250s / diet

Another perfect day in Sewanee, sunny, cool, crisp, dry, low to mid 60ºs, light NW wind.  I wanted to do relaxed and near race pace long sprints today and decided to do some 250s from the 400m start.  The track was covered in places by tents set up for graduation, but lane 4 was fortunately free.  I specifically ran these conservatively and relaxed.   I took a generous rest in between, almost full recovery.  All were 3 step rolling starts except the last one.

Hoka trainers on

stretches, drills, 2x100, bands

2 x 50m

250m - 34.12 (12.78, 14.1, 7.24 / 26.88, 7.24)

250m - 34.34 (12.94, 14.19, 7.21 / 27.13, 7.21)

250m - 34.26 (12.94, 14.00, 7.32 / 26.94, 7.32)

100m on the turn from lane 1 - 12.91

200m from the line - 27.37

I like 250s.  My first time doing them.  They are a good pre race workout because unlike 300m event runs, they aren't so tiring that I can do 3 of them without major fatigue.  

At race pace, 34 or just under would be a good target.  To get 57.5 that would require a final 150m of 23.5.  That would be 7.5 250-300m, then 16 on the last 100m. 

Race Saturday

Unfortunately, I have to leave real early to get to Brentwood for the meet.  The track looks good, but it's a 6 lane track and they put me in lane 1 for the 200m.  I may not run the 200m.  I'm still a work in progress.  The real season starts on Memorial Day weekend where I will race 2 (maybe 3) weekends in a row.  

Diet

Well, I thought I could get away with eating a lot of eggs but no, my cholesterol test came back high, so I'm ditching the eggs for oat bran.  Eggs are a satisfying, relatively low calorie high protein zero carb food. They have helped me get my body fat to very low levels.  Mistakenly, I thought being at less than 10% body fat and my training would negate the cholesterol, but no.  My bodyweight bottomed out at 135 lbs at one point, but today, was 139.6 lbs after workout.  Eggs are a relatively new food for me to eat in quantity.  I was hard boiling them and eating them 2 or 3 at a time with parmesan cheese, as many as 6/day, 2 doz/ week, too much!   So, I'm switching back to the mostly low/zero fat meat, dairy, fish, and plant based diet that got me to the levels I had before.  Niacin, raw garlic, ginger, etc... Even at best in recent years, I've been borderline high, around 200 total cholesterol, which is hereditary / genetic.  But, I know what to do to get back to where I was.  Not particularly worried since I had a calcium CT heart scan that yielded a ZERO score - zero plaque.  Fortunately, the local grocery has excellent quality low fat organic chicken, organic skim milk.  No more rotisserie chicken, toast and butter, eggs and cheese... unfortunately.   Still haven't eaten beef or pork in over 30 yrs.  I'm going to retest in 4 months.  If I'm still high (which I doubt), I'll have a more detailed CTA heart scan to see if there are any issues.   If there are, I may consider a low dose statin, but I doubt it.  

A close friend of mine was on the heavy animal fat 'keto diet' and he suddenly started having heart problems, ended up in the hospital and is now on statin drugs for life, he's only 51.  Problem is, he never knew he had a problem because he never went to a Dr.  It was only an emergency heart arrhythmia that put him in the hospital that he found out.  Keto diets are problematic in my opinion... all that animal fat.   My sister in law is 5'3" 105 lbs, very fit and had a cholesterol of over 400!  You can't escape your genes.  The liver produces cholesterol, and it's not all from diet.  Fasting will actually raise your cholesterol, and I do intermittent fasting, so that may have contributed.