Kona - 61: Food and the injured athlete

One week of training down. The knee still ain't perfect and running mileage has been severely restricted but nearly 500k on the bike and nearly 20k in the water means I'm starting to lose some of that weight and I'm currently feeling a satisfying level of fatigue. With a day of tomorrow I'm hoping to recoup with some ice and anti-inflammatory I'll be able to push the run up to 90 mins and be able to break 100miles on the bike and crack 15 hours during the week.

I mentioned in my last post I'd managed to gain 5kg in the space of 10 days and I've always had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with food. Some of you know (some may not) that I wasn't always in possession of the svelte physique I currently own and used to be a little softer around the edges. My Mum always said that I was born skinny and then started eating, and then never stopped (a fact backed up by the doubling of her weekly food bill when I was back home!). I love food and being an athlete this isn't really a problem. When I'm training I feel that I am the model of professionalism with my nutrition. My diet is low in gluten and all processed foods. I avoid bad food and refined products and aim for 10+ servings of fruit and veg a day. I also take a rough calorie count to ensure I'm not under/over eating. I also LOVE cooking and generally aim to make all my own meals so I know exactly what goes in them.

The problem is all it takes is a break in routine, like an injury, and I fall off the band wagon and I return to the 17 year old who ate because it made him feel good for a short period of time. This was then followed by guilt and inevitably more eating. At 17 this usually ended up with me raiding the cooking chocolate draw and eating it's content, sadly it wasn't much further from the truth when I was back home last week.

It's something I don't really understand about myself as I have the discipline to train and eat well but if I want to get anywhere in this sport I have to be able to deal with setbacks. Previously, when triathlon was a hobby, it wasn't as much of a problem but working on my mental game is something I will be aiming to do over the next few months as I feel it is as important as being physically prepared.

Bit of a "stream of consciousness" blog I'm afraid, haven't written one like this for a while and a random collection of thoughts from the last week nailed together. Apologies if it reads badly...!