It's What's For Dinner

Getting us all ready to ride our best is really about wellness. That is, it's not just about one-dimensional training. It's about seeking and living a whole, healthy lifestyle. Most lifetime athletes will tell you that competitive events are more incidental snapshots of particular moments. In many ways, the training is what the sport is all about.

Our food choices are just one aspect of a healthy lifestyle. For many years, I didn't realize how important healthy food choices are. I was on a "see food" diet. See food: eat it. Riding thousands of miles every year, I could easily burn off all the calories and maintain a healthy weight and high fitness. What I wasn't aware of was how much plaque was accumulating in my arteries.

I believed that as a lifetime endurance cyclist I had earned a free pass in terms of nutrition. A few years ago I was eating along the lines of a Mediterranean diet plus a mess of chocolate and snack food when I felt like it. Why turn down free, delicious food if I'm burning off all the calories anyhow?

Blockage of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery is what interventional cardiologists nickname "the widow-maker". As it turns out, it's a pretty common way for fit folks to die a sudden, unexpected death from heart attack. We all know that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of all American adults -- but not us, right? I slept well believing that an incidental benefit of my thousands-of-miles-a-year fitness program was getting to skate right past any worries about heart issues. With a resting heart rate in the 40's why worry?

So I got a shocking slap in the face back in February of 2011 -- all the signs of an impending heart attack. Sudden weakness, deep achy arms, tight chest, immediate complete exhaustion, other feelings of stuff generally coming undone. I happened to be only about five minutes into a bike ride at the time. First time I figured it was jet lag. It went away a few minutes later. Second time my co-workers convinced me to get to a doctor. I'm lucky (blessed) to have gotten a second time. Many people ignore symptoms and die from heart attacks -- every day. After a flurry of doctor visits and exams, it turns out I'd managed to get my LAD 95% blocked. I hadn't had a heart attack, i.e., no heart muscle damage due to lack of oxygen. But I was about five jumping jacks away from sudden death.

I got to enjoy an angioplasty, a stent, a lot of medical bureaucracy, and several weeks out of work to recover enough just to walk at a fast stride. I'm back to riding a few thousand miles every year. But this is not a sequence I have any interest in repeating.

My cardiologist proscribed various medications including statins that mostly disguise the problem but don't get at the root cause, and don't extend lifespan. As I learned from painful experience, they can also cause some nasty collateral damage.

Instead of following that path, I re-learned how to eat. First I learned what to eat. I continue to work on what not to eat, or at least what to minimize.

Lesson One is easy: For the next 30 days, commit to eating at least three different fruits and three different vegetables -- every day. It's not hard. But no slacking! Every day. We're not (yet) discussing what else you jam down your gullet. Do it right. Put a piece of paper and a pencil in the kitchen and make three columns. Write the next 30 days dates down the left column. Write "fruits" above the second column. Write "veggies" above the third column. Score yourself with little stars (or check marks) every day. Not kidding. Do it.