I just wanted to share a nice success story from one of Coach Michael Rutherford’s Athletes. A common counter argument about eating paleo is that people “Can’t get enough carbs” to fuel elite level activity. I’m going to do an extensive deconstruction of that notion in a few days. The funny thing about facts, they are so concise it makes them almost EASIER to ignore for the dogmatically ignorant.
BTW-If you get a chance to check out Rut’s Max Effort Black Box programming seminar I highly recommend it. I hear he will be in Toronto in March!
Here is that note from Rutman:
Quick Report on a Paleo Diet success story.
I started working with Dina about 6 weeks ago. We have been working mostly on a MEBB / CrossFit template. Dina is a regular participant on the road racing circuit around these parts. She is what I would categorize as a trained subject. She finishes in the money most weekend. She ran in college and is very athletic from every angle. In fact, she has spent time doing some personal training in her past.
Part of our agreement to me taking her on as a client was her willingness to modify her diet to Paleo and to drop out two training runs that I considered to be junk miles. Dina was game and has been a model trainee these last six weeks. She is married, a sales professional and mother of two youngsters. Her world is not all about training and racing. While the training has been easy to integrate on a relative basis, adopting to a Paleo Diet has been a gradual transition that has finally happened.
This past weekend, that established athlete, sales professional and mother of two ran a hilly 5K in a tick over 20 minutes. This was a PR for that distance. While I would like to take a percentage of the credit I will have to tip my cap to the Paleo Diet eating change. The whole family is slowly getting with the program. It’s really a great story.
And the evidence continues to pile up….
Hey Robb,
Awesome entry. It’s like it works, indeed.
Question: I’ve got a client (and this holds true for myself as well) who I suspect is suffering from major adrenal fatigue. Way too many hours working, way too little sleep, way too much stress. Is there a way to quantify this/get some kind of cortisol measurement we can track? Going by feel is tough–some days he reports he feels great but performance is dragging; by same token I occasionally feel great on 3 quad americanos spaced out over the course of the day but fear that might be overkill and would love a way to quantify it!
Justin-
I’ve been meaning to tackle adrenal fatigue for some time…I will hit this on a front page post. Short answer: It’s a legit concern.
Hi Robb,
I’ve been paleo-ing and staying away from longer met-cons to maximise recovery and Vit-D3 is now my new best friend. Last week or so things have been feeling much better on the Colitis front.
Trouble is… I had my annual check-up today (the one with the camera – ouch!) and the colon inflammation is still pretty severe. I’ve got faith in the long term plan, but is there anything you’d recommend to get things settled down quickly so my bowel can chill out a bit?
Cheers,
Chris
Chris-
Sleep, stress, food. Those are the usual suspects. Keep tinkering, let me know how it goes.
Let me start by saying I loved this post. I also run, crossfit, and eat paleo and like to think that I understand the longterm benefits of all three (although running is what I really enjoy).
However, I thought the post was a little misleading. While a 20 minute 5k is not a bad time, it’s not elite by any means. I think it’s safe to say that most all collegiate females could run around 17 minutes or faster, and elites would run anwhere from 14:20 to 16:30. I’m not refuting that crossfit and a paleo diet helped her improve, but I would like to see evidence of improvment from a “true” elite runner. Most importantly, I don’t think it’s appropriate to mislead the readership.
Ann-
that was elite for HER. We sent 3 people to World championships in Tri using apleo diet, I’ll be doing a write-up on them soon. My “mislead” readership appears to number exactly 1.
A 20 minute 5K would have placed 19th out of 1227 women in the 30-39 age group at this year’s Carlsbad 5K–known as the “world’s fastest 5K,” it attracts runners from all over the world. Ethiopia, Kenya, Sweden, and Australia were included in the top finishers this year.
So I’m fine with confering “elite” status for a 20 minute 5K on a hilly course, especially for someone who isn’t a running specialist and has other interests like work and family which compete for her time.