Thats exactly how an evening of performance nutrition and tasty meal ideas began for me last night when I had the opportunity to attend the trial run of a nutrition and cooking class being put together by Noa Deutsch (PT Performance Training) and Hayley Resenberg (Nourish Garden Bistro).

Noa and Hayley share a love for good quality ingredients and a belief that proper nutrition and a balanced approach can lead to a healthier life and better performance. They have taken this philosophy (also called a fact) and designed a class to teach even the most useless athletes (ie. ME) how to take better care of themselves and get their food working for them.

These two women both have a unique and complementary set of skills that lead to a very informative evening!

Noa, a sports nutritionist currently working on her first cookbook Fueling Endurance Performance, has condensed her vast (and sometimes a little scary) store of nutritional knowledge into an easy tounderstand presentation. In one short evening she clears up many of the most common problems faced by athletes of any discipline. How much should I eat? What should I eat? Carb? Protein? Fat? Noa provides a simple to understand set of guidelines that will help any athlete make the most out of their time in the kitchen!

In two short years in Victoria Hayley has made quite the splash in the foodie community.

After Nourish opened last year it quickly joined the ranks of the top spots in Vic for a healthy, local, fresh, and most defiantly TASTY meal. Bringing a whole new level to eating local with most of her greens and herbs coming right from the gardens out the back door, Hayley’s passion for what she is doing comes across in the first five seconds of talking to her. With a few simple ingredients and some very innovative preparations (seriously take the class just for the cool prep ideas!) she shows us how preparing tasty dishes can be fast and easy.

Overall the course is a fantastic way to get good information on nutrition and help short though all the fad diets and health trends that will crash your computer if you make the mistake of goggling. Thinking of going Raw? Vegan? Gluten free? Dairy free? or even if you heard it would be a great idea to survive purely off bananas and beet juice. Noa and Hayley are happy to answer any questions you have and will provide a great meal to boot. If you are an athlete no matter what your disipline you would be well served to check out this class!

For more in for Email Noa or Hayley for info!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well you can sleep again! Here I am, alive and well, getting ready for yet another wonderful adventure.

I won’t drag on and on with everything I have been up to for the last few month but I thought I would get you caught up with the highlights. To keep it simple lets categorize things:

School:

September to December marked my last (and hardest) semester at UVic. In the last year of the BEd degree, we take our “professional” year, this consists of one semester of a set program of eight classes followed by a four month practicum in a school. The class work wasn’t to hard but there was a lot of it and it involved a ton of group work, which makes scheduling a challenge.

My classes ended well, I didn’t do as well as I had hoped in a couple of them but overall I feel like I ended on a good note. I had a lot of mixed feelings surrounding my last semester. On one hand I have had some of the best times of my life at UVic and met some of the most meaningful friends of my life. On the other hand it has taken me seven years to get my undergrad and I am ready to get going on the next stage of my life.

Now, my focus for the next four months is doing a good job during my practicum and getting my certification as a teacher. I am really excited to be getting the opportunity to spend some time out in the schools and build my experience as a teacher. I am interested to see what teaching full time will be like, I have already had so many wonderful experiences in the classroom I am sure it will be exciting.

Training:

My last post was letting everyone in on my clean bill of health as of my last bone scan. Since then I have slowly been building my training back up to normal and adding running back into the mix. I am happy to report that things are going well so far and I am looking forward to getting some races in this season.

My training load has been limited slightly by my heavier than normal school mode, but I have been able to maintain a solid schedule. I am especially happy with how my swimming has been progressing. I feel like I am finally starting to get this whole “stroke” thing!

Going in to the next few months I will need to be aware of my energy levels as I try to balance my practicum and my training. I am preparing myself for a hard four months, but as long as I stay on top of things I thing I will be able to handle it!

Personal Life:

One of the best aspects of my life right now! As I also eluded to in my last post, I have met a wonderful girl who I have been seeing for the last few months, and I couldn’t be happier. It hasn’t been the easiest of relationships, seeing as I live in Victoria and she is in Langley, but I realize that we still have it better than most long distance couples. Also, it often works out very well seeing as spending a couple hours on the ferry a week can lead to some serious productivity!

I took the Christmas and New years excuse to take some time reconnect with my social side. I spent a couple days up in Whistler skiing with my brother and having Christmas with my Dads side of the family. After that it was off to Alberta for a big family Vacation with my Mom’s side. I spent my time skiing with my little cousins (4 and 6, cutest kids in the world!) and playing some pretty epic games of Taboo!

Overall:

I am feeling really good about everything right now!

I am looking forward to the next few months of work and training. I am planning on getting back in to the blog, and I have some interesting ideas for posts (just a warning, a lot of them are teaching related and may be heavy on opinions…)

All my best!!

A couple weeks ago I got a new bone scan on my shin and waited with baited breath for a five days for the results. When the time came to see the doc I could hardly take sitting in the waiting room. I had some pretty dark thoughts going though my head and had spent the night before working myself up for bad news (as my beautiful Girlfriend can attest to, so patient with me ).

My negativity was unwarranted though and I am happy to report I am the proud owner of two healthy shin bones! Thats right after 10 long months I have a clean bill of health and permission to return to a full training program!

I not totally back yet, the road to Ironman will be a long one. Over the next couple weeks I will be returning to a full bike program before starting on a very slow return to running.

For now I am doing some very interesting work to take care of some lingering psycho-somatic pain, so expect a blog on that soon!

Coach: So how is the (insert body part) feeling?

Athlete:

Obviously I’m taking this a little far, but the reality may not be far off.

The point?

Athletes are often of the opinion that they need to push through pain in order to be successful. This attitude can often lead to injuries becoming much worse before they are dealt with.

For coaches this means that you should be aware of how your athlete is feeling. This goes beyond simple verbal checkins. You should be aware to physical signs of injury and be prepared to pull an athlete out of a session, even against that athlete’s wishes.

This is just a brief, slightly comical, look at one of the biggest issues in a coach/athlete relationship. Developing this relationship is vital so you understand each other and can work together effectively.

It was midnight and there was a knock at the door…
I stopped reading the portfolios, they were becoming a bore
The self-evaluations made no sense at all
Written by kids with brains a wee bit too small
Their grades were low, mediocre at best
Proof that they had not studied for the tests
But still, I had to give them an assessment
To show that I actually valued their investment
I did not look forward to reporting their scores
Because the next day at school I would have parents at my door
I knew that a student centred conference would be coming
And for me, a PE teacher, I would go running
To evade the awkwardness that would follow
From telling parents that their child is as smart as a swallow
Still, in life, I could never ask for anything more
So I got up from my desk and answered the knock at the door.

courtesy of Jonny Lee (aka William S. sorry Jonny!)

Now anyone who knows me will attest to my lack of belief in the classically held beliefs surrounding stretching ie. stretching before and after workouts will help with injury prevention and improve performance. There is simply no evidence to support those beliefs and there is actually quite a bit to suggest stretching improperly can increase risk of injury and actually lead to a performance determinant, especially in power based sports.

That being said stretching can play a vital role when an athlete is dealing with a specific mobility problem or in a sport that requires a large range of motion such as gymnastics or dance. In my case I have a mobility issue in my legs that has led to a misalignment of my knees and had caused (or contributed to many of the problems I am now dealing with.

Now that my 2010 racing season has come to an end, I can focus completely on fixing the problems I had this year and coming back stronger next year. This means that the standard swim/bike/run aspects of my training have taken a back seat and the major focus of my time is stretching and yoga. I am working closely with my team of support personnel including my physio, massage therapist, acupuncturist, coach, and yoga instructor (thats the new one!) to develop a program that will address my specific needs.

The program incorporates a balance of Iyengar yoga and physio exercises, combined with regular acupuncture and massage to try and bring my knees back in to proper alignment. Not the most traditional approach but it seems to be working, and it leads to some very interesting scenes at my place (as you can see in the pic)!

So if you are having problems that just don’t seem to go away. Make sure your doctor or physio is looking at the underlying causes and not just the immediate symptoms. It may be a long process but solving mobility problems early can lead to a much happier future!

Some of the member of the 2010 PT Performance team

For many people training on their own works for them, they enjoy the solitude of long bikes or the tranquility of early morning runs. Some people even argue that because they are alone on race day they should be alone during training. I used to be a big supporter of individual training. I loved the freedom of setting my own schedule and choosing my own routes. That is, until I discovered the wonderful world of team training.

Don’t get me wrong, I still do a lot of solo efforts and there are few better feelings than running solo around the lakes in the morning just as the sun is coming over the horizon and the mist is still hanging in the air. I have been lucky enough though, to become associated with a number of fantastic athletes in Victoria, and we work together to help each other meet our goals.

My conversion to the team style of training can be attributed to one person, our coach Noa. I first met Noa just over a year ago, when I really had no idea where I wanted to go in this sport, or what was even possible. I was simply looking for a coach to help me design a program that would take me to my first Ironman. She immediately saw a potential in me that I had no idea existed (partly because the goal time I had set for myself just happened to be TriCan’s international standard…little did I know).

As my relationship with Noa grew and I committed myself to working towards some pretty lofty goals, she invited me to be part of the founding members of the PT performance training high performance team. Quite simply, a group of like-minded people who are prepared to work as hard as they can to reach their goals.

The benefits of training with a team are endless. By committing to a program there is a buy in, not only from the athlete, but also from the coach. This creates a bond that transcends a simple working relationship and has the potential to accomplish great things. When that relationship is extended to a group of people all with similar goal and a strong work ethic, that potential becomes a driving force with the power of a freight train.

When you are training with a team they learn what you are capable of and what they can ask of you, sometimes even better than you know yourself. They are the ones that will push you to the top of the hill when your legs are screaming for you to stop, and they will force you to negative split that last 100m of the 5km swim workout.

PT Campers celebrate a good workout

But how is that different than any training partner? Everyone has a masters club for swimming, or the Saturday group ride with a local shop, and these are great for breaking up the normal training week. It becomes a team when you are invested in how those other people are doing. I feel almost as much pride and accomplishment from my teammates successes as my own, and hurt with them when they fail. We go to each other’s races as a team because we have all had a hand in preparing for that race.

I have spent this season struggling with injuries, and have failed to meet every single goal that I had originally set out for myself. Despite that I can still look back on 2010 with a feeling of accomplishment because my coach and my teammates helped me to find new goals that worked around my injuries. So to Noa and all of my friends, thank you for a great season!

Often, for athletes in individual sports, it is easy to forget the many people that support us while we try to achieve our goals. When you are taking your final step over the finish line the attention is understandably focused on you, but in reality there are probably a number of people that deserve to be taking that step with you.

The most obvious people that come to mind when talking about support are family members. The people that don’t get to choose to love you!

For most athletes, their family represents their primary source of (or lack of) encouragement. I am very lucky in this department. I have a very supportive family in my mom, dad, and brother, as well as an extensive extended family. My parents have always supported every goal I set for myself. All they ask is that I work hard and enjoy what I am doing. In fact when I get too focused on the end result (as happens almost daily) it is often my parents that help focus on the process, not just the outcome!

Time commitment is a reality of training for any sport but for ultra-endurance racing, such as ultra running, or Ironman triathlon, that commitment can be overwhelming. A strong, supportive family to come home to can make all the difference on those long winter training rides, or early morning swim sessions.

Take a moment to think about all the different things your loved ones do to help make your training possible. Maybe it is little things, like kicking you out of bed at 5am, or having coffee waiting for you when you come home. Maybe your wife or husband (girl/boy friend is good too) gives you a massage after long rides. You know that dinner didn’t just magically appear on the table while you were out for your evening run!

I want to take this opportunity to thank my entire family, especially my mom, dad, and brother. Their support means a lot. I hope you all have someone that loves you enough to support you in your goals, and in return show them the appreciation they deserve!

That’s enough for now, but the support network doesn’t end there so check back soon!