My First Paleo Powered Race

Yesterday I competed in a sprint triathlon in Freeport, Texas. I did this same race last year when I would have considered myself in the best shape I've been in athletically. I love this race and have been looking forward to it all year, partly because it's just a really fun, local, small race, and partly because it's the first race I ever placed in. Last year I got second in my age group, so I was hoping for big things again this year. This was all before the whole paleo thing entered the picture, so a couple of weeks ago I started to wonder how this was going to affect my performance. In the early days of eating paleo, a couple of my workouts went, well, less than perfectly, so I was anxious as to what it would do (or not dot) for me.

I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I have fairly little to report as far as feeling anything different than normal. It's definitely a good thing that I didn't feel that I had any less energy than I normally would at a race of this distance. It was a very windy day and so the bike portion zapped a lot of the energy that I would normally take with me to the run, but again, this didn't in any way feel due to a lack of anything to do with my diet. On the positive side after the event was over I felt like I recovered perhaps a little faster than normal. Relatively speaking, a sprint is a short race that doesn't require a ton of recovery, but it is an intense event that does leave your body depleted and in need of some care. Yesterday, however, I took down a lot of water and some fruit after the race, then went and had an omelet with my friends, and I felt pretty much normal for the rest of the day. I took about a 15 minute power nap and sat on the couch watching a movie for a couple hours, but today I have zero soreness or fatigue. I usually would have left over soreness and a lot of fluid retention the day after a race of any distance. Today I'm actually down a little in weight, and feel totally hydrated and fueled.

My conclusion? I love this for competition. I didn't see a huge up swing in energy during the race, but there was definitely no down swing, and if I can recover faster and hop right back into the game, then that's a huge bonus. After getting over my initial sugar withdrawals the first couple of days, I continue to be so pleased with how eating this way makes me feel.