The run to & back work experiment

A little while ago, I saw a video by ultra-runner Michael Arnstein (which is also a fruitarian)  in which we follow him during his daily commute in to work (15 miles) which he does running (so 30 miles in total) ... I immediately though "hey, why did I never thought of running to work?" ... at least occasionally since I commute 9 months of the year on my bicycle. I had the opportunity to try it out today using the same route that I ride back home, which is about 9km (so a total of 18k in the day).

Here are both runs on Strava:

It's not exactly the best run around since most of it is on the side-walks or directly on the road, but it was fun. I used one of my wife's small backpack to carry a few items and a bit of food to eat while at work (2 slices of raisin bread and one bagel). I don't know if that backpack (which is similar to this one) is meant for running, but when tightly secured it didn't move at all. I had my iPhone in one of the waistbelt pocket and listened to some podcasts both way.

My knees are a little sore, but overall I'm feeling fine (a little sleepy though). While my wife thinks I'm crazy, I may be doing it again ... but not everyday since I have to cycle. I'm pondering, however, if that may not be the way to commute once winter settled in from November to February.

Much better run today (with co-worker)! I guess I should snack a bit during the day .... or not since yesterday was a pretty unfrequent occurrence ...

Had a crappy run yesterday afternoon. I wasn't in any particular in pain but just low on energy ... I usually don't eat trough the day (unless I have done a long ride in the morning) so I'm not sure to why yesterday was so different from my usual days. Accumulated fatigue maybe?

Notes: "Sugar: the bitter truth"

I recently watched two speeches given by Dr Robert Lustig on the role fructose (may?) plays in the on-going obesity epidemic (link, link). IMHO, it's pretty conclusive and does seems to explains some of the paradoxes (see this Gary Taubes talk @ Google) seen with the calories balance dogma.

Here's are the notes I took from the videos:

• Observations
• Atkins and Japanese [Okinawa diet?] diets both eliminate fructose
• All countries which have adopted a USA style diet have the same obesity issue
• The First Law of Thermodynamics in nutrition is stated in an incorrect way: "if you eat it, you must use it or you are going to store it". It should be "if you store it and you expect to burn it, you going to have to eat it" 
• An epidemic of obese 6 months-old means that any attempt to explaining the overall issue, but also explain this. It's not all about diet and exercise
• We are all eating more than before, there is something wrong with our bio-chemical negative system which control our eating:
• +187 kcal/day for men
• +335 kcal/day for women
• +275 kcal/day for teens
• We are not eating more fat, we are eating more carbs as soft drinks and fruit drinks (1 soda can per day = 15.6 lbs per year of weight gain)
• How come leptin doesn't work to regulate our energy intake?
• What happened?
• Soft drinks consumption is demonstrably (studies) linked to obesity and diabetes (type 2)
• Soft drinks are loaded with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which is sweeter and cheaper than Sucrose (one molecule of Glucose for a molecule of Fructose).
• Fructose and Glucose are NOT the same, however Sucrose and HFCS are the "same": they are both poison. It's not about the calories.
• Excessive consumption of any sugar does lead to health problems
• Trend in fructose consumption (*2 for sucrose):
• pre-WWII (natural) consumption (fruits & veggies): 15 g/day
• 1977 consumption: 37 g/day
• 1994 consumption: 54.7 g/day
• Today teen consumption: 72.8 g/day
• Today consumption per person: 140 lbs/year
•  The "Perfect Storm"
• Drive to make food cheaper (1972)
• Invention of HFCS (1966) which is now in pretty much every processed food
• Call for dietary fat reduction (1982) to reduce heart disease: dietary fat raise LDL -> LDL correlate with cadio vascular disease (CVD) so dietary fat must lead to CVD
• 30 years of nutrition guidelines has been  based on a faulty study (The Seven country)
• To make low-fat food palatable, carbs (either HFC or sucrose) were substituted to fat. Fibre and trans fat were also removed (for a longer shelf life of the products)
• Sugar hides:
• salty (chew mix, honey roasted peanuts ...)
• sour (German wines, Lemonade ...)
• umami (sweet & sour pork ...)
• bitter (milk chocolate ...)
• What is the issue?
• Fructose is NOT Glucose
• Fructose (which is very sweet) is 7 times more likely than Glucose (which is not very sweet) to form Advanced Glycation end-products
• Fructose makes you eat more:
• doesn't suppress the hunger hormone (Ghrelin)
• acute usage doesn't stimulate insulin or leptin
• Hepatic fructose metabolism is different from glucose's
• Chronic fructose exposure promotes the Metabolic Syndrome
• How the liver deal with:
• 120 kcal of glucose (2 slices of white bread, 1/4 cup of white rice)
• 80% of it will be used by the body as all cells use glucose as glycogen
• 20% of it will be metabolised, resulting in 1 kcal of VLDL and insulin release which will stop the eating 
• 120 kcal of ethanol (which is fermented sugar)
• 20% of it is absorbed by the intestine
• 80% is metabolized resulting in VLDL (no glycogen)
• 120 kcal of sucrose (1 glass of Orange Juice)
• 30% of the fructose end-up as fat (no glycogen)
• metabolising will lead to:
• habituation, if not addiction
• fetus insulin resistance
• hypertension
• myocardial infarction
• dyslipidemia
• pancreatitis
• obsesity
• hepatic dysfunction
• What can be done?
• Lifestyle intervention
• get ride of all sugared liquids
• eat your carbs with fibre
• wait 20 minutes for second portion
• increased physical activities
• Why is exercise important to obesity (since exercising doesn't burn enough calories)?
• improve skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity
• reduce stress and resultant cortisol release
• makes TCA cycle run faster and detoxifies fructose, improving hepatic insulin sensitivity
• Why is fibre important in obesity?
• where-ever there is fructose in nature, there is more fibre (fruits are okay to eat; only grapes have more sugar than fibre)
• reduces rate of intestinal carbs absorption, reducing insulin response
• increases speed of intestinal transit (or contents to ileum)
• induces satiety
• inhibits absorption of some free fatty acids to the colon; which suppress insulin
• Why is the government not doing anything?
• FDA only deal with acute toxin (e.g. tobacco, alcohol ...), so it won't regulate
• USDA doesn't want to hear about it for economical/political raisons (food exports)
• Summary
• Fructose (in sucrose or HFCS) consumption has increased over the past 30 years, coinciding with obesity epidemic
• A calorie is not a calorie and fructose is not glucose
• You are not what you eat; you are what you do with what you eat
• hepatic fructose metabolism leads to all the manifestation of the metabolic syndrome
• fructose ingestion interferes with obesity intervention
• fructose is a chronic hepatotoxin ("alcohol without the buzz")

The saddest part of the whole Lance Armstrong vs. USADA thing, is that it cheapen (maybe discredit is a more accurate term here ...) his most of the pro-cyclists achievements of that time. Did they cheat? Most likely, but that only allowed them to take their performances a little beyond what they were already capable off (that 2% Jonathan Vaughters talked about a couple of weeks ago) ... They still had to bust their ass off on a bicycle (on and off season) to get to the top of a race like the Tour de France.

Busy Monday #2

I went to my now usual Monday long ride this morning (on my way to work). The weather forecast was a little worrisome, but it was actually rather nice (14C, mostly sunny). Since some rain is (or was) forecasted for later during the week, I really wanted to get that ride done before my next long ride this coming Sunday:

So, instead of making my now standard energy drink, I went with a lighter version of it:

• 2 bags of Jasmin Green Tea brewed in 800 ml of filtered water
• 2 tablespoons of Agave Syrup
• 1.5 scoop of Maltodextrin (so about 120 kcal of Carbs)

Since I had (over)eat enough Sunday (it was a day off), I didn't feel like I really needed the extra calories punch in my drink not the electrolytes (since it wasn't going to be too hot). For nutrition, I packed some leftover home-made Larabar from our Saturday run. My hydration/nutrition plan was the following:

• Couple of sips of drink every 20 km
• One Larabar every hour

Worked pretty good as far as I can tell, except for the fact that the bars are kind of hard to chew and swallow while in aero position (in which I was for most of the ride, without much pain). I probably should cut them smaller so that I can chew and breath with more ease ;-)

To finish-off the day, I did an easy 8k run (with da wife). Felt pretty good doing it. Which I guess is a good thing ...

Run to Stanley Park (28k)

So this morning we ran to Stanley Park (again) but this time pushed to 28km. Since I followed loosely the nutrition plan I had described yesterday I felt pretty energized for most of it, even-though I totally forgot to drink the espresso two hours before, doh ... Physically, I didn't feel any pain to my calf (I was wearing compressing band on both) and only my knees were somewhat sore at times.

Here's the run details on Strava:

During the run, I made a couple of adjustment to the nutrition plan just so it'll be easier to keep track of when I should be drinking or eating:

• Every 5 km, I drank (probably 100ml each time)
• Every 45 minutes, I had one of the Larabar
• One kilometre before the end, I had a handful of dates

While my energy level was never low, I could definitely feel a slight boost starting 10 (or so) minutes after ingesting the energy bars. The dates didn't seems to do much of anything that late in the run, however I did felt some stomach discomfort later on.

My GPS watch contraption didn't cause much trouble during the long run. It did felt a little heavy on the wrist though ... I'm not sure this is the best solution, obviously.