Anecdotally, I have absolutely noticed a decline in motivation and performance after a course of antibiotics. Although, in each of these cases there has also been a reason why I was taking the antibiotics. Usually because I crashed my bike and needed them to prevent or fight off an infection. For that reason, I’ve never really thought about the potential that antibiotics were exacerbating the problem – until last night when I…
Health
Another nail in the Keto coffin
I have lots of opinions. Some of them are well-founded, other’s a bit more fluid ;). I do try to keep on top of the important ones, with the idea that as the best available information changes, it might be necessary to change my opinion as well. This is not shaping up to be one of those cases. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think that Keto is a great diet for…
Game Changer?
~18 months ago, I changed my diet dramatically. The biggest challenge was mostly the social aspect of shared eating experiences. Which, was very easy during the pandemic because I do 95% of the meal prep in our family, but as the world opened up, that has become more of a challenge. Now that travel and more restaurants are on the table, there are lots of places where there simply aren’t any decent…
Food for thought
Not going to deny that there might be some confirmation bias on my part, but I’ve been really pleased with the changes I made to my diet last year. That’s not to say there aren’t trade-offs involved, mostly around inconvenience, but there’s no arguing that from a personal health perspective I’m much better off. Of course it’s impossible for me to say to what degree the fitness improvements I’ve made over the…
Resting heart rate as an indicator of relative stress
Like a lot of people, I track my resting heart rate (RHR) as an indicator of training stress. It’s hard to know whether to CRUSH IT, take a rest day, or get in the space between otherwise. It’s a real number that provides insight into what’s going on, well before I would otherwise notice. With the worst of it over (hopefully), I thought it would be interesting to explore the impact crashing,…
Just say “no” to keto
I noticed when GCN started pumping out their keto videos, but was too distracted to comment at the time. To be clear, I think it an interesting, but completely settled, topic. Carbs are the most efficient way to fuel. Period. If you want to lose weight; add miles, cut back on calories, or both. For most people, finding a healthy weight is a simple math problem. It’s also worth pointing out that…
I’ve been doing wound care wrong. My whole life.
Unfortunately, I picked up some lacerations, and stitches, in last night’s adventure, but fortunately the 182lb Pure Climber was there to let me know that I have been handling my wound care incorrectly. For as long as I’ve been self-managing my wound care. Maybe it’s just me, but I suspect not given 1) the host’s desire to discuss it 2) he specifically mentioned that some surgeons do it wrong 3) it’s what…
Brilliant. Just eff’g brilliant.
This is super interesting, and every time I try to think of something clever to say about why you should watch it, I come up short. What can I say that isn’t already in the title. Just watch it already.…
It’s getting hot in here…
It was my understanding that training in the heat not only helps with performance in the heat (duh), but also performance in the cool. So there’s simple guidance: train hot whenever you can. That might not actually be the case (thanks 182lb Pure Climber for the link), with the study below indicating that there’s no performance benefit to be had from training hot for cool weather events. The sample isn’t massive (only…
Is HRV useful? Probably, but it’s complicated…
I don’t have a Whoop, but many of my friends do, so when I picked up a fēnix 6 (which can do HRV), I got on the HRV monitoring train. My goal was to find something that could be used in addition to, or instead of RHR, as a marker of capacity for training load in a given day. Not quite ready to share the results, but the screenshot above is a…