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Newsletter Archives: December 1999 Don't ever underestimate the inspirational value of a PowerBar and a cup of coffee. In overwhelming numbers, runners are traveling to participate in events and retreats. I've been taking running trips for almost four decades and find them to be the best way to energize my life‹as well as my running. Let me use as my example my most recent running adventure: to the original marathon in Greece. I was able to put my finger into the carved letters on the acropolis of a prayer that a fellow human being wrote into the stone, about 5000 years ago. No amount of reading and studying can give you a feeling for history as walking the same walks as Plato and Phidippides. I learned that the ancient Greeks received their news and communications from a group of career distance runners, the messengers. They could literally run messages faster than horses because of the terrain and because of the fact that men have better endurance capacity than horses. To run on the same fields as the ancient athletes was a thrill beyond words. The starting block stones are there for you to practice starts, as the athletes did on that field almost 3000 years ago. Near our hotel, in a seaside resort town south of Athens, are trails that Phidippides and his fellows could have run, overlooking the Aegean, with an abandoned lookout post on top, giving a vista of 40 miles of coastline and shipping. While running, it was easy to imagine how the messenger lookouts of 490 BC scanned the horizon for the site they feared most, an armada of ships from Persia. The Greeks were the first civilization which appreciated sport and fitness as an important activity for itself. So the ancient Olympics motto states that it doesn't matter so much that you win or lose but that you take part. Now we know of the endorphins, attitude boosts, and almost unlimited physical and psychological health benefits of running. You'll enhance your experience if you travel with a group of fellow runners. The runs together, the swapping of stories, and the sharing of new experiences in a different city will add even more positive benefits to your experience. So whether you travel to the next town, state or country, you'll find an opportunity to come back more inspired and with an expanded appreciation for your running addiction.  The Athlete's Kitchen "In the winter, I take 500 milligrams of vitamin C, but in the summer, I just eat lots of fresh fruits." ."I don't take vitamin C pills; I drink lots of orange juice." "I don't trust the quality of today's food, so I supplement my diet with vitamin C for health insurance." Active, health-conscious people commonly wonder if they should supplement their diets with extra vitamin C. Touted as a health protector, vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid) has many functions in the body. It is an antioxidant that protects cells from being damaged. It boosts immunity, helps with wound healing, and increases the absorption of iron from vegetables and grains. As humans, we can't make vitamin C, so we have to get it through our diets. The question arises: How much vitamin C do we need? The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for healthy, nonsmoking adults (including athletes) is 60 milligrams per day of vitamin C. This number was derived with the goal of preventing the deficiency disease scurvy. Given that 10 mg/day eliminates deficiency symptoms, the RDA actually includes a large safety margin. People who consistently eat the RDA have body stores of about 900 mg C, enough to prevent scurvy for four weeks if they were to consume no C during that time. You can survive without getting C every day. The 1989 RDA's are currently being revised with the goal of not just preventing deficiency diseases but rather of preventing chronic diseases such as cancer, cataracts and heart disease. In an article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (June, 1999), the authors review a plethora of Vitamin C research (238 studies, to be exact) with supplementation from 60 to 6000 mg C. They suggest 120 milligrams C per day as an appropriate intake to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, and 200 mg/day may reduce the risk of cataracts. This is the amount needed to saturate body tissues with C; eye lens tissue requires more C than other tissues. Active people can easily consume this amount, plus more, through their diet. For example, 12 to 16 ounces of orange juice provides 120 to 200 milligrams Cenough to saturate your body tissues and protect your health. In this age of highly fortified foods, many athletes consume far more vitamin C than they realize--even if they eat too few fruits and vegetables. For example, if you eat some Froot Loops (1.5 cups; 90 mg C), a PowerBar (60 mg), and a package of Skittles (30 mg), you'll consume 180 milligrams of Cand that's with no fruits or veggies! Pills vs Food You certainly can't go wrong with eating the recommended 5+ servings per day of fruits and veggies. All public health organizations, to date, suggest generous servings of fruits and vegetables (rather than pills) to optimize health. Some athletes have little trust in today's food supply and question the nutritional value of the fruits and vegetables available in supermarkets. For example, they may fail to understand a tomato plant does not grow vitamin C-poor fruit; it simply yields fewer tomatoes. Nor do they understand cooking destroys only some C; a half-cup of cooked broccoli offers about 60 mg. C; when raw, it offers one-third more, about 80 milligrams. Food works! The list below highlights some popular sports foods that can help
you reach the goal of 120 to 200 mg C per day without supplements.
Nancy Clark, MS, RD is nutrition counselor at Boston-area's SportsMedicine Brookline and author of Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 2nd Edition. To order this best-selling book, send $20 to Sports Nutrition Materials, 830 Boylston, St #205, Brookline MA 02467 or visit http://www.nancyclarkrd.com. By using muscles in different ways‹from the beginning‹your legs keep their bounce as they conserve resources Walk breaks keep you from using up your resources early. By alternating the exertion level and the way you're using your running muscles, these prime movers have a chance to recover before they accumulate fatigue. On each successive walk, most or all of the fatigue is erased, bestowing strength at the end. This reduces the damage to the muscle dramatically, allowing you to carry on your life activities even after a marathon. Walk breaks force you to slow down early in the run so that you don't start too fast. This reduction of the intensity of muscle use from the beginning, conserves your energy, fluids, and muscle capacity. On each walk break, the running muscles make internal adaptations which give you the option to finish under control, increase the pace, or go even further. When a muscle group, such as your calf, is used continuously step by step, it fatigues relatively soon. The weak areas get overused and force you to slow down later or scream at you in pain afterward. By shifting back and forth between walking and running muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles, increasing your overall performance capacity. For veteran marathoners, this is often the difference between achieving a time goalŠor not. Walk breaks will significantly speed up recovery because there is less damage to repair. The early walk breaks erase fatigue, and the later walk breaks will reduce or eliminate over-use muscle breakdown. Walk breaks can eliminate injury Walk breaks taken early in the run keep the muscles strong and resilient enough so that the legs can move with strength and efficiency throughout. This will significantly reduce or eliminate the excess stress around the knees, ankles, feet, etc. which produces injury. The little "back up" muscle groups can stay in reserve, and fine-tune the running motion after fatigue sets in. "I tried to train for three marathons without walk breaks and became injured each time. Walk breaks allowed me to get to the starting line, and then to the marathon finish lineŠŠinjury free! Injury of the Month: Overeating At this time of year, there are goodies galore available nearly everywhere you look. We all really know better than to overindulge, but good sense doesn't necessarily rule here. Following are a few strategies which might help you enjoy the holiday fare without paying too high a penalty:
According to the U.S. Surgeon General's report, you are more likely to keep doing physical activities if you:
In other words, you are more likely to stick with your exercises if you set yourself up to succeed from the start. You can help do that by choosing realistic goals, learning to do the exercises correctly and safely, and charting your progress to see your improvement. Take a minute to think carefully about the points in this list before you start planning your exercises and activities. From Exercise: A Guide from the National Institute on Aging, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Publication No. NIH 98-4258, http://www.nih.gov/nia
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