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| A Great Read |
The best of that pack is easily Scott Jurek, Eat and Run. I recommend it.
It's not an all time classic like Chris McDougall's Born to Run, but it's really involving and this book is the product of a massive amount of work. The difference with Born to Run is that McDougall is a pure writer who learned to run to get his story, whereas with Jurek, we're back in the land of the non-writing athlete who rests heavily on a ghost writer. But it's head and shoulders better than the vast majority of these sorts of books. It wasn't rushed. It was crafted and crafted again. You enjoy this crazy guy finding himself through a tough upbringing in Minnesota. Good characters, incredible events you won't have heard of, running events of 100 miles ++ and ....... a persuasive case for a vegan diet.
So I've just completed a whole week of being vegan. Can't believe I'm saying that. It's not a political statement. It's just an experiment. Jurek swears that it made him faster, got him a tonne of tone and made recovery a faster process. Interestingly, Rich Roll, who really is a 'zany' Californian character, narrates exactly the same process. He's vegan too. I think Dave Zabriskie is too, in cycling. Actually I just checked that - he's vegan plus salmon, a Pesca-Vegan? He says a small amount of salmon twice a week helps iron absorption.
Vegan means no meat or fish, like a vegetarian, but then add in NO DAIRY AT ALL as well. So even whey protein recovery shakes are off the menu (whey is from dairy). No cheese. No milk. No eggs as well - the theory is that a plant only-based diet is better for you.
I'm going to post a more detailed account of all this on my website richardlofthouse.cc, but so far so good. I think the novelty might wear off, but it's been really fascinating to see the whole universe of food through this new lens. For instance, there's not a single product you can buy at an Upper Crust franchise that's vegan. That means nothing. Or does it? Bad chains rely on mayo in all their sandwiches. They focus on fatty muffins and cakes; in fact just about everything cyclists should try and get away from. You can just about do a packed lunch from Tesco. It means buying low fat hommous and bread rolls. Or relying on fruit more than before. The biggest 'loss' I notice so far is not being to indulge in baked goods like croissants, since they have butter in them. Yet once again I'm up against myself saying: should I be eating that stuff? Not really.
On the plus side there's a vast universe of alternatives and whole foods that are much easier to get hold of than they used to be - world cuisine for want of a better word. So today we had home made felafel (pan fried not deep fried) in corn tortillas with guacamole (Mexican) followed by delicious miso soup (Jap). For dinner, brown fusilli pasta with a nice sause, no parmesan (don't miss it contrary to expectation); massive salad. After my threshold training a smoothie like the following:
Green kale, cavallo nero kale, chia seeds, maca root, sprouted brown rice protein powder, banana, blue berries, mango pieces, spirulina, hemp milk, almonds.
If that sounds expensive it's not. All the fruit is frozen from Asda, while you can buy the powders in large bags that last months.
The one thing is this: you need a very powerful blender to make sense of almonds etc. I bought a Vitamix Aspire for us at Christmas. It spins at 10,000 rpm and commands two HORSEPOWER - and no surprises, it's a cult product among all those flaky west coast ultra people. But I can tell you it is simply incredible.
One example I'll leave you with: you dump some roasted peanuts in it. Turn it up to max. Less than one minute produces the smoothest, creamiest peanut butter ever witnessed this side of Waitrose. And it costs...buttons.
Don't know how the whole 'food and sport' scene will evolve, but we can probably agree that we're a long way away from A Sunday in Hell, where Roger de Vlaeminck is shown in 1976 grubbing down a rare steak as his pre-Raris-Roubaix breakfast. I don't think any of us would do that now. The question is to what extent going in the complete opposite direction can be a benefit. Plant-based warriors or flaky nut jobs? Zabriskie said his best year followed the new diet, having previously been a massive meat eater. He won more TTs that year.
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| 'Transforming the planet one warrior at a time?' | But it costs as much as conventional recovery powders. |
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| Arare are a nice crisp substitute |
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| You feel brilliant after corn tortillas with not-deep-fried felafel |
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| Less than one minute to make super-smooth peanut butter in a Vitamix Aspire |
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