achieve your goals on time, and on target. Negligence and carelessness can compromise our goals, and even dreams. However, details can cloud the big picture if we can bogged with them. Analyse until paralyse!

Routine tasks are just routines which means we need to do them. However a routine need not be boring or predictable. Training for a race may be tough, but it need not test our attention and attentiveness. Routines help build discipline and patience, so we do them to prove we can manage the daily disruptions and interruptions. Here are some ideas for not spending too much energy wasted on the minutiae.

1)    Spend a small of the day to compliment somebody or give praise.

2)    Encourage somebody. This is one of the best ways for empowering others.

3)    When the going gets tough, laugh it off. Laughter produces stress-coping chemicals in our brain.

4)    Exercise is like laughter, although its more strenuous it can be just as effective.

5)    Create moments to leave your desk. It would be better for your back.

6)    Send a ‘how are you?’ text message, or an e-mail. Enjoy how soon you get a reply.

7)    Pick up an unfamiliar word and search it up on dictionary.com. See how soon you can use it in your correspondence.

8)    Break a pattern of behavior. Change your morning routine. Switch your exercises around. Each more vegetables of another colour.

9)    Delegate to another a useful task – however offer the person a degree of authority, and you retain the responsibility. That’s sharing the workload.

10) Give thanks and praise to the universe. Be thankful that we are alive to be able to experience life in its many forms.