Nutrition

Nutrition is truly the new frontier in the quest to increase athletic performance.  After you have spent hours and hours running, training, stretching, lifting…doesn’t it make sense to eat right?  And not just for athletic performance–for your life.  Eating right will help you feel better and live longer!

Luckily, you generally know what you should be doing–don’t eating junk food, don’t eat packaged crud, stay out of fast food restaurants, eat a wide variety of simply prepared foods.  If you look at a plate of food and you know what it is–that’s a piece of salmon, that’s broccoli, that’s rice, that’s a tomato–it’s probably good for you.  If you look at something and you have no clue what it is–what the heck is a pizza pocket made out of, anyway?–it’s probably not so good for you.  Trust your instincts to know that is good, and then use your willpower to make the right choice.  Making the right choice may be hard–that candy bar looks better than that carrot–but let’s try.

Attached is the nutrition presentation we reviewed today; we hope it is useful to you!  Please let us know if you have any questions!

–Your Coaches

Here is some more data that may be useful to you.

From Dr. Russell Pate’s book, Training for Young Distance Runners

Estimated Calorie Requirements for Young Distance Runners

This is higher than what we discussed–and this may be useful for you and your parents.  We want to be sure you are fueled properly!