Grumbling gourmet Gordon Ramsay was forced to drop out of the LA Marathon this weekend due to a calf injury. A veteran of many marathons, Ramsay’s actually in pretty good condition and made it through 20K in 1:42… pretty sharp for a 43 year old with a crazy schedule.  He was on track for a chance at a PB.

Ramsay had planned to run April’s London Marathon, so hopefully he can get healthy in a hurry.  Persistent calf issues can be tricky in that they often lead to other problems (achilles injuries, plantar fasciitis, etc), but they can also be worked out pretty quickly.

Organizers of the Lisbon Half Marathon in Portugal were not disappointed by their aspirations of hosting a world record dash, as Eritrean Zersenay Tadese smashed his own PB by 36 seconds en route to both new half marathon (58:22) and 20km world records (55:21).

Take a moment to marvel at that math. He ran 20km at 2:46/km, then accelerated over the final 1.1km (2:45/km) to beat Samuel Wanjiru’s half marathon mark.

The Lisbon Half Marathon, which has arguably become one of the world’s foremost half marathons, has attracted an exciting field to this Sunday’s start. Six of the men have broken 60 minutes, most notably Jaouad Gharib who ran 59:59 in Lisbon last year… and lost by three seconds(to Kenyan great Martin Lel). However it will be Eritrean Zersenay Tadese, he of the 58:59 PB (seventh fastest all-time), who will be paced to a world record attempt.

Jaouad Gharib is probably best known to North Americans for his part in the most BONKERS marathon finish imaginable at Chicago ’07. Check it out:

Nutrition surveys suggest that most master athletes (anyone over 35 yrs of age) do NOT consume sufficient energy to support needs. They have a tendency to supply needed energy AFTER it is needed mainly because they are poor planners with many work, home and sport commitments or they are restricting their intake to achieve too fast a rate of weight loss leading to disordered eating patterns. Training on too few calories can lead to chronic fatigue, poor immune function, loss of muscle mass and decreased performance.

• Practice makes perfect

Your digestive system (as well as your muscles) needs some training to be able to keep you well fueled during your training sessions (and competition). If you want to be able to eat and drink comfortably during your marathon (or longer) event, you need to be practicing that in training. Exercising hard while eating and drinking are not things that your body would normally prefer to do at the same time – but just like skiing fast, eating is a learned skill that requires the same amount of practice and attention to detail. If you plan on consuming 200-300 calories an hour and 1 litre of fluid (for example) during your race you need to practice consuming both of these in your training. Don’t skimp on fluid or calories during training!

• So why do so many of us train on too few calories (and fluids)?

All it takes is getting dropped by the pack when the pace picks up or on a hill climb during training and it’s easy to start thinking that “if I just lost a couple of pounds I would be able to stay with the pack”. The problem with trying to diet while training is that the lack of calories and specific nutrients (especially carbohydrates) wreaks havoc on your muscles and immune system and makes you prone to injury. Taking in far fewer calories than what your body requires may result in the body attacking it’s own tissues, resulting in a a weakened muscular and immune system. Training, building muscle and following a sound diet are the best way to lose weight because it comes off slowly.

• How much do you need to eat?

Track your intake for three days – don’t change anything. If you are able to answer yes to the following questions then you are likely eating enough:

• Can you train without undue fatigue (i.e. you can train well throughout each training session)?
• Are you maintaining your body composition (i.e. not losing muscle or gaining body fat?)
• Do you have a fast recovery between training sessions (i.e. you are energized for each training session)?
• Do you have optimal biological functioning (e.g. regular menstrual periods for women, able to sleep well, concentrate on the tasks at hand, etc)?
• Is there an absence of health & performance issues?

If you answered YES to any of these questions then there are changes you can make to your eating patterns, food choices and timing of food intake to improve your health, your ability to train well and achieve peak performance in your sport.

My words of wisdom for optimal health and performance for master athletes are:

• Get enough sleep
• Eat snacks before and after working out
• Rehydrate, refuel, rest up for recovery
• Train properly
• Keep a sport nutrition checklist

A few years back, before his first NYC marathon, Lance Armstrong appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch as himself, racing in a Celebrity Ironman. Still wearing his bike helmet, Armstrong bobbed along the run course, his arms flailing incongruously in front of him. The sketch cuts back to baffled-looking ESPN commentators played by Jason Sudeikis and Seth Meyers, who intones, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think Lance Armstrong knows how to run.”

Lance on SNL

(Thanks to NBC’s ridiculous practices re. video file sharing outside the US, the only clip I could find of the sketch is part of a homemade montage of SNL sports sketches; Lance’s is third, after Peyton Manning.)

Since I returned to running a few weeks ago, I feel a little like Celebrity Ironman Lance: I’m never sure what to do with my hands when I run. As any new mom will tell you, on the rare occasion you find yourself NOT holding/feeding/carrying/cajoling/diapering/wiping/soothing/swaddling/burping or bathing your new baby, you’ll be frantically running about the house making use of your newly-freed hands to accomplish all of the things you can’t do whilst baby-wielding – sort of like the Tasmanian devil, but clutching a bottle of Febreeze. Anyway, heading out for a run unencumbered has come to feel all kinds of wrong, so to keep my arms from flailing in the air a la Lance, I’ve devised a few other activities to keep them busy. They include, in no particular order:

-Clutching my iPod so tight it jumps songs with almost every footstep

-Waving at stroller-pushing running moms like a lunatic; though since I don’t have my babe with me to identify myself as one of the tribe, most of them look at me like I actually AM a lunatic

-Yanking my too-tight running tights up in the hope that they’ll finally settle somewhere resembling a “waist.” Ah, someday.

-Doing the double-guns finger point and making high-pitched “pew-pew-pew” laser sounds at anyone who passes me – which is, let’s face it, everybody.

-Use my free fingers to count the number of things I’ll have to attend to simultaneously the minute I step back through the door.

At very least, unlike Ricky Bobby doing his first interview in Talledega Nights, I don’t just let them float slowly into mid-air. Thank goodness for that.

Ricky Bobby\’s floating hands