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I mentioned yesterday I am planning on having a regular column called Tribute Tuesday where I will select someone in my life who has had a positive influence on me in some way or another. Most of the time these people will have coached to increase my athletic prowess (which is actually pretty easy), challenge me intellectually (which isn’t really all that hard either), and/or inspire me to be a better human being. My first Tribute Tuesday subject has done all three. With no further ado I would like to introduce my coach, and friend; Amy Eck.
This is a kind of crazy picture of her, but it does really give the best possible introduction to her personality. She is a wild, and free spirit with the most positive outlook on life I have ever known in a human being. She refuses to believe there are limits to anyone’s potential, including her own. Just to give you an idea, this woman has competed in the Kona Ironman World Championships, the World Xterra World Championships, numerous ultra running and mountain biking events, and was a competitive wrestler in high school and college (yes I said wrestler). I credit her incredible coaching to my 47 minute reduction in time for my PR at Ironman Augusta 70.3. There is nothing Amy cannot do and her energy is uber-contagious. She gets so excited when she is able to help and/or see someone succeeding that she turns bright red. I cannot believe she doesn’t get muscle cramps in her cheeks.
Now she and her husband Erik are training for her biggest event ever, the birth of their first child. As you can see her pregnancy hasn’t taken an ounce of her positive energy away. She continues to enjoy life and even with all that drag she still beats both me and her husband in the pool. Obviously she doesn’t let anything conquer her competitive side. She was brought here to Florida due to Erik’s mobilization as a Reserve Navy Officer to CENTCOM, so the only negative thing I can possibly say about Amy is that she will be leaving to return to her home and coaching practice in Hawaii. (It was impossible to find a photo of her where she looks “normal”. In most of the pictures she is either in a superhero costume or in race clothes, but it’s…well…it’s Amy)
Grew up in: Arlington, Texas
What is your favorite motivational quote?There is a trend I jumped on early in January, right after I finished the Goofy Challenge. The Paleo Lifestyle. Most people would call it a diet, and if it was temporary than I would say they were right. At first I was a little spooked by it, but my friend and coach Amy Bennett Eck, dared me to try the lifestyle for 30 days and see what results I obtained and how I felt.
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| Before Paleo |
The first week was tough. I was lethargic, my workouts suffered, and I felt like I had lost a lot of strength and endurance. (Of course that might have also been from the Half Marathon and Marathon I ran the weekend before I started.) Something happened about the middle of the second week. I woke up on Wednesday and I felt better. Interesting thing was, it was immediate. I went to bed Tuesday night after strictly following Paleo for a week plus two days and I woke up on Wednesday, feeling like myself again. I’ll talk about the hi-level science in a minute, but let me just tell you I thought I could take on the world. The following Saturday I ran ten miles faster than I ever had. It was just amazing the energy I had. I don’t have that energy all the time, but I did for the next couple of weeks at least. Ever since then I have keeping a pretty strict Paleo Lifestyle at about 85-90%. The other 15% I attribute to pizza, beer, the occasional ice cream and a few items in my race nutrition.
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| On Paleo |
So what is Paleo? The word Paleo comes from the Paleolithic Era or the caveman era. It is basically eating as the caveman did, before processing, before grains, before even beans and legumes. It basically, consists of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. There are some items that are what I would call, “on the line”, specifically, milk and butter only if they came from a grass fed cow. There are no grains, no legumes, and no other dairy. I really thought it was going to be tough and the first week was, but after I toughed out the first week, I really didn’t even miss the bread, pasta, corn, cheese, yogurt or rice. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Well let me give you my results; I lost 12 pounds and 4% body fat in that first month. Crazy huh? Because of the Goofy Challenge, my workouts were even cut back that month. Since then I have lost another 5 pounds, 3% more body fat, my race times are faster, I can run, swim and bike longer and I have found my love for cooking again.
Let me tell you about the results of my friend Susan Johnson-Velez. Susan is a lawyer and single mom that was a little overweight, and had a severe case of asthma. She started two months prior to me with just removing dairy, and then started Paleo strictly in December and January like me. Now, she is down 35 pounds and the three medications she took for her asthma has been reduced down to a seasonal herb. Isn’t that crazy? I watched this beautiful woman go from baggy dresses and jeans to mini-skirts and dresses and skinny jeans, tight tops and boots. She came with us as our sherpa for the Chicago Marathon last October and when I saw her again at Jet City Coffee in January, my jaw hit the floor. The difference was amazing, and she has only gotten more fit, thinner and hotter since then.
My instruction book for this lifestyle started with The Paleo Diet for Athletes first printing, but since then Joe Friel and Loren Cordain, Phd have updated it. For the edition I was using, Joel Friel, the father of triathlon training, was instructing the Paleo diet for everything except for pre and post workout meals, and race nutrition. I have not completed my read of the second addition, but from what I can tell, Joel is not adding suggestions for those meals to be Paleo as well.
Why Paleo? The theory is, that grains have two major disadvantages; One, they breakdown into sugar, which if you do not use the carbohydrates right away they end up creating imbalances which increases your insulin levels causing the metabolism to slow down and store fat. Second, a lot of grains contain gluten which is basically poison. If the grain, for example oatmeal, does not naturally contain gluten, then there is more than a possibility that it was packaged a facility that also packages grains that do have gluten causing transference. Interesting enough there is another risk of transference of gluten; through meat. If a cow is grain fed, then the meat may have a high level of gluten along with the milk produced. I have actually started buying meat from a farm in Texas that has only grass fed meat. Slanker’s Farms also has chickens, buffalo, and some fish as well. All of it natural without antibiotics, pesticides or hormones.
The benefits of Paleo start by eliminating all the excess sugar your body doesn’t need or use, and then instead of using sugar for energy it uses fat. Since fat is a lot more dense than sugar, the energy production lasts a lot longer, which means you last a lot longer. Can you imagine working out and being able to go a couple of extra miles, just because you want to? Can you imagine a new outlook on life, not to mention cooking? I found a lot deeper interest in cooking since I started Paleo. Also, depending on your body and where you are at the moment, for every pound of excess you rid your body of, it could translate into a 10-12 second per mile decrease in your running time.
There are a lot of resources out there on Paleo. I personally am only fond of books and articles written by Loren Cordain, Phd and Rob Wolf. There are plenty of great resources for recopies on the internet. Do you think you have to give up brownies? Here is my favorite recipe for Paleo Brownies;
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
They are awesome, trust me.
Check out the books and articles online and see what you think. I suggest just thirty days, knowing that the first week to two weeks you will probably not feel great, but the energy will hit like electricity once your body converts from burning sugar to burning fat.
I hope you are able to extract some good information and that it may at least increase your interest in this healthy lifestyle.
September 11th will always remain a significant event in the history of this country. The day when Osama Bin Laden dared to bring terrorism to the United States and unfortunately succeeded, at least at that point in time. Where were you on that day? I bet everyone I ask that question will remember exactly where they were. Me? I was getting ready to go on an interview for a job.
I was just coming out of the shower when the phone rang and it was a neighbor and really good friend of mine, Sue. She told me that a plan had struck the twin towers and to immediately turn on CNN. I swear I told her it must be a hoax until I actually did turn on the TV. I was completely wrecked at the site of the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. As the camera went back live to grab a shot of the destruction, the other plane struck the towers. I was completely floored and I felt like my whole body was over stimulated with anxiety. Then the worst thing happened, I heard another explosion except this time it was not coming from the television. It came from a distance outside my condo. Oh, I didn’t mention that at the time I was living just outside of Washington DC and I had recently separated from the United States Army where I was stationed at the Pentagon.
Within three minutes CNN was relaying the story of the Pentagon. I put some clothes on grabbed my Pentagon badge and left. When I arrived just outside of the gate, guards were already posted at the parking lots and the entryways were fortified. A soldier came to my window and told me to turn around, so I flashed my Pentagon badge and told him I wanted to help. I had people in there and I was a trained EMT and I could at least help triage. He wouldn’t have it. I then asked to him to radio the head of security because I knew him and he knew me very well, but he had his orders and he was not going to make any special provisions. I couldn’t argue with that. All of the military police, security, and medical personnel were all under a great deal of pressure and being that I knew what that was like, I wasn’t going to argue. I turned the car around and went home. It took twice as long for me to arrive at home as it did for me to get there, but after walking in the door and immediately turned on the TV and there I sat, on and off, for two weeks. I was a sponge for information. I made frequent calls back to my old unit asking about people I knew. On that day there were three soldiers who were, subordinates of mine at one time, missing. Friends in other units also missing and two of my mentors pronounced dead; Sergeant Major Robert Strickland and Lieutenant General Tim Maude.
It was a crushing blow for me. I had dinner at both of their houses. General Maude would take me to the Officer’s Dining Room where “a little lunch” was a huge steak and baked potato with all the fixings. SGM Strickland filled in instructing a couple of classes at Ft Jackson when I was in training and then continued my mentorship when I ended up at the Pentagon after Korea. The only thing I could think of was that if I felt this bad, it had to be 100 times worse for any of the victim’s families.
My best friend Sean was living outside of Times Square at the time, and his auditions and work took him all over the city. I immediately picked up the phone and gave him a call, but the circuits were overloaded. I wouldn’t talk to him for three days. The mood around DC and Virginia was somber throughout the coming weeks. It was heavy with dread and confusion, but something positive happened. I noticed that there was very little hostility toward one another.
Everywhere I went I could see citizens going out of their way for one another. For example, an incident that happened to me; the roads were slick after a little rain and I ended up in a 4 car fender bender. Maybe not a fender bender, but a hard love tap. The front car hit the brakes, the car in back of her hit their brakes, then me, then the guy in back of me. We all, got out, looked at our cars and we all had some small dents or paint nicks. My Xterra had part of the bumper had come askew but it looked like it could be fixed pretty easily. The weirdest thing was, no one was mad. We looked at each other shrugged asked if anyone was hurt and basically agreed there was just too much crap going on at that time to worry about such a minor incident. We didn’t call the cops, we didn’t exchange insurance info, we didn’t even exchange names. We shook each other’s hands and went on our way. I saw this happening everywhere I went. Their were customers actually moving their carts to the corral at grocery stores or even helping the employee stack them. I saw two, three, sometimes four cars stopping on the side of the road when a motorist was changing a tire asking if they could help. The whole country was supporting each other. It seemed to last for months before it started to slowly return to the normal disdain.
It was just an amazing sight. I guess the question is why can’t we always feel that way toward each other? Why does the country have to go through an incident of massive destruction for citizens to realize we need each other?
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of people that read my blog, but those of you who do, I challenge you to take an hour every day and think about other people before yourself. As you are in your car, and you see another car that is really trying to merge into traffic but no one is allowing them to enter the line, stop and let that person in. If you notice someone having issues loading groceries into their trunk, offer to help. It is just these little acts of kindness that can change the world as we know it. Lets prove that we do not need a major incident to bring our country together again.