Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

Kevin's Road to the Daytona 100 - Part 2

• Angie Brown

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Join us this week as we unravel Kevin's recovery after an intensive run-weekend comprising of a 20-mile and 28-mile run.

To sponsor Kevin's 100 mile race, click here.

We understand the sheer importance of refueling with high-quality protein and calories, and how this dynamic changes when fueling for a grueling 100-mile race. Kevin's physical and mental preparation opens up intriguing insights into the world of endurance sports. 

Unveiling another layer to this narrative, we delve into the intriguing realm of nutrition and fueling for optimal performance in endurance races. Kevin shares invaluable nuggets of wisdom, from maintaining strength and mobility to managing sickness and injury, while keeping hia eye on the prize. We talk about the pivotal role of nutrition - think substantial meals and strategic snacking - to keep the fire burning during these intense training sessions. This conversation extends beyond general health guidelines, offering a tailored approach to nutrition and fueling for endurance training. 

To sponsor Kevin's 100 mile race, click here.



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Speaker 1:

This is the Real Life Runners podcast Kevin's Road to the Daytona 100, part 2. If you're looking for ways to bring more joy into your running and you want to be a physically and mentally stronger runner, you're in the right place.

Speaker 2:

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, and we're your hosts, kevin and Angie Brown. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Now let's get running.

Speaker 1:

Alright, we're back with another Kevin's Road to the Daytona 100, part 2. So we're checking in with Kevin this week and seeing how this week of training has gone. We're going to focus a little bit more on fueling and nutrition today, because when Kevin tells people that he is going to run 100 miles, that is another question that he often gets is how much do you have to eat? How do you even train for that? How do you fuel for that? And so we're going to dig a little bit deeper into fueling for a 100 mile race in today's episode.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right after they finish talking about, I don't really even want to drive that far.

Speaker 1:

There you go, alright, so tell us, give us a little update, just on how your training has gone this past week.

Speaker 2:

It was a weird week One. I was kind of in recovery from the big weekend I had last week of the 20 plus 28. That's a big one. But then this week was also the cross-country state meet. We had to trek all the way up to Tallahassee, which is a long drive, a much, much longer drive on the way back, actually, the way traffic hit.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, it was six and a half hours on the way there and eight and a half hours on the way back. That was brutal.

Speaker 2:

And then what occurred to me on the way back is that by the time we woke up in the morning, the girls ran their race. Then we got on a bus, drove all the way back for what felt like eternity. On the day that I raced 100, I will be running for more than that whole time period Because we got up and left the hotel to start the day at like 6.15. I started at 6. And then we got back to school at like 6.30, 6.45 and I will still be running at that point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's kind of crazy when you think about it that way.

Speaker 2:

It seems depressing when you think about it that way, because that was a long bus ride, I mean not depressing, because you're going to be out there doing something that you really want to do. Yeah, I know, but from the perspective of sitting on that bus, which was eternal, that was not the best way to think about how to spend that time period, I think.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, the training was weird because we had a day driving up, a day driving back the day that we were there, Okay, so before we talk about that, because that was at the end of the week, so let's jump into first your recovery from your bigger weekend. The weekend before that you ran 20 miles on Saturday, you ran 28 miles on Sunday. What does then Monday look like after that?

Speaker 2:

Okay, Pretty sure I took Monday off, but I knew that I had. I had off days coming at the end of the week. So, yeah, I took Monday off and then got back into it normal on Tuesday, had a speed session on Wednesday and like was really hitting some some good times on that Wednesday. But I did take Monday off to make sure that I was gonna be able to refuel enough. Because that's that's one of the big things If I go really long on the weekends is not just getting enough food on that Sunday but then getting enough food on Monday, especially if I go for a run on Monday. So if I do a 20 on a Sunday, I eat a ton for the rest of that day but then need to continue like Excessively eating on the Monday so that I can continue refueling from the Sunday run.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because I don't think that you can really Refuel completely in just one day, especially after a double like that. I mean you.

Speaker 2:

You can take in, in theory, enough calories, but I don't think that your body is made up for it. I think that you're still in repair mode For going into Monday, possibly Tuesday, depending on how rough that day was.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, but if you also think about trying to get in that many calories on that day, it's going to require you to, you know, eat a pint of ice cream, like what you actually did, I did yeah, which is fine, but you also want to make sure that you're getting in high quality protein, other high quality calories that are going to help your body rebuild.

Speaker 1:

And, yes, in it, like the one way that you look at it, calories are calories, but we all know that Fat calories, carb calories and protein calories are all different and our body uses all of those things differently. And so, yes, while it is important for you to get a lot of calories back into your body, you also have to make sure you're putting in the protein so that your body can repair itself from what you just did over the weekend, and it's going to be very difficult to do all of that within that one day, I think right.

Speaker 2:

So, like during sunday and and monday, one of my big focuses is making sure I'm getting in good, like you said, like good protein. But I knew after I mean that was 48 miles over the weekend. On sunday night I ate a pint of ice cream because it was like, well, I still ultimately just need calories and I need them without having to sit and eat like Such an enormous quantity of food. So I ate not the highest of quality of food. It was delicious but I needed to get in a huge amount of calories and it was like 1200 calories and a pint and I could put that down and take it in and I felt fine the next day. I mean, that was the thing is. I did feel fine the next day. I I could have gone out and knocked out several miles, but I wanted to make sure that I was really fully properly refueled Before I continued the training, because that that wasn't the goal. Race, that was just a big weekend.

Speaker 1:

And then on thursday, we left and spent six and a half hours on the bus. So what did thursday and friday look like?

Speaker 2:

so thursday, I ran just a little bit at the meet when we finally got up there, because you can run on the course and the course is, amazingly so, one of the best. It's the best cross-country course in florida, uh, probably one of the better cross-country courses in the south, um, and the course is great. But I only ran for like 15 minutes around on the course because by the time we get up there they're almost shutting the course down. And then we were out to dinner with the team, so it wasn't like all right. Well, I'm just going to spend an hour on the treadmill, like it was, enjoying the experience of going to the state meet.

Speaker 2:

You know, like we built this whole thing up, I've bleached my hair. Anybody following us on on the Instagram you can see that my hair went all sorts of crazy colors, like it was. It was fun and I didn't want to just step away from that experience either. And then on friday we got up early. The, the girls ran the race. I ran around on the course to Chase them around and cheer for them on the course, but that was only like I don't know, a mile mile and a half maybe of running, and then we got on the bus and drove home, so it wasn't a huge amount of running on thursday, friday and I knew that, which is why I wanted to make sure that on Tuesday and wednesday I was able to get in some, some quality running.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and so then, what about then saturday, sunday?

Speaker 2:

Saturday was like a normal saturday run, like eight ish. And then sunday was another 20 miler, which I mean that someone asked me that a while ago of how do you train for these? Because they, they knew people that had trained for marathons and marathons. So much is that focus of the buildup, of getting to the 20 miler, and I feel like a lot of the focus on racing 100 is that consistency of so many 20 milers that you just keep stacking on top of each other. So that was just like a normal sunday of well, I'll aim for 20, if they don't feel great, maybe I'll go like 18, but I got in a like just over 20, which which was good.

Speaker 1:

All right, cool. So that's kind of what your training block look like. What does your lifting look like during this point in time? Also, because I know that last episode we did focus on, you know, talking about the importance of strength training and especially going through that strength training block where you spent a good three months really just building strength and building muscle in the body. What is your strength training look like right now?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I'm still consistently at one big strength day a week, um, making sure that I'm still in the gym. I'm I'm not trying to hit higher weights anymore, I'm basically hitting what I was hitting, uh, at the end of that strength cycle of trying to make sure that I can stick with that. Um, that one slipped up in September when I was sick and my lifting kind of disappeared. Um, cause it's not the thing that I enjoy the most. So if I was sick and hurt and like, uh, I need to run or lift, uh, you know, I'm, I'm like so many of the listeners, something's going to slip and it's probably going to be the thing that I don't want to do the most. So, um, I've been back on that and making sure that I have the same strength that I had towards the end of that lifting cycle. So that's been going okay. Um, and then I do like a mini, just keep my hips mobile and strong enough, basically before every run. So I do a little like band session that I do also.

Speaker 1:

Okay, cool, um. So let's just take a couple of minutes just to talk a little bit about your fueling overall, like there's a lot of fueling that needs to go into the race itself, but let's just talk right now about kind of daily nutrition, on how are you fueling your body to make sure that you are continuously like staying strong, being able to handle this mileage and being able to feel strong as you look at the last month here before the 100 miler, I mean it's, it's not in my head.

Speaker 2:

It's not that crazy of weird nutrition. Like I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's just that they're. They're really sizable breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like what I used to bring for school to eat eat during lunch period was not as big as what there is now. Like my, my lunch bag doesn't really close anymore.

Speaker 2:

Like I have a big container that I fill up with whatever leftovers we have in the fridge and those leftovers used to make it all the way through the week and often by Thursday or Friday I'm trying to figure out what I can still fit in there. Like if we, if we go over to your sister's house for dinner, we we have a night that we don't have leftovers in there, I'm running out of stuff to eat by the end of the week because it's not like, oh well, I'll bring a little of this and that'll be good enough. Like there's there's not allowed really to be a day that's good enough. Every day has to make sure it has all the calories. So big breakfast, giant bowl of oatmeal with so much stuff that gets thrown into that. Big lunch that has like a main but also like a fruit in it. There's always like a big cottage cheese with some granola or cereal or something that I put in there, plus some other like multiple hundred calorie snack that I get.

Speaker 2:

I come home from practice and I have not like, oh, I guess I'll grab a granola bar, I'll grab a few crackers, because that used to be what I would do, is I'd grab a few crackers because I was kind of hungry and now it's like all right, let's see if, between the time I'm home from practice and the time we sit down for dinner, can I take in a few hundred calories. Not like I don't know, maybe it was some calories because I had some crackers but like, think about it for a second and say, all right, I'm going to eat this much right now and then still have a full dinner, like that's. That's the thing is don't snack and then pull back on dinner. Make sure that I get a decent snack and then still have a full size dinner. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So what you're doing is very much not what most people would think of as, quote unquote healthy eating, right Like or weight loss type of eating, because like obviously you're not trying to lose weight and, like one of the people, things that people tell you is stop snacking right, or time restricted eating or all of these things that we hear about that are so good for your health and those things can be okay for some people, but not you, not someone that's training for a hundred miler, and this is one of the things that we really want you guys to understand.

Speaker 1:

That's so important about fueling your own body is that you need to fuel for your level of training and for your body type and for your goals, and that's what the most important thing is here. Like Kevin is not worried about his physique right now, he is worried, and I mean not that you ever are, but um, but you are worried, not worried, but you are focused on getting the proper nutrition to fuel your body to be able to achieve this goal that you've got set out for yourself. So that requires a lot more intention, even in the snacks and the things in between, to make sure that you're getting enough food into your body.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean that's one of the big things is trying to make sure that I'm still getting in good food, because good food is not necessarily as calorically dense as some other things that you could be snacking on. Like I'm not eating dessert all day long. Like you could really build up some calories that way. We don't have a whole lot of of just calorically dense snacky stuff through the house. So if I want to build up calories during a snack session, I have to actually think about it and eat more of like a small meal, maybe. Like I'll make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and put a banana inside of it, rather than like I'll grab like a couple granola bars. Like I just have to figure out what can I eat based off of the food we have, because I want to take in enough protein, like that's. One of the big things is make sure that you're still getting enough protein and not just having more highly processed fat based things Like that'll get you your calories, but I need the proteins.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the other thing that I want to point out here is that you are eating both right, like there are some people that think that if they want want to lose weight like let's just talk about that, cause I know there's a lot of people out there that do they think they have to cut out some of those higher calorie types of foods, like the process foods, those kinds of things you right now are trying to maintain, slash, gain weight right now to be able to fuel your race, and so you're focusing on yes, I need to have a lot of these calorie dense foods and, at the same time, make sure that I'm getting nutrient dense foods as well.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's it can be the same for people with a different goal with you know, when it comes to performance or health or body type, it just the opposite direction that you can still have both. You just want to maybe focus more on the nutrient dense types of things and have less of the calorically dense foods in your diet, but it's still important that you're not depriving yourself of everything. So for you it's like yep, I need to eat a lot of these foods that have that are very high carb or high fat so that I get calories in, but I also have to make sure that I'm still eating vegetables and fruit and lean protein so that my body is still getting what it needs as far as micronutrients as well.

Speaker 2:

Right, like the micronutrients always need to be in the picture. But then you have to make sure that there's just enough fuel on the fire, otherwise the fire goes out. So I mean it's that goes into, like what I'm taking in when I run. Like I'm taking in hundreds and hundreds of calories on the run. If you're out there for several hours, two plus hours, the amount of calories that I'm taking in is way more than I was taking in.

Speaker 2:

Last year, like I'm putting down it used to be, I'd take like a hundred calories of whatever the form was gel raisins, some goo thing. I'd take in 100 calories every 45 minutes, every 50 minutes, like I'd try and stretch it sometimes and see what goes. Now my liquid source almost always has some calories in it, so they're just sipping calories. And then I'm taking in 100 calories of something every 25 minutes or so, sometimes more than that, like depending on how much I'm really trying to push my calorie intake. And then that doesn't stop when I finish a long run and you just keep eating because you can't, during the run, take in enough calories to burn, to refuel what you just burned. Like it's impossible.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think that this is one of the important things for people to keep in mind, even when they're running a marathon, even if you're not doing ultra marathons. Yet, there's a lot of people that sign up for a marathon with the goal of losing weight, and that is not usually a compatible goal with performance because, like Kevin is saying, it's so important to fuel your body for what you're doing, and so much of that is recovery fueling too, like what you're eating afterwards to help your body recover and refuel and rebuild itself, not to be in this mindset of restriction, and that's where a lot of people get hurt in marathon training, because they're not actually fueling their body well enough and then their body starts just trying to find calories and trying to find things from anywhere it can and it starts to break the body down in the process to do that, and that's really what you're trying to avoid here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the biggest things is being able to make sure that I can hit a long run on Sunday and then still very often, almost every time I'm still out and running again on Monday. I couldn't do that if I had any sort of depriving on the rest of Sunday. I think a lot of people go into Sunday. They'll fuel their run and be like all right, well, this is the goo that I take during my run. And they finish the run and they're like excessive calorie intake is done and they'll like have a small lunch and then have a normal dinner. It's like no, you put out a ton of miles this morning. You have to make sure that you're able to refuel that. And then I personally try and continue to refuel into the Monday because I don't think that I'm taking enough in on Sunday.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and so that's really what we wanted to talk about today is really how everything went and then kind of the fueling. Is there anything else you think is important when it comes to fueling during your training?

Speaker 2:

Make sure that you're balancing it with excessive hydration, because they're always like you can't you can't stay hydrated during these long runs either, like you do the best that you can and then afterwards you just keep drinking water over and over and over again and try and make sure that your body's able to hold on to that water and it's not just flushing through you all the time. So I'm drinking like crazy also.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely All right you guys. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been part two of Kevin's Road the Daytona 100. If you would like to sponsor Kevin's race, any donation is appreciated. You can go over to kevin100.com to make your donation and proceeds will benefit the Epilepsy Foundation, because Kevin is doing this to help raise awareness, education and support for the Epilepsy Foundation. So thanks for joining us. This has been the Real Life Runners podcast, kevin's Road the Daytona 100, part two. Now get out there and run your life.