Ross-
Sounds like you have some interesting people in your life and are on quite an adventure yourself. Bravo!
As far as the J-pouch questions go, I will say I have also experienced some bleeding after runs. There is no rhyme or reason to it and it wasn’t due to pouchitis. My doctor told me not to worry as long as it isn’t consistent or happening after hard/long workouts, which it doesn’t. It just randomly happens sometimes.
I eat PB&J before I run, drink Citrucil, wait for it to settle & use the bathroom before I run. I eat Clif Shot Bloks while I run and hydrate with Nuun tablets. I haven’t noticed I need anything special as far as my regular diet goes, even during marathon training. In fact, I added Eggo waffles to my pre-long run regiment because they seemed to stick around and settle quite nicely. Whatever works.
If you want more information, feel free to email me directly:
Happy running!
- Hi Abbie,I guess that means you are running marathons?…I noticed after writing you yesterday, reading the comment by Trad Cruikshank that there are J-Pouch marathoners or ultramarathoners or that there is Trad…, which is very uncouraging. As for eating P, B & J… lovely memories with Chunky Peanut Butter and heaps of Welches Strawberry Jam on Branola bread (with the exception of Branola, since Wonder and Weston Foods were bought up by the Mexican baker and now #1 in the world BIMBO, I can’t obtain those products here), since Sams Club and Costco and Walmart dump the worst products in Mexico (makes me wonder and worry everytime a product is removed from the shelves by the FDA or the USDA due to salmonella etc)… and since I’ve removed refined carbs from my diet, especially wheat products, which I would say helps greatly with energy levels, increased endurance and recovery times, inflamation… along with better sleep. Granted, it seems to go against what Christopher McDougall writes in “born to run” since it seems that all of the runners he mentions are basically vegetarian. I was vegetarian when I was running in college and believe that being vegetarian was related to my injury… A lot of reading. A lot of information. Many people would disagree and say that they are perfectly fine with their diets. My uncle swore by a breakfast of Coke and a Chocolate Brownie (although my mother would say that he was obsessed with his weight–probably being the little brother of two older sisters who were obese and who knows how were the crazy daughters of my grandfather’s crazy girlfriends who tended to live with them during childhood; it seems that my grandfather was attracted to women with psychiatric health issues–my maternal grandmother died from gangrene in a mental hospital in Brooklyn when my uncle was 10-years-old)… Then again, my uncle was a superman and probably defied laws of human biology that all the “normal” humans must respect. He ran one NYC marathon with a couple of slipped discs in his back incurred playing soccer in Central Park and ran another NYC marathon with a broken bone in his foot after not seeing “that hole” when pulled by his very enthusiastic german shepherd pursuing another dog in Riverside Park… A shot of cortisone and he was running and finishing the Marathons as if nothing abnormal had occurred a few weeks earlier. My uncle had also told me that rage fueled his runs, since he was a helpless witness of repeated visits by the Mafia and my grandfather crying infront of them and my uncle, since he had a trucking business in Brooklyn…Thinking about the super runners mentioned by Christopher McDougall, he’s not writing about all the rest of the unknowns, but about the incredibles. He even mentions in the end of the book that much has to do with who are your parents (be it genetics or training)… Maybe the 9-year-old boy with the prosthetic leg after having bone cancer wouldn’t have started running again if his father and mother and uncles weren’t marathoners… Maybe for some of us it doesn’t really matter what we eat… we’ll still manage to do things that are beyond incredible. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you are vegetarian or Paleo… if you are an exception. But, what I noticed is that for both my wife and I, no matter how much exercise we did and how healthy our diet seemed, we couldn’t drop the weight and increase greatly our distance without removing the simple carbs… I had always believed in carb loading before the runs… In fact, 2 years ago, I developed increased fatigue and muscle cramping instead of increased distance until I was forced to walk-run 8 minutes into the runs… This led to a 1.5 year hiatus and a ton of investigation into my health and diet… Removing the simple carbs removed the excess weight (over 30 pounds for both of us since March) and the problems, believe it or not. No limits on fat or animal protein… No Paleo diets either, since I believe much of Paleo is based upon myth and fantasy and mixed with a whole ton of confusion and in-fighting about what we truly should eat… I do believe that we may eat too much animal fat and animal protein… and will continue “monitoring” that question… Removing the simple carbs effectively removes the excess eating caused by reoccurring hunger… Many people (“experts”) who advocate weight loss through low-carb diets mention that exercise increases appetite and the subsequent risk of over-eating. I don’t see it that way. And reading “Born to Run” makes me think that the ultramarathonist’s body becomes a much more efficient energy burning machine, leading to their needing less food… I also believe that “teaching” your body to stop relying upon simple carbs makes it a much more efficient energy burning-conserving machine… However, I do believe that animal protein has a function in preventing your body from burning muscle for energy…Thanks for responding to my comment.Ross
