Mary Eggers

Three more swims including this morning’s, and I will be swimming outside for the next 6 months. My outdoor pool opens on April 1st and at 6:30am that morning, we are having a pool party. The pool at Midtown Athletic Club will be eighty degrees. And get this…. you know how when you get out of the pool and run to the locker room, the locker room, or hallways that leads to it is cold???? Not at Midtown. I think the floor might even be heated. Pool is eighty degrees. I don’t care if there is snow on the ground. I am swimming outside.

Then just a few weeks after that I will swim in the outdoor 50 meter pool at the National Training Center with my Qt2 mates.

Pinch me, and pinch me now. I sometimes can’t believe this is my life.

Now, onto the review…….

In some circles, bonking is thought of as something to be proud of. Dude…. I totally bonked on that ride……. man it was a great workout till I bonked…… I can’t think of the last time I bonked, much less bragged about it. I think sometimes people use nutrition as a means tto get attention.

That’s because on QT2… we are not allowed to bonk.

To paraphrase Jesse, you never ever leave the house without your nutrition. Fueling is one of those things you are in complete control of. No excuses. If you dare bonk as a QT2 athlete, better start looking for sources before it blows your workout. See an old gel wrapper on the ground…. you’d better try to squeeze what’s left out of it.

The real tragedy about bonking is this: it sets you back days. A big bonk will set you back weeks. Bonking is Gluconeogenesis. On the QT2 team we understand that there are four things that affect race performance: preparation, nutrition, fueling and pacing. Notice two of those four are fueling and nutrition. Fueling being during a race and during workouts, nutrition is daily nutrition.

So you can see that nutrition is over half of the equation.

We as triathletes are notorious for our Fuel Belts. I think I wore the first ever one. My running friends mocked me out….. you carrying grenades in there??? In all fairness they were purebred elite runners, running 100 miles a week. It didn’t total up to the 20+ hours I was putting in as a triathlete (even though they were so much faster!) Every moment counted then and it does now. So does every gram of carbohydrate, protein and fat that you put into your system. It’s not a rite of passage to bonk, to not drink during workouts. One of my friends told me the story of an athlete of hers that told her that eating is cheating….. yeah we have both been there and done that enough to know that in this sport, fueling is everything. The ounces of weight it might add to a training run is worth much more than the minutes you lose when you bonk.

If I as a recovering Bulimic can understand the importance of nutrition as it relates to health and performance, anyone can. Nutrition on and off the field is a choice.

Fuel Belts have changed over the years. They have gone from the smaller bottle small mouth to a wider mouthed style (LOVE that change by the way). The belts have changed as well.

I remember hating the first one, I wanted to wear it on my hips not around my waist. It rode up. It bounced like crazy for the first 5 minutes of every run. The bottles leaked. How many times did you have a good pace going, you grabbed a swig of drink and then as you were sliding it into it’s trust holder….. damn….. the bottle drop. UGH!!!!! But that was life.

Last week I was sent the Revenge Fuel Belt. It’s the newest of the Fuel Belt line and it looks like this:

The new features of this belt is that it’s fully adjustable, rather than being dictated between a small, medium or large, you can adjust the belt to fit you. That was a nice feature as I often fall between sizes. Okay, I was sold on that. The next feature was this one handed entry and exit idea, which truthfully…. I didn’t believe.

Ever try to put a Fuel Belt bottle back in one handed? Yeah, right I thought! I began to wonder as I got ready for the run…..I wonder if Vinu has completely lost his mind….. didn’t he try this out before he advertised it as a one hand exit and entry? The exit I believe, the entry??? Come on. How many bottles have I dropped with two freaking hands!!! He’s crazy. I was determined that night to prove him wrong.

It was a rather hilly run in the dark, with 2 X 20 minute tempo efforts. If any run is going to prove this one handed entry and exit thing wrong… it’s this one I thought.

10 minutes into the run…. hmmm…. this doesn’t bounce. I am actually wearing it around my hips and it’s staying there. I was sure when tempo began it would ride up and twist and then the bottle dropping would begin. I took my first swig soooo ready to drop the bottle. One handed exit no big deal, let’s see about this….. holy CATS…. wait a second…. did I put that in the right place? I almost had to stop. It slid in with one hand.One lucky turn, I figured.

 No way that would happen again.

Tempo began. I forgot about my little experiment. It was gorgeous outside. There is just something about evening running that soaks me up into it. There are so many evening runs I didn’t do because of my work in Pediatric emergency…… I worked evenings and nights….. man I have missed these days. Where the air is cool yet you need not much clothing…… it just feels great to run and find your sweet spot.

Ahhhhh, looks like it’s about time for some fueling, grab the bottle, take a swig…… slide it right back in. HEY! Wait a second. It worked, TWICE! I was sure when I hit the hills and really got into the sweet spot I would pull the infamous bottle drop.

I can’t tell you how awesome it was to be running outside again. This was what running was supposed to be, meant to be. Simple.

Not to be a corn dog, but the Revenge Fuel Belt felt simple. As much of a cheap plug as that sounds…. it’s true. It is by far the most comfortable belt I have ever used. I never dropped a bottle, and before I would average 3-4 bottle drops during a 70 minute run. At one point I even tried the two handed entry….. and believe it or not it was harder. WHAT? I know. Stranger things have happened to me.

The Fuel Belt Revenge system gets a thumbs up from Mary Eggers. Thanks so much to the gang at Fuel Belt for the goodies they sent me, I have a lot of great stuff to try out!!!!!!!

Speaking of great stuff I have quite a line up of interviewees in the next few weeks, in addition to whom I told you about the other day I have professional triathlete Amy Kloner, race director Kat donatello, Professional triathlete and teammate Cait Snow (um hello 2:56 off the bike in Kona!) , elite age groupers Beth Shutt, and the return of  the one and only Rachel Ross.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, see you right back here on Monday!

Filed under: My Training