CU Stress Fractures and Running with the Buffaloes

Your education in nutrition is way off base. Your body doesn't take stored fat and repair muscle breakdown. Also, if someone is running 80-90 miles a week (12-13 per day) they're burning a TON of calories. In this instance, the kid's BMR (basic metabolic rate or how many calories per day we burn just being alive and walking around before taking running into account) is probably around 1500. Add running into the mix and he's probably burning at the minimum another 1500 and maybe even around 2000. So, if he's expending 3000-3500 calories per day and is only allowed to eat 2000, that's not going to cut it. It will be detrimental to thought process, hard on the organs and consequently, hard on the muscles and tissues in the body. There won't be a sufficient amount of energy for the body to repair itself on that amount of food. Now unless you're privileged to some new knowledge, I don't see how that's arguable.

Listen Ibird, my bar-tending, SOU Coach, here is the original post."Not that I agree with Wetmore, but what about the fact that Batliner was trying to drop excess pounds. If the generally accepted rule is that one pound is worth roughly 3000 calories, then that means that he was carrying around 18,000 extra stored calories available as fat. Granted, fat isn't the most efficient or readily available form of energy, i.e. glycogen/glucose, but still, he DID have the calories there to repair himself from his daily grind-he had 18,000 in excess that he was trying to get rid of. In order to drop them, you have to go negative somewhere, either in calorie intake or calories burned. Now, if we are talking about nutrients, then that is a different story. I contend that you CAN get ample nutrients, i.e. all your vitamins and minerals to repair your body from day to day in 2000 calories. You have to be disciplined and can't have junk take any calories away from what you are doing, but it can be done."Let us now pick apart what you had to say.

There isn't any new knowledge in anything I've just written. Just the way many great runners have been doing it for a long time when they have found themselves above their desired weight. Is it tough? Does it suck? Of course. But you can't argue with the fact that in order to lose weight, you must go negative on calorie intake vs. calories burned. That isn't any type of new science. It's fact. Have a pleasant day, Mr. small school coach, I'll be here being Mr. Old School Coach.

yes

Deter was a FUCKING CHEATER! TOOTH PASTE MY EYE

never achieve greatness wrote:

never achieve greatness in college? the only recent runners to achieve greatness in college so far is cragg, willis, and a few other foreign/foreign coached athletes. american coaches suck because they try to keep up with the local "jone's" and prep their ncaa athletes to win the ncaa's with a slow ass time. mcdonnell made cragg beleive that he could race fast. willis has the right mind set to just abuse and deficate on any american runner as he climbs to the top spot as the worlds best 1500m caucasion.

yeah 27:38 is soooo much worse than 13:16.

also willis has nothing on webb and the olympics will show that.

In RWTB it says Batliner was on a 2000 calorie a day diet, but this was a unique circumstance. Wetmore did not have ALL his runners on such strict diets, and he only did this with Batliner because it was so close to Nationals time. Had Batliner been returning to training in August, instead of October, I'm sure he wouldn't have tried to rush his body's return to racing weight. That's another point here, Batliner's stress fracture that season came BEFORE he was on a diet, i.e. he was eating whatever the hell he wanted, got hurt, THEN Wetmore put him on the diet (when he started running again).

"But you can't argue with the fact that in order to lose weight, you must go negative on calorie intake vs. calories burned"

You can't just crunch the numbers and assume the pounds of weight loss are coming from fat.

In the general population it is assumed that if you are losing more than 2# per week then you start to breakdown muscle (ie:protein) I am assume in a high mileage runner this window is much narrower

In Batliners case - the calorie deficit was probably 1500-2000

cals (3-4# weight loss per week)

Bottom line - creating a calorie deficit of this level in a high mileage runner to stimulate weight loss is much too drastic and leads to muscle breakdown - no reserve for anabolism and hence injury and poor performance

Wettmore and BIg Skul Guy are way off base

HMMM???? wrote:

How much of it falls on the athlete to make the decision to go on after college is finished? If you ever talk to the former Razorback runners, you will find absolutely NO REGRET in their lives. If they could go on to a higher level, they did, if not, they found something else to do with their lives. It's as simple as that. Don't lay that shit on the coach. These aren't 5 year olds that go away to colege, they are young men, and they make the decision to either be great in a great program, or go somewhere else. After, their drive has to be something they pull out of themselves. It's not Coach Macs or M. Wetmores job to force them to be great after college. That fals squarely on the athlete.

This is a very important post. It illustrates perfectly why the NCAA is in direct opposition to developing distance talent for the international stage.

I wish every college coach (to whom it applies) would tell incoming recruits, "I am prepared to sacrifice your long term develoopment and success as an athlete to make me look good at meaningless relays and invitationals, as well as the all important conference meets." Ask Tiffany McWilliams for more info oin why SECs and NCAAs are so much more important than the Olympics.

In America we settle for mediocrity. "I ran this time in HS," or "I ran this fast in college," whereas the REST OF THE WORLD is gearing towards Olympic and World Championships. Don't bitch about crappy American distance runners and lack of depth when the NCAA destroys available talent.

If I were a HS senior, with plans to continue persuing excellence, I would find coaches who would develop me, not fry me, treat me as an individual as a part of a team, and put my long term goals (10 years ahead) ahead of seasonal (meaningless) goals. And if that were impossible, I'd find the best coach I could and run out of a club.

Is it really so hard for a good runner to lose weight when they start training again? I realize the need for good general nutrition, but it seems that once the training starts back up, the pounds drop quickly for someone who has a runner's body type (although there are always exceptions). I've never been near as good a runner as Batliner or the other CU guys, but when I was running in college, I ate 3 meals a day and a snack at night and finished every season slightly underweight. Now that I'm not training at that intensity anymore, I eat maybe 2/3 the calories that I used to, but I've still gained weight since college. It seems that a good runner eating healthily would drop any extra weight within no time at all.

The reason Batlineer was on this \"diet\" was because he was trying to get into All- American shape in half a season. He was not running 80-90 miles a week like the rest of the guys. Therefore he could not eat as much and still expect to be ready to race in such a short time period. This was such a unique circumstance that Wetmore was adjusting to. Batliner was a Senior looking for All-American coming off a stress fracture and not having a base training period. So he probably was overweight in running terms when he came to practice.

Why does this topic drag on and on? It is almost as repititous as "What could Lance do for a 3.15724K" or "Ritz vs. Mothra"

Unless you run for Wetmore ... who cares?

Why?

Somebody should have told this to Deena, right? After all, she's the American with the best shot at an Oly medal, right...and, she went to a mountain school.Hoovis

i agree wrote:

if you want to ruin your running career, go to a school in the mountain region. you will get real far. up to the top of the mountain and then you will fall off the face of the earth.

Didn't she go to Arkansas? It's not a mountain region school. She trains in the mountains now, though...

First of all, I don't tend bar, I just check IDs at the door.

Second, I get tired of all the talk about diet when it comes to distance running. As a coach, the pressure to "look" a certain way or weigh a certain amount in order to be fast gets really annoying to deal with. Granted, you can't be 300 lbs. and be good but I think we all have a fairly good idea of when we're pretty fit. My argument is that we're constantly looking for shortcuts to get better when in fact, that's contradictory to the sport. Eat, sleep, run is a fairly simple formula and I don't think it's ever been eat, diet, sleep, run.

Look, my point is that when someone is a young, high-level athlete and they start looking for the quickest way to lose weight it generally ends up being a bad idea. Starving yourself is NEVER good especially when you're a high level athlete. How about good nutrition all the time and if you get hurt, listening to your body and taking the time for it to heal? That's not too tough is it?

In this instance, the kid had been hurt and not running which is why he put on a couple of extra pounds. Don't you think that at elevation with a high activity level that starting to run again would take off the weight? Why then have the kid starve himself when it's going to come off anyway? The problem sometimes with this sport is that we lose sight of the fact that it's really easy if you let it be. As soon as you start thinking about a bunch of crap other than running (how you look, how much you weigh, how many intervals so and so is doing compared to you), you're screwed.

Third, you seem to know who I am, e-mail me a let me know who you are "old school" tough guy.

Also, I agree with you that you have to go negative to lose weight. I just think that a 2000 calorie diet for someone burning 3500 is a bit scant and wavering on the cliff of an eating disorder. Why not just use the wrong end of your toothbrush and cut out the middle man.

Not saying that starving oneself is the way to go, but you can't tell me ol' Tyler wasn't doing a little starving to get himself into this condition.

http://www.roadcycling.com/news/article351.shtml

He definitely wasn't eating whatever his body was telling him to. I mean, he looks straight out of the Holocaust there. Even Tergat could hardly compare to that.