Fast Running Blog

There is a new cookbook out there with recipes being submitted by many top runners.

I don't know about the quality of the recipes, but I recommend the book for two reasons. First, all of the profits go to Ryan Shay and Alicia Craig funds. Second, the book was compiled by Alison Wade. You may not recognize the name, but she was one of the original running bloggers. Her blog inspired me to start my defunct blog about 2 1/2 years ago. Then my blog at least partially inspired Sasha to start this blogging site. Now you are here.

check it out here   http://www.lulu.com/content/2392159

Oops, just noticed that this was already posted in the announcement section.

Actually Dallen's blog was the main inspiration behind the Fast Running Blog. I already had a training log going, and it never occurred to me that with a little bit of work I could use it to share my training with everybody until I saw Dallen's (incidentally while perusing the list of referrer URLs in my web access log). The side effect of the work was that others could do it as well.

I got my cookbook delivered last Saturday, unexplicably only 5 days after I placed my order, and that included actually printing the copy! I couldn't believe it got to London so quickly, until I saw the sender's address - it looks like lulu.com has some facility in Hammersmith, London.

I haven't tried any recipes yet, but I can say that the book is done very professionally, and I couldn't find any typos or mistakes at the first glance. Alison really did a great job. The pictures are great, probably from her own archives as she is a professional photographer as well. Some recipes look very healthy, but several had butter as the main ingredient - I know I'm not going to try those. I need to pick some simple recipes to try - I'm not a good cook (or, I should say, not a cook at all) and recipes with more 5 ingredients throw me into the state of panic :).

Less than ideal diet affects the following:

* Ability to maintain speed with aging
* Ability to run injury free
* Ability to hold pace at the end of a marathon

It does not affect the base speed (Quality X) that you start out with. A trained young guy that eats junk with a lot of in-born Quality X in all distances up to half-marathon will demolish anybody with less Quality X regardless of how well they eat or train. Following his diet, though, will not help them catch up.

My point is - do not follow the diet of an elite runner in his 20s regardless of how fast he is. Follow the diet of somebody in his 40s that maxed out in his 20s and is still that fast and injury free, even if his times are not spectacular.