The Cullman Track&XC Facebook page has been alive all summer with coaches sharing healthy recipes for their athletes. I reached out to the coaching staff to see if they were interested in explaining their "take" on the importance of nutrition for the high school runner. Michelle Greenlee sent the following:
Running On Empty by Jackson Browne made for a catchy tune in the late seventies. I
have even thought of this song comically at the end of a few long runs. Seasoned runners that are
reading this article know that running on empty is not sustainable. Let it happen once and it's just
one miserable run, but let it happen over and over then performance will certainly decline and
injury is sure to follow.
Unfortunately, what I too often find, especially with high school runners, is that this is
precisely the way they train, perpetually on empty. They run without eating breakfast. They run
without eating lunch. They fuel themselves with candy bars and toaster pastries -- empty calories.
This past April was coming to a close, and so was the Spring track and field season. In a
couple of days, our top track and field athletes would travel to Fort Payne to compete in the 6A
Section 4 Track and Field Championship Meet, hoping to earn a bid to compete at the AHSAA
State Track and Field Championships the following week in Gulf Shores. Grace Thompson, one
of my second-period Honors Chemistry students and a leader in our cross country and track and
field program, sent me a text message one evening and asked if she could come in early the next
day and talk with me.
Grace had some concerns about a disconnect between her goal setting and her
understanding regarding the necessary actions required to reach those goals, specifically in terms
of nutrition. As a team, we talk a lot about the little things really being the big things. For the
athletes, depending on where they are in their maturation as a runner, those little things seem
overwhelming, and often there are just too many conflicting voices. Grace and one of her
teammates, Mabry Free, had recently read a book they were excited about, The Players Plate by
Emily Cole. Grace gave me a summary of the book, and I too became excited about the value it
could provide not only to our athletes, but myself as well. I ordered the book right then.
It may seem unusual to the reader that an athlete would present a book to one of her
coaches, but in our program every Summer, we participate in a book study as a team. Grace and
Mabry thought with Summer approaching this would be the perfect book for our team study.
The Player's Plate is an easy read as it is mostly driven by narrative but well organized
with practical guidelines and principles that our athletes could easily employ. Further, it only
requires about five hours of time to read it all the way through at a comfortable pace. I read the
entire book within the first day I received it and then passed the information along to our head
coach, Trent Dean.
As a coaching staff, Trent, Robin Cook, and myself have long promoted the concept that
process is primary. So why is a focus on proper nutrition necessary for our sport? The body has
to have the proper fuel to adapt to training and improve. For endurance sports especially, the run
training is only a fraction of the recipe. Nutrition, sleep, hydration, mental preparedness,
strength, and mobility are all vital pieces to the puzzle. The more someone runs, the more
important these non-running details become.
With new athletes to our program, we try to stress small changes, such as replacing a pre-
run toaster pastry with a banana and glass of water and replacing mealtime sodas with water.
Typically, as athletes get more excited about their progress, they want to make more and more
nutritionally wise choices, ask more questions, and make more positive changes. For athletes that
are further along and have trouble progressing, it is often a combination of these non-running
issues that impede progress. For example, poor sleep habits coupled with a diet full of empty
calories will wreck an athlete's progress. If you read The Player's Plate, you will discover that
Emily Cole suggests "aiming for a B+." Balance is important. I also love that she does not
promote a one size fits all approach and will not discuss specific calorie needs. She directs
readers to the need for a registered dietitian for the best guidance for your individual nutritional
needs. Registered dietitians are the experts. As a result of the book's guidance, Coach Dean is
currently in contact with a registered dietitian out of Colorado who is also a runner, and her
husband is an ultra-runner (2x Badwater 135 finisher). We hope that through these consultations,
we can provide even better guidance for our athletes.
This June we have reinforced the principles discussed in the book in practice and posted
recipes from The Players Plate and Run Fast Eat Slow, written by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse
Kopecky. We challenged our athletes to prepare the recipes in their kitchens with their
teammates and post pictures on our group page. Not only has this created some excitement about
trying new things, it has served to educate the athletes and their families. Lastly, it is helping us
grow closer as team. Cooking and sharing meals together has a powerful effect on building
relationships.
Now that June has come and gone we are excited to find a sustainable way to make this a
part of our process perpetually at Cullman. We are confident that it will have tremendous value
for our athletes in their lives, training, performance, and relationships.