7:30 a.m. 8 miles recovery run. Everything felt tickety-boo.
As part of 'The Bam Method' ('a' holistic and long term approach to optimizing 'my' marathon performance) I investigated and studied many areas. One of the things I found fascinating was the whole area of nutrition and blood. Here's the first part of an article that I discovered about blood - I've edited the article:
Blood bathes our cells in nutrients 24/7. Blood not only brings nutrients to our cells, it flushes out metabolic waste. It's the superhighway of nutrition and detoxification that reaches into (virtually) every organ and cell in our bodies. A typical human red blood cell survives about 4-5 months. We are constantly producing new blood and releasing it into the bloodstream to do important work: the work of carrying nutrients, hormones, water, chemical messages and information to all the nooks and crannies.
Blood is primarily made of three things: red blood cells (oxygen carriers), white blood cells (immune function) and blood plasma (a liquid solution that carries everything else). When more red blood cells are needed, we automatically generate new ones. Naturally, we must create those red blood cells using the materials that are available: materials that are circulating in our blood at the time. So the blood cells we make TODAY, which circulate throughout our bodies for the next four months, are made out of the materials being carried in our blood right now. So what's in our blood right now?
Our blood largely comprises the things we ate, drank and absorbed over the last several months. So if we ate a McDonald's cheeseburger today and chased it with a large Coke, the blood cells our body generates today are going to be made, in part, of materials from that cheeseburger and Coke - lovely stuff. If we think about where cheeseburgers really come from - hormone-injected animals, the ammonia-injected beef parts, the refined white flour in the bun, the processed cheese "food" substances, and so on, it's not exactly the kind of thing we want coursing through our veins for the next few months, especially if we're trying to break our marathon PR. Caveat – if my memory serves me correctly, McDonald's 'stuff' tastes darn good!
If, on the other hand, we spent the last several days consuming fresh living juices, superfoods and clean, energized water, then guess what our new blood is going to be made of? It will be super blood, energized with the elements and vibes of all the good stuff we've consumed.
Bad blood leads to bad health. It leads to angry, moody mental function and chronic disease. But good blood results in happy, healthy outcomes. Good blood improves your sleep, your sex, your moods and cognitive function. Good blood keeps your body free from cancer, youthful, energized and actively healing itself at multiple levels. Good blood is essential to good running. Once you understand all this, it only seems natural to work consciously towards creating good blood every single day. Tomorrow, I might tell you how to improve your blood...
6:00 p.m. 6 miles easy. Felt tired at the start of the run, but soon got going and feeling better. I think with the mixture of workouts and miles, 2x8 miles on my recovery days might be a tad too taxing at the moment. I think an 8 followed by a 6 will work better until I get used to the wokouts. | 