Upping the Ante

When I started my journey in the world of running I was somewhere in the vicinity of 90kg. I’m not really sure how much I weighed as we didn’t own a set of scales.

Not quite my heaviest

When I realised I couldn’t even run the 200m to our property gate without stopping for fear of dying I knew I had to do something. On the recommendation of some friends I joined Michelle Bridges “12 Week Body Transformation”. With the combination of a very low calorie diet and a high intensity program of cardio and weights I quickly lost weight, a lot of weight. Unfortunately though I was of little use to anyone after most sessions as I suffered from severe exhaustion as a result of so few calories and a body adjusting to, what seemed at times, the punishment of exercise. I also took the increased activity as an excuse to reward myself with alcohol. My youngest had now weaned, my partner worked away all week and I was depriving myself of the thing that I used to deal with my emotions – food, so alcohol took its place and then some.

Not the healthiest existence, but from the outside it looked like I was getting on top of my weight and moving more, so what did that matter.

Once the 12WBT finished, I was left to my own devices. The alcoholism stayed, but I at least realised that the way I was eating was not sustainable. The biggest blessing was that over the course of the 12 weeks I had discovered that I loved running.

Without the money to continue with the Michelle Bridges plan, I turned to friends who knew about nutrition and running. My running progressed and I began to run farther and discovered trail running and races. My nutrition jumped around, I did strict paleo, Low Carb/High Fat and then settled on a cobbled together diet from what I read in books, internet articles and various sporting websites.

At my lowest weight, some 30kg lighter than when I started, I was faster than I have ever been but I don’t think I was truly healthy. I looked gaunt, I was slow to recover after big days and my drinking was now pushing over into my daily life.

My drink of choice – vodka lime and soda followed by red wine

Events were an excuse to drink as much as my body could handle, I would fast to increase the impact of the alcohol and I would think nothing of planning a 30min drive with the kids just to pick up a bottle of wine and vodka. Its not something I’m proud of, but it is my story.

My lightest but definitely not healthy

Around this time I started a dialogue with some close friends. I knew my drinking was unhealthy but didn’t know how I could unravel myself from it. It was also around this time I found my coach. The regular routine of running was a comfort. The drinking however, continued. It took me over a year of attempts to get alcohol out of my life. In that time I learned that I cannot moderate myself with alcohol and I also learned how much good friends can help you and be there for you, when you need them.

During the process of eliminating alcohol from my life, I used food and drink (milo) as a substitute. I figured these substitutes were a lesser evil than alcohol. At the end of the Coastal High 50 in 2015 a friend made a comment about me drinking chocolate milk while everyone else wandered the field with beer in hand. My reply “Yep, thats how I roll!”.

Mmmmm – chocolate milk!

Of course, like everything, chocolate milk is great in moderation, something I don’t seem to do well. So I again jumped back into the world of online diets, downloading programs that would work for awhile but didn’t seem all that sustainable. By now I had a good basic knowledge of food, nutrition and fuelling, but felt I was missing key elements. I trained for and ran my first 100k and another 50k. Meanwhile my weight slowly increased, I tried to remember that fuelling my body was important and that starving myself for the sake of decreasing my weight would likely be detrimental, but in the back of my mind I wanted to be better and fitter and more and I knew my nutrition played a part.

After my last 50k, I spent most of my recovery time trying to work out where I was going wrong. Why was I gaining weight? I was also reading a lot on running (as you do) and there is that whole thing of the less you have to carry the faster you get, to a point. As anyone who follows me knows, I’ll take any increase in speed I can get.

During a recent race

So, I talked through my thoughts with my hubby. He was, of course, worried about me going back to my previous unhealthy weight and also about the toll it would take on my training, as I had just started training for my second 100k race. He suggested a nutritionist or dietician might help, something I had talked about before. My thought processes about getting professional help for my diet were sadly similar to what I went through with getting a coach. It seemed somewhat indulgent, plus isn’t that something only elite athletes need and do? I sat with the idea for awhile and after another few weeks of no shift in weight and feeling like I was doing everything I possibly could to improve my performance, I approached my running coach for his thoughts and also contacted my strength coach to see if he could help. We decided it couldn’t hurt.

A few weeks later I saw a dietician recommended by my strength coach. I prepared myself to be told that I had to completely change what I was doing to get results. I also felt really nervous, it feels like this is the last little thing I can do to influence my running. It probably seems silly to those looking in that I go to such lengths, particularly when I’m nowhere near the front of the pack. It really is hard to explain why I do expend so much energy on trail and ultra running. Maybe its just that it brings me such joy, I feel driven and compelled to do everything I can to be the best I can be, even if that ends up being mediocre.

So, it turns out I was mostly on the money with my nutrition. Working with how I eat everyday, the dietician moved around a few elements to aid recovery, reduced some key foods and increased others to give me the balance she feels I need. I left feeling excited that I could do what I need without becoming unhealthy again but also nervous.

Its scary when you feel like you’re truly putting everything you can into it when you toe the line, but I figure I only get this life so I may as well live it the best that I can. So, I am upping the ante. I am taking on Northburn 100k in 7 weeks and I hope to be the absolute best athlete I can be by the time it rolls around. I am ridiculously excited, as always, and very nervous, but feel I am truly covering all the bases that I can think of this time round and thats the best I can do.

Doing what I love