Eat to Walk

Healthy Eating while you Train

Most athletes, including walkers, need large amounts of food to fuel their active lifestyle. Choosing the most nutritious foods that provide the broadest range of nutrients will give you the best possible results. Here are a few guidelines to follow.

1. Don’t dismiss Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating. It is a very good guide to how we should eat and it does work for athletes.
2. Be sure to eat low fat, high fibre, full grain choices whenever possible.
3. Don’t confuse fuel with nutrition. During long walks and events you will need quickly available fuel. The goal is to get sugar into the system efficiently for the activity. The rest of the time (ie when not exercising) the goal is to get the best nutrients into the body.
4. BREAKFAST: It is very important to have a healthy breakfast. Choose whole grain breads and cereals with low fat and sugar and high fibre. Have a serving of fruit, milk and protein each morning. (Ex Shredded Wheat, skim milk, whole grain toast with peanut butter, half cup of mellon and a cup of coffee)
5. SNACKS: Snacks are an important part of the training diet and should be eaten morning, afternoon and evening. Try to have at least two food groups at each snack with one being complex carbohydrate. (ex Whole grain crackers and cheese; and apple and some almonds; grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat and a glass of OJ)
6. LUNCH: One of the under rated meals for athletes. Using the training plate below as a guide will help ensure you get a balanced meal..
7. SUPPER; Again use the training plate as a guide

The TRAINING PLATE is a great easy way to plan your meals

Train to Walk

The key to successful training is like the old joke about election day, when they say “vote early, vote often”. When preparing for a long distance event the key is to “train early, train often”. Don’t wait until a month or two before the event. The Marathon by the Sea Programs are 20 weeks in duration to be sure you have adequate training.

Almost all endurance events have the same key workouts, here is a great summary:

Types of Walks

Easy walks
Top coaches and exercise physiologists believe that most walkers should do 80 to 90 percent of their weekly training at the easy walk pace (this includes your long walks, done at approximately the same pace). Easy walks build your aerobic fitness, and your muscular and skeletal strength. They also help you burn more calories and recover for harder workouts.

Tempo walks
Tempo walks help you improve your walking economy and your walking form. They are often described as "hard but controlled" walks, and they will help you prepare for races of 10,000 meters to the marathon. Tempo workouts generally fall into one of two categories: steady walks of 4 to 8 kms; or long intervals with short recoveries. Here's an example of the latter: 4 x 1 km at tempo walk pace with 2 minutes of recovery jogging between repeats. You should do tempo walks no more than once a week, and they should make up no more than 10 to 15 percent of your total training.

Maximum-oxygen walks
Maximum-oxygen workouts help you improve your walking economy and your racing sharpness. These workouts are often called "interval workouts," and are most useful when you are preparing for a race of 5000 meters to half-marathon. Here's an example of a good maximum-oxygen workout: 6 x 800 meters at maximum-oxygen pace with 1-4 minutes of recovery walking between repeats. You should do maximum-oxygen workouts no more than once a week, and they should make up no more than 6 to 10 percent of your total training. (When you walk these workouts, you are walking at or near 100 percent of your maximum oxygen capacity, which scientists call max VO2; hence the name for these walks.)

Long walks
Long walks form the foundation of all marathon training programs. Long walks build everything from your confidence to your discipline to your fat-burning. So, even when you're not training for a specific marathon, it's a good idea to do at least one semi-long walk a week. Because long walks are done at a relaxed pace, there's great latitude in how fast you actually walk. In general, we believe that slower is better than faster. Let your long walks be your slow walks, and save your legs for other days of the week when you might do tempo walks or maximum-oxygen walks. But there are a thousand theories about how to do long walks, none of which have yet been proven superior to the others. The important thing is building up the distance and training your body to keep going for 3, 4, 5 or however many hours it's going to take you.

Putting It All Together

Just because there are lots of different workouts doesn't mean that you should do them all every week. Just the opposite in fact. Please consider the following.

Hard days
We recommend that most beginning and intermediate walkers do just two hard days a week. More advanced walkers can do three hard days if they're very careful. Each of the following is a hard day workout: tempo walks, maximum-oxygen walks, long walks.

Hard days/Easy days
A hard day workout should usually be followed by one or (even better) two easy day workouts. easy days can of course include rest days and cross-training days.

Rest days
Most beginning and intermediate walkers should walk 4 to 6 days a week. We recommend one or two rest days, when you do no training at all (or just take a relaxed 30-minute walk) and one or two cross-training days.

Cross-training days
With the boom in triathlons and exotic fitness equipment, the world of cross-training has expanded dramatically in recent years. While research indicates that cross-training probably won't make you a faster walker, we believe it can make you a stronger and healthier and less injury-prone walker. We believe that walkers do best with cross-training exercises that are non-weight-bearing. This includes swimming and aqua-walking, strength-training, bicycling and rowing. We also like non-impact exercises, which include nordic skiing, elliptical training and step climbing.

Beginning to Walk

Nordic Walking
It's the Next Big Thing

Nordic Walking is new... and old. Trekking has been common in Alpine countries and using poles and walking sticks has always been a part of walking on tough terrain. More recently, poles have been used to enhance the exercise value of walking for both athletes and those interested in general wellbeing.

Here is some great information from the Cooper Institute.

The Cooper Institute

The Cooper Institute in Texas compared physiological responses of Nordic Walking to regular walking. The caloric expenditure and the oxygen consumption increase on an average with 20% and the heart rate increase with about 10 beats per minute when using the Exel Nordic Walker poles. The interesting thing is that even through the body works harder using the poles, the RPE (rated perceived exertion) was the same walking with or without poles!

Dr. Tim Church said, "Some individuals increased as much as 46% in oxygen consumption and just about the same in caloric expenditure."

Quotes from the study:

"Individuals who poled more intensely had higher oxygen consumption."

"There is potential for considerably more or less benefit depending on the selection of poling-off intensity. This may have particular significance for individuals who need to increase caloric expenditure but have walking speed limitations."

"Increased caloric expenditure with no corresponding increase in perceived exertion during Nordic Walking, may have important public health applications."

"The use of Nordic Walker poles is particularly promising, as the poles provide stability that may promote physical activity among older individuals and those with orthopedic and balance concerns."

T. Church, C. Earnest, G. Morss at The Cooper Institute,
RQES, vol 73, No.3, pp. 296-300, September 2002

Comment: It is obvious, that correct Nordic Walking technique improves the efficiency of Nordic Walking!