PREFACE

The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing is for triathletes, runners, cyclists, swimmers, cross-country skiers, and other athletes seeking greater endurance. You will learn about the many important tools that help you achieve optimal athletic potential—and keep you healthy and injury-free for many productive years.

 

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Commitment and dedication to your sport cannot be accomplished without careful planning. I want to assist you in getting even more from your body. The successful road to training and racing is relatively simple. It includes having a clear strategy with shortand long-term goals, monitoring progress to assure your plan is working and to prevent overtraining, and, of course, proper nutrition.

This book gives you a fresh look at successful endurance training and competition. My system offers a truly “individualized” approach, which I have continually updated and refined over three decades of training and treating athletes, who range from world champions to weekend warriors.

My general philosophy regarding endurance contains four key points:

 

 

 
  1. Build a great aerobic base. This essential physical and metabolic foundation helps accomplish several important tasks: it prevents injury and maintains a balanced physical body; it increases fat burning for improved stamina, weight loss, and sustained energy; and it improves overall health in the immune and hormonal systems, the intestines and liver, and throughout the body.
  2. Eat well. Specific foods influence the developing aerobic system, especially the foods consumed in the course of a typical day. Overall, diet can significantly influence your body’s physical, chemical, and mental state of fitness and health.
  3. Reduce stress. Training and competition, combined with other lifestyle factors, can be stressful and adversely affect performance, cause injuries, and even lead to poor nutrition because they can disrupt the normal digestion and absorption of nutrients.
  4. Improve brain function. The brain and entire nervous system control virtually all athletic activity, and a healthier brain produces abetter athlete. Improved brain function occurs from eating well, controlling stress, and through sensory stimulation, which includes proper training and optimal breathing.

Those familiar with my other books and essays on fitness and health know that I’m strongly opposed to quick-fix solutions to many of the problems encountered by triathletes, runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes. Too often, so-called sports medicine experts only consider the symptoms, leaving the basis of a particular problem unattended, only to cause other problems down the road (and sometimes a recurrence of the same problem). Today’s practitioners too readily recommend off-the-shelf treatments, including rest, stretching, hot or cold packs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and often surgery. It’s a classic case of treating the symptom and ignoring the root cause. This cookbook approach to the human body is indefensible.

Yet there are many exceptional healthcare practitioners in sports, and I devote a whole chapter to how to find one. The better sports practitioners take an alternative view about the best kind of treatment and carefully consider the entire athlete. This is critical because an injury is, with some exceptions, simply the end result of a series of dominoes falling over. For example, one morning, while bending to tie your shoe, you feel a twinge in your hamstring. While that’s where the pain is located, it’s often not the location of the cause. A comprehensive history and evaluation might discover the cause is in the foot—the result of wearing the wrong kind of running shoe. Some barely noticeable muscular imbalance in the leg might develop, leading to a tilt in the pelvis, with a final stop in the hamstring—the source of the pain.

The remedy? Obviously, ice, anti-inflammatory drugs, or rubbing the hamstring is not going to correct the real problem. Obtaining the right shoe will often quickly allow the body to make its own natural corrections of the fallen dominos.

Generally, the body has a great natural ability to heal itself. When your body gives you a very obvious sign, such as a hamstring twinge, it’s time to stop and assess what’s going on. If you don’t, it may soon be too late. Waiting until you’re physically unable to train—the point at which your body forces you to stop—simply results in wasted time, frustration, fitness loss, increased stress, and even depression.

Yes, it’s best to view the body in the entire context of physical, chemical, and mental balance. Some call this a holistic approach, or looking at the big picture.

The brain is an influential part of this holistic equation, especially in endurance sports. The brain may be the most forgotten or even neglected aspect of training and competition. I predict that neuroscience will soon emerge as the next frontier in sports research. I’m not referring to sports psychology, which has been around for decades, but the physiology of the brain and how it affects muscles, hormones, energy production, fat burning, and virtually all athletic function.

The brain is the reason we slow down during a race—not too much lactate, or too little glucose or oxygen. As the body’s control center, the brain may slow us down to prevent injury or ill health. For example, the body may have some impairment, some “roadblock” that prevents us from going faster, and rather than cause an injury, the brain tells the body to slow down or even stop. With information found in this book, you’ll be able to find those impairments before they occur and self-correct them.

The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing also dispels many of the commonly held myths that linger in participatory sports—and that adversely impact performance. These false notions are propagated by common misunderstandings; outdated information about training, competition, and nutrition; and the very worst sins—rampant commercialism and sports marketing. To dispel these myths, I will carefully explain throughout this book the following recommendations:

 

 

 
  • Focus on burning more body fat for energy, instead of just on carbohydrates (glucose).
  • Train slower, enabling your aerobic system to improve endurance so you can actually race faster.
  • Don’t use costly, built-up running shoes; instead use the flattest, least protective training and racing shoes to prevent foot and leg injuries.
  • Don’t stretch; instead, you can obtain significant flexibility through an active warm-up and cool-down, without the risk of injury that can accompany stretching.
  • Consume a balance of dietary fats to help build endurance, reduce inflammation, and improve brain function.
  • Stay away from refined carbohydrates that can reduce endurance energy, disrupt important hormone balance, and store excess body fat.
  • Avoid common dietary supplements that can negatively impact endurance and health.
  • Spend time in the sun without sunscreen or protective clothing to obtain more vitamin D to improve athletic performance.
  • Recognize and correct overtraining in its earliest stage—long before fatigue, poor performance, or injury occurs.
  • Know that age is no barrier to performance. It’s possible to go faster in your forties, fifties, and even sixties—with improved fat burning and better slow-twitch muscle function.