NY Marathon 2008 Highlights by a runner New York Marathon

Runners view of NY Marathon, 2008, first made for donators to charity I ran for

Starting Point For Triathlon Trainings

The popularity of triathlon is escalating as more triathletes compete for this multi-sports event which includes swimming, running and cycling. The intensity of the workout trainings is attracting many enthusiasts although the reasons can vary from perceiving it as an effective weight loss program, a way to increase fitness level or simply for the love of high adrenalin sports.

These three endurance sports are really tough and it challenges your stamina and fitness level. Most of the time triathletes go through intensive trainings to condition their body and to be fit for this competition. Despite of these punishing workouts, it is strange to know that triathlon is sweeping its popularity across the globe.

So what are the underlying health benefits of triathlon trainings? Perhaps you wonder what propels them to compete or to go through these rigorous trainings. However, you have to remember that not everyone trains to compete. The competition is only a bonus after reaping the health benefits of triathlon trainings.

It is important to understand that you will require experts to guide you for these intensive workouts to avoid injuries and accidents. If you are really keen to kick off the triathlon workouts, then it is best to enroll in fitness boot camps.

Fitness boot camps are good venue to start because they are equipped with experts and the facilities for training. Conditioning your body for such intensive exercise must be done gradually especially if you have been living a sedentary lifestyle. The professional trainers and nutritionists in fitness and weight loss camps are your best guide in the initial phase of your plan to proceed further in triathlon trainings.

Boot camp programs are always incorporated with high intensity of cardiovascular exercises such as running, boxing, swimming, cycling and so on. As you go for these workouts, the fitness experts and certified nutritionist in the boot camps will impart you with the knowledge about fitness and nutrition. They will educate you and in return it equips you with proper and right health information before taking further the triathlon trainings.

So what are the incontestable health benefits of triathlon trainings? The primary benefit is you develop lean muscles and improve your stamina. It is also considered to be the fastest way to lose fats because of the intense cardiovascular exercises it involves. This is one of the chief reasons that more people are training for triathlon.

In addition to that, it eliminates boredom compared to regular workouts in the gym. The variation in the triathlons training activities will definitely keep the level of your enthusiasm up, more so if you aim for the competition.

Make no mistake when you start for the triathlon trainings. There is no other best way to train yourself before undergoing such intensive workouts than to condition your body first in fitness boot camps. This is to ensure that any aspiring triathletes will start safe and injury free.

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The Danskin Womens Triathlon – A Great Starting Place

If you are a woman and interested in doing a triathlon, you need to participate in the best triathlon there is available, the Danskin Womens Triathlon.  This triathlon takes place in many different locations at many different times of the year. It begins with the first triathlon of the series starting in May and the last in the series ending in late September.  The Danskin Womens Triathlon takes place in locations all over the United States, therefore no matter where you live, you will have an opportunity to participate in at least one of the triathlons in the series.  The dates and locations listed below show where the races took place in 2009, therefore you can make a reasonable guess that the races will occur around the same time for 2010 in similar locations:

May 9, 2009– Tempe, AZ May 10, 2009– Orlando, FL May 31, 2009– Miami, FL June 7, 2009– Austin, TX June 28, 2009– Aurora, CO July 26, 2009– New England (Massachusetts) August 2, 2009– Philadelphia, PA August 16, 2009– Seattle, WA September 13. 2009– NY Metro Area (New Jersey) September 27, 2009– Chicagoland (Wisconsin)

If you are planning to participate in the Danskin Womens Triathlon, these are the areas that the race usually tales place in.

There are many good reasons for participating in a women's only triathlon.  One is that the Danskin Womens Triathlon was set-up solely to promote health and fitness in women.  Not only that but the Danskin Womens Triathlon donates a large part of its proceeds for breast cancer research. For many women this is a great cause, which is why they chose to partake in the Danskin Womens Triathlon.  This triathlon is a great way to raise money for research for a charitable cause. 

The Danskin Womens Triathlon also offers a mentor program for training as well.  If you have always wanted to do a triathlon, but are not sure how to train, by deciding to do the Danskin Womens Triathlon you will have a mentor that will help you train and prepare for all the phases of the race: swimming, running and biking. 

If you are wanting participate in a triathlon, the Danskin Womens Triathlon is the one to participate in.  It is a woman's only triathlon and it is all about what is best for the health of a woman.

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Starting to run and train for a 5k race

Starting to run for the first time will seem hard! You can find yourself out of breath easily and your body can give out signals that say stop.
The key here is to start very slowly and build up gradually to enable your body to get used to the new routine. An 8 week schedule will reflect that, with the first 2 weeks going by time rather than distance.

Setting a Schedule
When starting out you should take things very easy and you need to settle how many times in a week that you think you can run without overdoing it. I would suggest 3 times a week, which gives opportunity for plenty of rest in between.
Rest is very important as your body needs time to recover and repair after periods of exertion. View rest as part of the overall training that you are doing. Never do 2 days back to back running in your early training – learn to rest, it will pay off in the end.
NB. It is important to do some warm up exercises before starting any running – this should be at least 5 mins. of movement to get your body mobile
Try to run for 5mins at first. If that goes ok, then try and build up through to 10 mins. For most folks this should equate to about a mile run. If this is done over the first 2 weeks then continue to map out your programme running in miles rather than minutes. Weeks 3 to 6 should see a progression from 1 mile to 3. Aim to run your first training 5k at week 5 or 6. The final 2 weeks should build on what has been achieved so that the 5k distance can be covered comfortably.
Another important factor is your mental attitude. Staying positive is key and will help you a great deal as you progress in your training.

What surfaces to train on
It is a good idea to vary the surfaces that you run on. Forest trails are really good as they do not cause much jarring on the joints as you run.
A mixture of Roads, Paths, Trails, and Grassy surfaces are what you should aim for, but bear in mind that most races are on roads so a good part of your training should be done on them.
Use of the treadmill has become very popular and these are ideal if the weather is bad or you just want to stay in one place while you train/run.

Logging Information
It is a good practice to keep a log of your runs. Putting down elements like date, time, course ran, distance covered, time taken, type of course, weather conditions, how you felt etc.
This will prove invaluable when looking back and tracking your running history. It will also help in mapping out future goals and aims.

When not to run
Being Health-Wise is also crucial, do not run if you have a 'chesty' cold. You can still run with a light head cold – but always err on the side of caution.
If you find yourself with an injury, don't try and 'run it off' – it seldom works and can cause you to miss training for a longer period than you thought. Always listen to what your body is saying!

REMEMBER -  It is important to do some warm up exercises before starting any running -this should be at least 5 mins. of movement to get your body mobile.

Starting a Raw Food Diet

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Phillip McClusky shares on starting a raw food diet.

Renegade Water Secrets with Phillip McClusky, who lost 200 lbs. and found health and happiness in a raw food lifestyle. He is the host of www.lovingraw.com.

Kevin: So you're reading "Raw Family" you're sitting on the couch and you decide to go raw, what were the first three days like, the first week? How did that all pan out for you?

Phillip: Well I had tried so many things before in the past and what had happened was some of them were so confusing. Some of them were you had to buy this plan and you had to buy this package in the store and you had to write down how many calories and you had to move cards from slot to slot and all these different little colors and programs and all these different things that all these diets came across. So I knew that none of those were successful and basically they were confusing and not something that I want to do every day. I didn't really want to look at every single calorie or every single box I picked up. So when I switched to this raw lifestyle what I had decided was the only way that I was going to be consistent and be able to do this was if I kept it simple and I stayed on a very easy program.

So in the very beginning I didn't even concentrate on exercise. And it's not that I recommend that but for me that's what worked. I knew that I had to get the food right. I had literally devoured raw food books. I was reading a book a day and was really excited about everything. But I noticed that every body had a different opinion on raw foods. So somebody would say, "You have to juice so much." The next person would say, "Juicing's no good you have to do smoothies." The next person would say, "You have to have 50 percent of your diet superfood." And then the next person would say, "You have to mono-meal or do natural hygiene." I read all that and what I decided to do was take all the information in and then do what felt right for me.

So the first three days for me were quite simple. I had been used to eating large meals so I figured, "I'm going to continue to eat large meals and I'm just going to switch them to salads." So in the morning I had fruit and for lunch and dinner I had giant salads. I always think of it like this, when you go to maybe an Italian restaurant or a family-style restaurant and you have six or eight people around the table and they bring out a big bowl of salad that's for everybody at the table, that's pretty much what I made for my lunch and for my dinner. I didn't worry about quantity. Some people would say, "You can't have more than three avocados a week." Well I was having three avocados a day, or four avocados a day. Some people would say, "It's a good idea not to have more than a handful of nuts a day." Well I was having like ten handfuls of nuts a day. I was making these giant salads that were really fulfilling and kept me pretty much at the same par as far as quantity wise, the food that I was eating. I pretty much stuck with that the next three days. Little did I know that my body would intuitively make changes and that would decrease over time.

Kevin: What would decrease?

Phillip: The size, the amount of food that I was actually eating.

Kevin: Got you. Why don't you talk a little bit about…there's a bunch of things I want to speak about but since we're on what you started off eating, let's talk a little bit about how that transition over the last two years, maybe give us a snapshot of every six months up until now. So six months from there, then six months-

Phillip: Sure. Great question. So here I am making these big, giant meals and just enjoying it and loving it. The weight is literally just flying off of me. Even without exercise at the time the weight was just flying off of me, just from changing the way I was eating. And I was shocked. I mean, I remember the first time I stepped on the scale and I realized that I had lost like 45 or 50 pounds or something like that, I just couldn't believe it. It was a great feeling.

Then over the course of maybe the next three or four months I had noticed something that I had never noticed before, I was eating this giant, massive salad and I noticed that about 25 percent of the salad was left over. And I thought to myself, "Well that's strange. I've never not finished a meal before." So what I had to do was reevaluate. And I said, "Well, I guess I'm getting fuller quicker." So I would make my salad a little bit smaller. Then over the next couple of months again the same thing happened, I had a little bit of the salad left over, about 25 percent. So I was making it smaller and smaller until I finally started to notice that it was kind of shrinking down to a normal size. It was quite an interesting experience because I wasn't needing as much mass, this large amount of food that I had been used to eating.

So then I wondered how I could change other things. I was having fun and I was experimenting and there was times that I did make some of the gourmet raw foods. I went out and got a Cuisinart food processor and dehydrator and blender and stuff like that. I would have fun making some of the raw dishes and the pizzas and stuff like that sometimes, but it wasn't my normal fare. My normal fare was usually just fruit in the morning and this salad for lunch and dinner.

So after a while I started really getting into making green smoothies or green shakes and literally just putting in an entire head of maybe spinach or lettuce or whatever green, I would rotate my greens, in with a little bit of fruit and water. And I would make this giant half-gallon smoothie. I started drinking that in the morning instead of just eating the fruit. It was a good way for me to get in my greens and fiber and a large amount of water, being a half-gallon container. I noticed that would take me until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Then I might eat a little bit and then I would have dinner later on.

Then I started to notice that would take me until 3 o'clock. I just wasn't hungry until that point. Then 4 o'clock, and then 5 o'clock. Then one day I was just sitting down and I realized that I hadn't been eating lunch anymore and that I was totally fine. My body felt energized and excited and I was losing weight and I was feeling great. Literally this half-gallon smoothie, which is a lot of liquid, that I was making in the morning was taking me right to dinner. So I had switched from a three-meal way of eating to this two-meal essentially within probably eight months to a year, maybe around the year mark. Then I would just have a very moderate salad for dinner.

I was really thinking about the dynamics of how everything had worked and how things had transpired and what had felt so good was I didn't necessarily have to listen to anybody's rules per say, I took in what everybody was talking about and if one day I felt like just juicing, I would juice. If the next day I felt like having smoothies, I would do that. If I was eating oranges and just felt like having citrus, I would do a mono-meal of oranges. So I kind of incorporated a little bit of what everybody was talking about. But more than anything I really began to start, for the first time in my life, intuitive eating and just eating what felt right for me. There might be a day when I had mangoes and they tasted fantastic and I'd have maybe four in a row because there was something inside there that my body was really desiring, but then a couple of weeks later I would go to eat the same mango and it might not be that tasty for me. So I just figured to myself that maybe my body already got out of it what it had needed. So intuitive eating became a really big part of the way I started to live. Some days I'd feel a little bit weighed down and I might just do juice that day. I was totally fine with it. And vice versa, some other days I might just feel like I want to be a little bit more grounded so I might do a little bit more as far as avocado and nuts and such.

But this process was a fairly gradual process until I got to the point that I am at today. Really just intuitive eating and just really listening to your body and breathing throughout the process and just kind of being present to what I was putting in my mouth was probably the greatest source of change for me and felt the best for my body.

So maybe after a year I started figuring out what would be the next option for me and things just kind of got lighter and lighter until maybe about a year and a half or a year and six, seven months. I decided to do a juice fast. Basically what that was was drinking just juice for 92 days. It was something totally new for me, I hadn't done any kind of long-term fast for anytime that long. And I just felt that it was right, it was my time and I just jumped right in to it. I ended up extending it and I did it for 100 days. For 100 days I just had fruit and vegetable juice. So that had switched my diet drastically. But it was a new experience and I wanted to really experience what the human potential was and what my body could really do and how much resolve and determination I had to really stick with this thing. So I did it and just experienced such amazing changes in my life, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. I experienced such amazing changes.

Then after the juice feast period I'm slowly transitioning, that ended maybe about three or four months ago, and I'm just slowly transitioning back into my old way of eating, having smoothies in the morning, having salads. I do a lot of high water content fruits and vegetables – cucumbers and celery and tomato and things like that. Lately I've moved away from the nuts so much and just kind of keep to some simple seeds, like chia or flax or sunflower seeds and some things like that. But I tend to do a lot of high water content. I usually have at least a head of some sort of green – lettuce, bok choy, swiss chard- per day. And I keep it simple. People ask me if I get bored and I'm just like, "Fresh fruits and vegetables is what my body craves."

Raw Food Diet Plan – What Kind of a Diet Plan You Should Have When Starting Out With Raw Food

When starting out with raw food, a diet plan is immensely important as that helps you stay on course and makes sure that you have the least withdrawal symptoms. Initially if you are totally into cooked food then it will be wise to have a raw food diet plan which has 50% raw vegan food while having the remaining 50% as cooked food. This is just an estimate and you should figure out the ratio which you are most comfortable with as initially your job is solely to get acclimatized to the new raw vegan food diet plan.

At this stage it will also be wise to invest in some raw, vegan food cookbooks as those will give you a whole lot of recipes to play with. And playing is exactly where the fun is! When you start on a raw food diet plan there is just so many new things that you can try. In a raw food diet plan you can start with making delicious desserts, hemp dishes, raw soups, entrees, snacks etc. Also as time goes by you will learn which recipes and what kind of a raw food diet is best for you and stick with that.

People who are already living on a diet of this kind food cant stop raving about its benefits. Raw diet is rich in everything your body will ever require from dietary fiber (**extremely important** for a good digestive system) to vitamins, minerals, proteins.

You can try some raw recipes and see what works for you and what you personally like. Who knows this just might be all that goodness that you were looking for…