Dr. Sears was interviewed by Dave Young from CF Radio weekend edition.

I am listening now so I can't comment but it has to do with eating for performance and diet strategies.

Here are a couple links. Or just look for www.crossfitradio.com

http://library.crossfit.com/free/au...090530.mp3

http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/06...090328.tpl

Matt

Oh, I bet PL Matt would love to listen to that!

Will have to check it out later, my work computer has no speakers :-(

I don't think PL Matt would have been impressed. I was surprised that the athlete discussion was about endurance or marathon type athletes. I was hoping for some discussion about strength training nutrional requirements. I will have to listen again I was interupted twice and was slightly distracted.

He did address the ATP / fat for energy issue as we have always heard. He also gave a recommendation for timing and type of food for a marathon. I did not write any of it down or try to remember it since that does not really interest me much.

One sticking point I do remember was that an athlete will require 30-40% more food than a sedentary person not 300-400%. He spoke about the first week and increasing carbs to get you through it.

All in all it was a good interview.

Matt

I listened to the interview. Sears stated that fat is the most important nutrient for energy. But then he mentioned a zone snack can be egg whites and humus. If fat is so important, why is the zone diet so low in fat? Not that I'm recommending it, but there are forums where the recommended diet is 85% saturated fat. I also disagree with adaption to the Zone taking a week or so. I know enough physiology to know that for enzymes to respond to a physiology change takes three weeks or longer. A good example is blood donation. After every donation I have to run slowly for a week or so. The enzymes that connect oxygen to red cells take about three weeks to be fully replenished. The red cells themselves take about three months to be replenished.

When Sears was first hawking the original Zone book, he did a web talk. I emailed that for long distance runs I would lose energy long before the run was over. His suggestion was using half a zone bar every hour of the run. I tried that on a 30-mile run and ended up walking the last 10 miles.

Last weekend I did a 52-mile race. Not only was I the last finisher, I finished nearly an hour later than I did last year in the same race. I've been following the Zone with emphasis on veggies for the past several weeks. My running pace has deteriorated since starting this. My energy level also. For this race I was reduced to a walk after six hours. Part of the problem might be that I carb-loaded for the week prior to the race. Then ate carbs constantly during the run. But that had been my pattern for racing going back twenty years.

They say you can't gain weight on a vegetarian diet but I did this race nearly 10 pounds heavier than last year's race.

kevin

Kevin, most of the Hummus I have used has a fair amount of fat & carbs. I even made my own a couple times. The recipes call for olive oil & or Tahini. If I remember correctly it is not a zone balance of fat to carb. It is more like 3-5 grams of fat to 4-5 grams carbs but I don't have a label in front of me & I'm too lazy to look it up.

I have no first hand experience with the whole long distance thing, but would like to make a comment about something I read.

There is a gentleman by the name of Greg Amundson famous in the CrossFit community who used CrossFit training and Zone food for a 100 mile run in 24 hrs. I believe he has run triathlon or marathon distance in the past but not for a number of years. The challenge was train CrossFit mainpage workouts only for 30 days then do the run. The random workouts only had him running a couple miles total in that time frame. He finished 80??? miles in 24hrs. Looking back he was very happy with these results. CrossFit claims to take you to the 80 percentile in everything across the board. For the non specialist or sport specific athlete it would be quiet impressive. Greg does not look like your typical marathoner. http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/Greg-Amundson-oh-squat.jpg greg is on the right of this one http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/Nicole-C_Matt-G_Greg-A.jpg He is a beast http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8h5izzqmd-0/RuotzLdxdyI/AAAAAAAAAMc/4sm5Yycpjm0/s1600-h/AmundsonHeavyFran.jpg


Imagine a hopper with every exercise in the world from Powerlifting to Ultra Marathons and every thing in between. Spin the hopper randomly pull out an event and compete. You will not beat the specialist at his event but you will beat everyone else and destroy the specialist in every other event. The person who scores the highest average across the board at the random exercises is who CrossFit would crown the fittest human on the planet.

Sorry for that not sure how I went that direction. Oh yeah Greg also ate in the zone in preparation for the 100 mile run and ate nothing but zone meals during the challenge. I think he has a nickname like Mr. Tupperware from an earlier article he did about food preparation.

Kevin, I would love to work with an athlete such as yourself to change how they train and see what kind of results we could get. Don't know if you have seen the CrossFit Endurance site at all but you might be interested. It is a specialized version of CrossFit that adds in the longer stuff, I have heard good things about it.

Furthest I plan to ever run is a 5k or maybe a 10k. The Marine Corps ruined me with those 20 something mile hikes with full gear.

What kind of veggie diet were you doing? What is you protein source? I have heard you can gain lots of body fat on a veggie diet. You can't maintain muscle mass on a veggie diet that is why many people lose weight when converting, they lose mm and replace with bf which weighs less in volume. I've heard it called skinny fat. Small frame, low lbm, high bf.

Matt