The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [162]
Take, for instance, the Copper Canyon Ultramarathon. It’s held in the Mexican backyard of the near-mythical Tarahumara Indians, who are world-famous for running in sandals called huaraches. The soles consist of little more than one layer of old tire rubber.
It sounds romantic, but the top three runners in 2010 were all wearing shoes. Running barefoot alone does not make you a better runner.
The front of my shins kills me after running. How can I prevent this?
Don’t “dorsiflex,” or pull the toes up towards the knees, while running.
Just imagine doing 21,600 toe raises on each side while sitting down. That’s what will happen if you run 180 total steps per minute for a 4-hour marathon and dorsiflex the entire time.
If this is a habit, pre-fatigue the muscle involved (your tibialis anterior) before training by pushing down on your toes with your hands and dorsiflexing slowly on both sides 30 times.
Is there a simple indicator of bad form I can monitor while running?
If you hear a loud stomp, which is clear during video analysis, you are overengaging your quads and therefore your hip flexors. Aim to be as quiet as possible.
If you watch the end of a 10K and listen to the loudness of footfalls, you’ll find that the first finishers are the quietest, then you have louder runners, followed by the loudest runners, followed by the walkers. The better the runner, the quieter they are.
What should I do if I get fatigued during intervals and my form starts to fail?
If you find your form deteriorating, focus on keeping turn-over (stride rate) high.
What type of diet do you follow while in training?
The biggest problem in endurance sports is, hands down, nutrition. I’ve seen people finish the 135-mile Badwater Ultra in the top 10 who had no business being in the top 10. One of my runners PR’d [set a personal record] in nine hours off of nutrition alone. Most runners subsist on drinking Gatorade and eating gels. The high-carb diet is crap. You need to replenish glycogen, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat pizza and pasta, or cereal and bread, during training.
I follow, and suggest my athletes follow, a Paleolithic or “paleo” diet, which omits starches, grains, and beans. It consists of lean protein, vegetables, a little fruit, a sh** ton of fat and nothing else. The most critical thing a runner or athlete can do is record three days of food logs, which includes weighing their food. This will give you a clear idea of baseline.
Do you take anything in particular post-workout?
This time window is a paleo exception.
I consume GENr8 Vitargo S2, a carbohydrate supplement, which allows me to replenish glycogen faster than any other product I’ve used. Some athletes can consume 1,100 calories an hour of Vitargo, if needed, versus 200–600 calories of carbs from whole foods.
If I’m able to consume Vitargo within ten minutes of my workout, I usually take 70 grams. If more than ten minutes have passed, 35 grams. I’ll also consume Vitargo for the first 3–4 hours of a race, after which I move to whole food.
FORCED EVOLUTION
Brian’s protocol, 12 weeks of murderous intent (but not volume), has worked for nearly everyone who’s done it to the letter.
Did it work for me? Enzymes notwithstanding, was I able to create a 50K ultrarunner out of a huffing and puffing mess?
“It’s important to train the body to process food during movement, and you should practice this during your longer training runs. Aim to consume one gram of carbohydrate (CHO) per hour, per kilogram body weight. For example, if you weigh 110 lbs. (50 kg), you would aim for 50 grams of CHO per hour.… Most bananas are approximately 25 g of CHO, so, in this example, you could eat two bananas per hour. But don’t eat all your carbs at once. Consume 25 g, in this bodyweight example, every 20–30 minutes and gulp water at the same time. Why gulping? Gulping, and the subsequent pressure in the stomach, is an important trigger for gastric emptying. Sipping doesn’t have the same effect.”
4:00 A.M., Daly City, California