Guest Column by: Carolyn K.

The following post is from a Ms. Carolyn K. who, after reading my post on my triathlon experience has offered to write a guest column for my blog. After reading her article I think it is very useful for both those who need to prepare for an up coming extremely physically straining event, as well as any body who works out vigorously daily. Either way, enjoy the article and feel free to comment. 

Healthy Meal Plan for Triathletes in Training

Anyone can tell you that the ideal meal to consume pre or post workout is a healthy one with protein, whole grains, and produce.  But what if you are a serious athlete and training for an upcoming triathlon?  You’ll need a healthy meal plan designed to fuel and repair your body through taxing and strenuous training.  Here are a few guidelines to follow that will help sustain your body while you undertake one of the most taxing challenges in the realm of athletics. 

Post-exercise consumption is important.  The glycogen window is the 30 minutes after a workout, when your muscles are starved for nutrition.  Easy to digest carbohydrates and quickly absorbed protein (whey for example) will help muscles grow rather than breakdown. 

If you’re training 2 times a day, you’ll need to eat a lot to keep up with your energy needs.  Depending upon your lifestyle, shoot for 3 meals and 2 snacks per day or 6 smaller meals spaced throughout the day.  A good rule of thumb for each of the meals is 25% protein, 25% whole grains, 50% fruits and vegetables comprised of 5 different colors.

An example of this would be:

Breakfast:

2 Boiled eggs

½ c. oatmeal with ½ c. blueberries

1 banana

Snack:

1 Orange and veggie sticks with peanut butter

Lunch:

Turkey sandwich on whole grain bread with veggies

Cup of tomato basil or black bean soup

Spinach salad with strawberries and walnuts

Snack:

Protein shake

Dinner:

1 grilled chicken quarter

½ cup cooked, whole grain brown rice or quinoa

Slices of grilled vegetables (2 eggplant, 1 onion, 2 zucchini, 2 red bell pepper)

Watermelon for dessert

This is also an easy dinner to cook in larger portions so you can save it for leftovers and not have to cook every night of the week.  Skinless chicken and sliced veggies make great bases for just about any marinade too, so get creative with different flavors. 

If you find that you’re not getting enough calories, try eating more healthy fats like nuts, avocado, olives and olive oil.  On the flip side if you want to trim down, try low sugar options and using oil sparingly on salads and vegetables.  No matter what you do, it’s about getting the right kind of nutrients into your body, not about denying yourself.  Filling up on healthy things first will take care of your body, so that when you want to indulge a little at least you already have the building blocks in your nutrition working on your muscles.  Try to incorporate a healthy meal plan into your training. It is just as important to reaching your goals as the exercise itself!

Home Sweet Home

After being gone for a week and a half from home it is really amazing how much you miss the loved ones in your life. I mean when you travel across the country and meet many new people that you have never met before is rather mentally exhausting. It is nice to see familiar faces like my mom, dad, and sister. Not to mention my girl friend who I love very much. It was so great to see her again as well. When I touched down in SMX or Santa Maria Airport I just had a huge sense of accomplishment. I felt like I had done something that most people have never done in there entire lives or ever will do in there lives. It is a feeling that I will never forget and a adventure I will never regret.

Sunrise in Arizona

I am sure anyone who has ever traveled across country has experienced jet lag before, whether it be commercially or privately. This is the sunrise in Arizona and the only reason I was able to witness the beauty of the sunrise was because of that jet lag. I know that most people think of it as a nuisance but this time it payed off. I have never seen such a gorgeous sun rise. Not to mention that the couple that we were staying with were the most interesting people I have ever met! Next to my grandfather that is. Both of them had flown around the world and have known some of the most marvelous people that have walked this earth. The gentleman's name was Mark Rehbolz and he was the pilot of the Vickers Vimy in the Vintage air rally that went from Europe to Australia. Not only was Mark Rehbolz the pilot but his copilot was Steve Fosset!

If you do not know who Steve Fosset held 115 world records! Some have been superseded but most still stand. You might ask why he "held" them. He was in a tragic airplane accident in the sierra Nevada mountains. This just shows that when you stop at a family friends house you should always ask about what they have done with there life if the right time shows itself to ask. You might just find out that they have done some amazing things with there lives and could help you with yours.

The First Leg

When you fly from one end of the country to the other you are bound to have problems. Well, when I flew I experienced just that! The Sab Safire, even though it is a beautiful aircraft, is still a vintage airplane and with any "vintage" vehicle it has problems. I myself just acquired a 2002, 1976 BMW which was given to me but cost 3,000 dollars to get it to pass California's smog requirements, but it was worth every penny. I digress, the Sab Safire had battery problems and could not hold a charge. So, we could jump the airplane but could not start it off of the battery power by itself. Not to mention that once you had touched down and the R.P.M. in the motor went down the battery charge dropped so low that the radio would not function! It makes it hard to talk to the tower when you have no radio.

These pictures displayed above are from our first stop at Perry Foley airport where we could not start the airplane. So we had to spend the night and let the battery charge before trying again in the morning. Luckily the airplane did start up again and we were able to continue out of Perry Foley, North Florida and into its neighboring state Alabama.

The Man Who Made it Possible

My Grandfather at eighty two years of age is still able to fly his two airplanes legally. He has his pilots license until it expires in 2012. He is the healthiest and most energetic person I know and he is older than all of them. He was the reason I wanted to go on this trip because if it had been with anybody else I wouldn't have trusted them. He was my guardian on this trip and he made it so I could experience something that most people don't get to experience in there entire lives. Along the way I also learned his life in how he came from Sweden, to Germany, to U.S.A., to India (Where he witnessed the birth of my Mother), back all the way to U.S.A. It is a fascinating story and he was more than happy to tell me about it as if it had just happened a few days ago. He is the reason I want to get my pilots license and he is the one who has inspired me to achieve my dreams and explore the world.

Olympic Triathlon

When you say the word Triathlon you don't exactly think that it sounds too hard. Unlike when you say Marathon, you immediately realize that you are going to have to run a lot to complete a marathon. An Olympic Triathlon consists of a one mile swim, a forty kilometer bike ride, and a 10 kilometer run. Just in case you don't think it takes a lot of time and effort to finish one of these things, forty kilometers is around thirty five miles long and ten kilometers is around seven miles. That is a long ways to go.

In the first picture you see a red circle with an arrow pointing towards it. That is where the beach raps around and you have to run for another kilometer after that to hit the half way point of only the running portion of the triathlon. Then you have to come all of the way back and that is after the swimming and biking. That is only a ten kilometer run when the biking is forty kilometers! A triathlon is a suicide mission that lasted four hours for me to complete. Not to mention the five a' clock wake up in the morning to get to the race on time. In the end, it is worth it because you have completed something most people in this world would never even think of doing. I mean think about it some people don't even travel that far in there entire life and I was able to do it in a day! It was one of the most rewarding experiences in my entire life.

The Beginning or the End?

Imagine that two people wakeup at a random time and they have no idea what time of day it is, or if it is morning or night. These people look to the horizon and see that the sun is barely visible. There are two options, is it rising or is it setting? It sounds almost like, is the glass half full or is it half empty? It applies in almost the same way. Do you look forward into a new tomorrow and to a new beginning, or do you look to the end of the day where the worries of the day, and days to come are just dreams and memories.

Now, the person who thinks that it is morning arises and gets ready for a day of opportunity. The person who thinks that it is night goes back to bed to catch more shut eye before another day full of disappointments begins. Now even if the the person who thought it to be morning was wrong and it was still night, he still would have gotten up and gotten ready and realized, later, that he didn't need to get up for a few more hours and would go back to sleep. The question is even if the person who believed it was night was told it was time for the day to begin would he even get up?