Don't Stop Me Now

by Vassos Alexander

  Before leaving London and driving up to Nottingham (via 48 hours throwing up in the New Forest and a Children in Need jamboree in Sussex), I’d had the foresight to make myself a rather wonderful, super-healthy, super-nutritious superfood cake of my own devising. It’s a strange-looking concoction I grant you, but I remain insistent that (1) it’s really quite tasty if you ignore how unappetising it looks, and (2) it might just be the perfect endurance fuel. Just six ingredients: oats, egg, avocado, banana, blueberries and peanut butter – mash them all up and bake. It’s all in there: slow release carbs (oats), good fat (avocado, peanuts, egg yolk), sugar for instant energy (banana, blueberries), anti-inflammatories (blueberries) and protein (egg and peanuts). All in there, and all good. Tastes nice too. I’m so proud of it, I submitted the recipe (such as it is) for inclusion in the charity book Fuelled By Cake compiled by another amateur triathlete, Helen Murray. To be honest I’ve had a mixed response from people who’ve subsequently made it – but I still continue to believe in it. Who needs a protein shake when you’ve got a superfood cake?

  I’d wolfed down some cake at 4am in my poky hotel room as I got my race things together. It was precisely the recommended two hours before the swim start, and after forcing down as much cake as I could, I carefully wrapped the rest to eat after the bike ride.

  Having completed the swim in just over an hour, and at that stage feeling quite good about life, I made the snap decision to bring the remaining cake with me on the bike.

  Now what with being ill and busy and all, I’d not had a moment to buy myself any proper triathlon kit. So I was racing in the same get-up I used for my training rides up and down Box Hill: long-sleeved running shirt and baggy old cargo shorts. In a field full of Lycra, the shorts may have looked comically out of place, but they weren’t half practical. Room for a puncture repair kit and hand pump in one front pocket. And, as I decided on a whim this morning, room for my cake in the other.

  The mid-point of the 180km bike ride came at the top of a hill. Annie Emerson, triathlete-turned-TV-presenter, was there with a camera and wanted a quick interview. In fact she enjoyed a laugh at the ridiculous shorts more than she asked any questions, but the whole episode came as a welcome break from my by-now caustic calf. So afterwards, as I reluctantly resumed pedalling, I succumbed to the urge to treat myself to a little corner of cake.

  Very nice it was too. Only one problem: I must have failed to put the rest back in the pocket securely, as that’s the last I saw of my much-needed super-sustenance. At some point during the second half of the bike ride, the cake fell out of my shorts unnoticed, and at about the same time, my digestive system started to reject the sickly-sweet gels being offered by the ever-excellent volunteers manning the aid stations. I had been meaning to train myself to get used to these by using them during long ride/runs in the build-up to this, but as with so much else, somehow never got round to it. Error.

  Every time I grabbed a gel and tried to wedge the glutinous liquid down my parched throat, I promptly threw it all back up again.

  So the cake I was planning to scoff at the end of the bike ride became ever more important to me. As I pedalled those seemingly endless kilometres unaware of the cargo shorts pocket disaster, I started fantasising about the moment I could tuck in. It’s what kept my feet going round and round in the cleats as I ticked off the distance markers. 120km, 130km, 140km... just another forty to go until cake... 150km, a little dizzy with hunger, but only around an hour left... 160km, tempted to have a little nibble just as an appetiser but no, resist the urge to enjoy it all the more when the pedalling finally ends... 170km, so close I can almost taste it... 176km, onto some cobbles, slowing the bikes down but somehow taking the pressure off, no cycling hard here, time to savour the prospect of the blissful calories to come (though the cobbles are also prime suspects in the great ‘What Caused The Cake To Fall Out Of The Pocket Mystery’)... 178km, it’s Christmas Eve, the anticipation almost as sweet as the big day itself... 179km, back around the lake whose grandstands were deserted last time I saw them after the swim, now teeming with people cheering on loved ones, everyone smiling, everyone enjoying the sunshine (everyone but the lunatics racing, that is)... then finally, finally, thankfully, 180km, and out of the saddle, and off the bike, and no more pedalling, and a few sweet moments of rest ahead of the only triathlon discipline I was approaching with any semblance of confidence: the run.

  And best of all, the cake which had occupied so much of my conscious brain for four hours. Bliss!

  So it was quite a blow to be honest, when I sat down in the transition tent next to a bloke who didn’t look remotely tired as he greedily stuffed down tuna sandwiches, to discover that the cake was nowhere to be seen. I checked through every pocket with an increasing sense of desperation. Chrissie’s words reverberated in my mind as it dawned on me that I was going to have to run 26 miles hungry. ‘Get the nutrition wrong in an Ironman, and you measure the mistake in hours.’ And also, more to the point, because I’m not really testing myself against the clock today, you measure the mistake in misery.

  So yes, that must be why my stomach hurts so much. Hunger. Pure and simple, grim and tortuous. All my own fault. And still 16 miles to go.

  Jo Scott-Dalgleish is a nutritional therapist who specialises in endurance sports. What she is not, she makes clear, is an endurance sports nutritionist. There’s a difference, you see. For a start they train differently, and Jo’s also keen to point out that she examines her patients’ overall health as well as their sports performance. Which is good, because that’s exactly what I want to talk to her about. When I first started running, like pretty much all novices, I fell into the trap of believing I could eat what I liked, however much I liked, whenever I liked.

  And the thing is, I have a big appetite. And I do mean BIG. If this were a children’s book, I’d emphasise how big my appetite is by increasing the font size dramatically so only those three letters B I G could fit onto the page. I might also include a Quentin Blake-style illustration to hammer home the point. A picture, say, of the amount of food I can happily put away in one sitting.

  Though come to think of it, I suspect you might be sitting there, reading this, supposing you have a similarly large appetite. Thinking, I can eat a lot too if it comes to it, I’m probably equally greedy. Well, take it from me (and this is a good thing as far as you’re concerned), you’re just not. My appetite can be obscene. I frequently eat more in a day than the rest of my family put together.

  This, for instance, is what I put away from the hotel breakfast buffet every day of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And there are witnesses – credible, dependable witnesses, BBC staff members and International Olympic Committee officials – who could testify to this.

  I’d start each day with some fruit, to make me feel healthy. Two large bowls of fruit salad. Then some cereal – a large bowl of muesli, and a large bowl of something treaty like Frosties. Next, toast with butter and marmalade. All of which I considered to be a starter.

  The main course consisted of a full cooked breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, beans. Then the local breakfast dish, which I always try wherever I am in the world, in this case an egg hard-boiled in soy sauce (turning the white brown and making the whole thing deliciously salty) and a bowl of chicken noodles.

  To finish, I’d have some fish, mackerel or smoked salmon, on more toast, followed by a croissant to go with my third cappuccino.

  I’m a little embarrassed to see that all written down. But there it is, a truly gargantuan, gluttonous breakfast, and I devoured it every morning for the 28 days I was in Beijing. Nowadays I pretend not to have a problem with how much I eat and pretend I don’t worry about getting fat – but I kind of do. It’s why I started running in the first place, and one of the reasons I keep going.

  Nutritional therapist Jo told me:

  ‘Many people come to see me thinking they can basically eat anything they like because they’ve started running. But there are several diffe
rent factors to consider here, not least – what sort of running are you doing? Is it a 5k Race For Life, is it a first marathon, or are you off to do an ultra*?

  ‘One of the common things I see in people who are new to running is an assumption that because they have burned extra calories, actually around 300 say on a typical 20-minute jog, they can reward themselves with guilt-free treats. That’s clearly an error. In fact, that level of physical activity on its own is going to make no difference to weight loss, or fat loss.

  ‘The type of running you’re doing, the distances and the type of training, it all plays a really important part in any nutritional advice I would give. But clearly, if all you do is a weekly 5k parkrun and you reward yourself with a burger and chips, what you’ll find is you inevitably end up putting on weight rather than losing it.

  ‘Also, there is an issue over health. If you’re going to be a runner and you’re going to have that sort of healthy lifestyle, then what you eat for your meals and snacks is vital. It’s important for immune support, because often when people start training heavily, their immune system begins not to function quite as well and they become prone to upper respiratory tract infections like colds. And there’s the injury risk when people start running and become quite enthusiastic quite quickly, building up volume without increasing it slowly, and if they have a poor diet it’s going to take them longer to recover because they don’t have the basic nutrients they need to repair bones, muscles and ligaments. The naturally lean runners wouldn’t necessarily consider that.

  Are we allowed to binge on pasta and bread though? Traditionally, the runner’s diet has been high in carbohydrate and you’ll still hear experienced marathoners talk of carbo-loading before a race. But are they right to do so? Recent research, according to Jo, suggests not:

  ‘A very high carbohydrate diet is not necessarily optimal for running performance, but that doesn’t mean to say that it doesn’t work very well for some. The Kenyans, for example, naturally have a very high-carb/low fat diet and nobody would suggest they would do better if they ate more fat.

  ‘There is probably a genetic component to how you personally respond to what you eat, how you react to carbohydrate and fat and how sensitive you are to those particular nutrients. But there are several other aspects of the carb-story that are coming out through research. One is that running in a fasted state, which means not having any food at all before a run except perhaps a cup of coffee, does have some benefits for endurance capability. It helps to ‘switch on’ the biochemical pathways that help grow the mitochondria in the muscles – essentially charging your batteries. So doing a fasted run before breakfast once or twice a week can be very helpful come race day, and it also teaches your body to run off its fat stores.

  ‘Both the research and basic biochemistry tell us that when you’re running at a certain intensity, your body has to use carbs. You simply cannot convert fat into energy fast enough to feed your anaerobic† energy system. However well adapted you are, there comes an intensity beyond which you simply can’t run on fat. Any 5k or 10k race, as well as any half-marathon for almost everybody, and even a marathon for a fast runner, someone who’ll complete the race in around three hours, none of those races is going to be run on fat stores.

  ‘The people who are successfully teaching their bodies to run off their fat stores are doing so for the longer events where you’re running at zone 2 intensity, maybe even zone 1‡, for really extended periods. For instance a slower marathon runner, and especially an ultra runner, an Ironman triathlete or an endurance cyclist doing a six-hour sportive, those are the people who can access fat stores. But when they want to speed up, they’ll find it a struggle as they don’t have the carbohydrate to convert quickly into energy.’

  Hearing this, I begin to make sense of why I was finding the run such a struggle in the Outlaw.

  ‘What happened to you in the Ironman is your carbohydrate stores got completely depleted, and you hit the wall. If you were able to complete the marathon at all, the only reason is that you accessed your fat stores at that very low intensity at which you were running. If you had been able to keep your carb stores topped up during the bike by taking on, say, 60g an hour through a combination of gels, bars, drinks, whatever you had taught yourself in training to be able to tolerate, it would have been a very different story.

  ‘The stomach is a big issue when it comes to long distance triathlons and ultra-marathons. There comes a point where you instinctively don’t want to take on board any more nutrition, but you need to. That’s why practising is incredibly important. You can’t be on your feet, or working hard, for such a long period of time without eating.’

  Now she tells me...

  Chrissie Wellington MBE

  Four times Ironman World Champion and world record holder. Undefeated in all 13 Ironman distance triathlons she entered. Since retiring from competition, she’s helped found and promote many sporting events from the women’s Tour de France to junior parkrun.

  I can remember running quite a lot (informally) as a kid, and I think I drove my parents mad because I wanted to run or cycle everywhere rather than walk. I used to run around the garden with bare feet shouting, ‘I’m Zola Budd! I’m Zola Budd!’ She was obviously an inspiration to me at that time; it was 1984 and the Los Angeles Olympics when she competed in bare feet. She was, quite simply, a visible role model. Sharon Davies (swimming medallist for Britain) was another.

  I recall doing cross country at school, not being particularly good at it but enjoying the off-road aspect of the running and being in nature. And I was quite a tomboy so getting muddy and dirty and sweaty appealed to me.

  But it was all very unstructured and I didn’t see running as a sport that I necessarily wanted to improve at or even become more proficient in. It was just something that I loved to do, but at the time I didn’t see – or I didn’t recognise – that I had any particular running talent.

  Years went by: sixth form, university, and I really didn’t run again until I did my Masters degree. I’d been travelling for a couple of years and had gained a little weight and had gone a little puffy! So after going round the world I arrived in Manchester and decided I wanted to run as a means of losing weight.

  I had an old battered pair of trainers and I can remember being embarrassed that I went very red when I ran. I’ve since learned that I naturally dissipate a lot of heat through my head, but at the time I just knew I went red when I ran – so I used to go out early in the mornings so nobody would see me. I also didn’t have any specific sports kit, so I’d run in a regular vest top or an ordinary jumper in the winter, along with some old cargo shorts or leggings.

  But then I was inspired to take running a little bit more seriously when I was talking to my friend who’d grown up with a heart defect but had just completed the London Marathon. So I thought to myself: here I am, I have two legs, two arms and a fully functional heart. What’s to stop me running a marathon?

  I managed to get a charity place for London the following year – it was 2002 and places were much easier to come by in those days. So then I started running a lot more. But I still wouldn’t say I knew much about it. I just went for a run.

  That was the point when I first started to enjoy it, even though I still didn’t know the first thing about training to improve my performance. I didn’t have a clue about hill training, or interval training, lactate threshold training, fartleks.... Basically I didn’t have any idea of pace. I just went out and ran for 20 minutes, 30, 40, an hour, an hour and a half... it just gradually increased.

  And I ran the London Marathon in 2002 and I surprised myself by running a time that was much faster than I ever dreamt I was capable of – 3:08.

  That’s when I began to realise that I had a bit of a talent for running and also that it was something I really did enjoy. I had just taken part in a big event with fantastic crowd support. And it brought my family together too because they all came to the finish line and we all celebrated as a family
. A fantastic day, which prompted me to take running more seriously.

  So I began to focus on how to improve. I thought a running club would be the answer, but I was quite nervous about joining one because I still didn’t know a lot about the sport. I thought you needed knowledge as well as talent before you could join a club. But I was really wrong about that.

  In fact you don’t need to know anything, you definitely don’t need to be able to run a fast marathon, you don’t even need the right clothes. These clubs are so open to new members, and so welcoming, and so used to empowering anybody who’s new to running – and so it proved with me.

  I believe I truly benefited from joining a club, especially one with such a fantastic coach. The late Frank Horwill§ used to train us down at Battersea Park track – and as I started to see improvements in my running that’s when I really started to love it.

  I’m quite performance orientated. I like to set goals and achieve them, and watching myself improving was very encouraging. Then of course, when you discover you’re actually quite good at something, it doesn’t half help! I made friends in the running club, and that made me go running even more, and what began as a weight-loss activity soon also became a social activity as well as a fitness activity. I’ve found there are many different motives for getting involved in running and often they evolve as you develop.

  Starting anything is horrible – it’s the hardest part! And especially if it’s a sport, and you’re not fit, so it’s not comfortable, it hurts and you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. That soon changes; you’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to see it as a journey.

  That’s the beauty of sport – you’re always developing, always evolving, and always learning. Whoever you are, whether you’re Mo Farah, Paula Radcliffe or me, we all went on that first run and you can bet your bottom dollar we all found it equally horrible. But something compels you to keep going – and if you do keep going, you reap the benefits.