Mik P.

PROGRAM
NEW YEAR PERFORMANCE CHALLENGE: 3RD PLACE WINNER

I’m not one of the clients that lifts lots of weight for performance. I mean, I have in the past but that’s not what my current goals are. I’m an endurance athlete; I like to run, a lot. And running a lot means you burn a lot of calories. And burning a lot of calories means you need to replenish with a lot of calories and carbohydrates post run for recovery for the next run. Carbohydrates are an endurance athlete’s friend, not an enemy. 

When I signed up for this challenge, I was tempted to sign up for the transformation one because I wanted to really feel and see changes in my body, especially after the holidays of eating lots of things I don’t usually eat and trying to establish some better habits. However, I knew I had a longer-term goal to continue competing in endurance running and ultra marathon races. I wanted to work with a coach that could help me improve my performance for running through nutrition so I signed up for the performance challenge. 

I had many goals going into this challenge which included getting better at nutrient timing/prioritize my nutrition around my workouts- run, strength, yoga workouts, morning workouts vs evening workouts, getting better at hitting my daily macros, preventing overeating in the evening especially of sweets/snacks, trying to see if my body would undergo recomposition while training for an endurance event and fuel for performance. These are a lot of goals and I was aware of that going into this from the beginning. I was also coming back from an injury so I was being cautious yet optimistic with my endurance training. I had tracked my food and had macros targets in the past but saw very little progress toward my performance and body recomposition goals so I was hoping that putting in the work with this challenge would result in more progress toward my goals.

The first four weeks- I wanted to go full in with carb cycled days, figure out why I was having so many evening cravings/how to stop them since I was struggling with this the first few weeks with an “all-or-nothing” mentality of “if I eat 1 serving of cookies which could ruin my day, why not eat another serving or two?”. I also struggled with moderation around sweet things at work and would eat more than I should have. My coach and I talked through these problems I had and they eventually improved (more on this later). Instead of doing carb cycled days, my coach helped me pull the reigns in and just focus on 1-3 mini goals a day consisting of something as “small” as 10k steps a day. He was a big cheerleader for me to do my PT exercises, something I constantly complained about not “feeling like” doing though I knew I needed to do them since recovering from an injury so we added it to the habit tracker and it has helped. 

In the first few weeks I was getting better with tracking and figuring out what to eat to hit my macro targets which meant adding to my afternoon meal especially if I was training in the evening. I didn’t use a meal prep service so trying to eat 120g+ of protein and lots of carbohydrates took a lot of planning. There were days where I thought “it would be so much easier to not have to track or think about what my next meal macros are going to be” but then I thought “it would be easier to not have a run goal” but then I thought “you don’t get better by doing the easy things either”. I was already meal prepping but I worked on finding efficiencies with it. This meant that I improved on packing my food for after my long runs to eat on the drive home since I had anywhere from 30-60 minutes before I would be home to eat a proper meal. This also meant I would pre-track my food more often especially on long run days to make sure I was getting close to my macro numbers for that day and if I would be short someplace, to think of ideas of what to eat to pack and take with me or cook/prepare enough whole food carbohydrates instead of just eating candy post run to fill the carb void. A main focus was my carbohydrate intake around training- before and after a run. It took me a few runs to get the hang of it and so I managed to fuel up with more carbohydrates post runs. Additionally, I began prepping a second or third carbohydrate during my meal prep to account for this which made it so much easier during the week to grab a whole food carbohydrate source rather than a processed carbohydrate source and then overdo it with that. 

Fast forward and for about four weeks, I was traveling half way across the world in a time zone with a time difference of more than 12 hours and trying to adjust to that while continuing to train and be coached. I knew that there was a chance I would be traveling during the challenge so I had to make a decision- was I going to sign up for a challenge knowing I would be traveling for 1/3 of it which may make me super unmotivated to stick to my goals since it was a vacation or was I going to sign up to challenge myself and hold myself accountable for the goal I set for myself which was get to the start line of an ultra after the challenge was over. Well, we know the answer to this question now but those were my thoughts before the challenge started. I ended up being able to find a nice balance between maintaining my fitness, a goal my coach and I had, while also enjoying my vacation with going out to eat more often and meeting new people. I was traveling solo so I was also concerned I wouldn’t be able to get as many runs in in areas I felt safe ahead of time but it ended up that I was adventurous and used my legs to explore new paths, trails, and road by myself in safe areas. I would go out for a 1-3 hour run and stopping along the way to take pictures and it was wonderful! I was able to maintain about 20-30 and walked at least 10k steps a day. At the start of the vacation, I was trying to track my food but it became difficult due to my sporadic meal times and the fact that I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on my phone. So I decided to stop tracking, eat intuitively and enjoy myself and guess what? I was still able to make progress! Three of my measurements went in a favorable direction, to my surprise! I was eating less meals/less structured meals throughout the day but my coach and I made a plan that if I thought I wasn’t going to have a protein rich meal out, then I would have a protein shake to help keep my protein intake up. My coach reminded me in my check-in to “enjoy my vacation” and I appreciated that. I was able to hang out with friends and go out to eat without feeling like I was sabotaging or reversing any progress I made the month prior which was a huge mindset shift for me! We only have one life to live so we better enjoy it, right? 

Now, it’s the last month of the challenge and coming back to reality was a little rough, mostly with my sleep schedule being messed up and getting poor and less sleep and then I had some sinus issues again for a week. But I managed to make it through with the support of my coach reminding me that it may take me longer than a week to get “back on track” and that’s ok. The day I got back, I started tracking again and everything came back to me like clockwork and I almost hit my numbers exactly without trying! I went back on my meal schedule just like I never changed it. And then I had back-to-back long runs planned and we did a carb load which was challenging for me to adjust my macros in such a way but my coach helped guide me with my questions and dilemmas like how I was eating more protein than suggested but that’s because I was eating whole food sources of carbohydrates and not candy. My coach reassured me going over on protein in this way was ok and not to worry about it. I did the carb load and my 25 mile run went well and I had to eat so much after in order to prepare for another run the next day and all that eating felt like a full time job. But I knew it was necessary. Because of increasing my carbohydrate intakes during this challenge and of course all the “little things” I worked on with my my coach, my performance improved.

My key take-aways from this challenge: I can be flexible with my meals and nutrition. I can make progress tracking and I can make progress without tracking. I can enjoy a vacation while still making small changes to reach my performance goals. I can change my mindset to not be “all-or-nothing” and I can eat sweets or snacks in moderation. The question doesn’t necessarily become if I CAN do something, the question becomes am I WILLING to do the work. If something is high on your priority list, you are WILLING to put in the work for it. I can adjust my meals for the day if I have a long run planned and cook, prepare, pre-log my carbohydrate sources ahead of time. Will it take time to do all this planning? Yes. Will it be worth it in the end? Also yes. I can overcome and navigate challenges and obstacles that pop-up in the middle of pursuing a performance goal – sickness, vacation, injury. Will it be hard? Yes. Will dealing with these obstacles be mentally fatiguing? Yes. Will I do the best I can? Yes. Of course we don’t want to have to deal with such challenges but life happens and sometimes, we have to roll with it. I learned that macro numbers are just guidelines and they aren’t a strict rule like I believed them to be in the past so I learned to be flexible with them especially with my training. I found that typing out how my week went with training, performance, and upcoming goals for the week helped hold me more accountable along with communicating with my coach on weekly basis. Using a habit tracker helps me and I even made my own goal to read before bed (which went with one of my goals to get better sleep) as a habit and have completed 3 books since January which I’m super proud of! 

This challenge not only helped me make positive habit change and positive mindset change, but it also taught me that I am capable of making physical and mental progress towards my goals if I truly make them a priority. Set-backs happen and uncontrollable things happen but it’s nothing that I can’t handle because I’ve learned to adapt to change. The number on the scale is just one metric to measure progress, other measurements are metrics to measure progress too. Although my weight and other metrics improved in the direction I desired, my performance didn’t suffer, (my peak mileage weeks were over 40 miles) and actually improved along the way which is super exciting! I am proud of the progress I made during this challenge with the guidance and coaching from Coach Chris and am very thankful for his support!