COLUMN – Thomas’ doubtful Swansea Half-Marathon blog – April

When I was weighing up (forgive the delayed pun) the pros and cons of signing up for the Swansea Bay Half Marathon, one of the biggest benefits was being able to eat without any guilt as clocking up all those training miles would surely burn off any fat.

And true enough, although my training hasn’t gone to plan (* more of that later), people have asked if I have lost weight to which I reply, ‘No. I just started buying bigger clothes.’

In truth I have lost a few pounds but don’t really weigh myself regularly so can’t tell you how much other than I can now tighten my belt by another notch without causing any damage to internal organs.

My weight this past year has been around 93Kg fully clothed – someone said it was better to weigh yourself without clothes on but when I tried that I got banned from Tesco.

As I have mentioned previously, losing weight means eating less and exercising more – if you had a car with a flexible petrol tank and filled it up every day, without ever driving it, then it would eventually burst.

And by my reasoning the reverse is also true to some extent – in order to exercise more you need more fuel! So I’ve spent the last couple of months reconnecting with my previous vices – the owner of my local tandoori takeaway greeted me like a long lost brother having feared I’d ‘crossed over to the other side’.**

I was fortunate enough to have a chat with Swansea Bay dietitian Andrea Miller – and she confirmed that you can eat more when in training!

She said: “If you are light training, eating less and doing more can help you lose weight. But if you’re training more than an hour a day, 2-3 times a week, then you need to have a regular intake of carbohydrates because you keep burning it off and need to keep refuelling. 

“Every time you’re exercising, you’re burning up your stored fuel, which is the stored carbohydrate. You can’t keep exercising if you’ve got no fuel left.

“You need to keep replenishing your stores for the exercise, to store all that glucose again, ready for the next training, so you’ve got a continuous source of carbohydrate coming in.

“Good sources of carbohydrate are bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, fruit, and milk.  Sweet foods such as cakes, chocolates, biscuits contain carbohydrate but may also be full of fat, sugar and salt which is not good for you.”

Protein is the other really important nutrient for exercise.

She said: “Good proteins are foods like your dairies. Milk in particular is a very good source of high quality protein. It has got lots of goodness in it that helps to rebuild your muscle after you’ve broken it down when you’ve been doing your exercise.

“If you’ve been exercising for more than an hour, then having a glass of milk at the end of training is really helpful. Rather than all these protein shakes, a glass of milk can do just as good a job. It helps to give you a bit of carbohydrate to put some fuel back in, and it also helps give you the protein to help rebuild your muscle that you’ve just broken down during the training.

“Eggs, meat, fish and yoghurts are other rather good, wholesome sources of protein. Pulses are another good one.

“Having a snack as soon as possible after exercise, certainly within the hour, such as milk, or a cheese and ham sandwich, is helpful to provide you with carbohydrate and protein to give you energy and help to repair your muscles.”

Fatty food is still part of a healthy intake, in moderation though.

She said: “Fatty food such as takeaways, burgers, fried food, biscuits, cakes etc generally tend to contain more calories, and more salt and sugar which are not good for your general health.”

Andrea also dispelled a myth – one that I was looking forward to unfortunately – that it was ok to binge on pizza and pasta the night before the event.

She said: “It is better to load up gradually in the days and weeks leading up to the event, rather than just the night before as you are still training and burning off the carbohydrate.”

You also need to be careful if snacking between meals.

She said: “If you are trying to lose weight, snacking is not always great because people tend to snack on chocolates, biscuits and crisps – it’s those sorts of foods you want to try and cut back on. If you’re going to have a snack, try a piece of fruit or a small cracker.

“For exercise, small snacks to build carbohydrate intake can be helpful such as fruit and crackers.”

What about taking water on board?

“Fluid is very important for performance. It is always important to begin exercise well hydrated and replace fluid between training sessions.

“You don’t want to be overdoing it because you can’t stop to go to the toilet all the time. 

“Making sure that you’re just having sips of fluid before, during and after, depending on how long the event is, is really great.

“If you’re exercising for less than an hour, water is fine to replenish the fluid, you don’t need all the isotonic drinks. But if you’re exercising for a number of hours, you need to think about fluid and the isotonic drinks will back up on the salts that you will lose.”

* With around 5 weeks to go until the big day my training plan is off the wall – literally. I’ve torn it down.

I have come to accept that my aging body is not up to the rigours of pounding the streets five times a week and have adopted my own approach – namely going for a ‘long run’ once a week and trying to walk a couple of miles on the other days.

I usually manage 10 miles and my thinking is it’s only a further three on the day. I can manage that. After all, I just want to finish the course. I don’t want to embarrass others with a record time.

** He meant he feared I was going to the kebab shop opposite.