Project Half Marathon: overenthusiastic floorball dad unlucky with injuries

I weigh as little as I did about 20 years ago. And back then, I had three to five training sessions a week and a match every weekend. For about three weeks, the scales have been showing a consistent 81 to 82 kilogrammes.

Admittedly, I probably had a better muscle to fat mass ratio back then – which is no longer the case. But I can still get there, even if I haven’t managed it yet. I’ve been working on it for almost three months now.

And I can say without lying or exaggerating that the work’s fun. I can now almost always manage to fit in three running sessions a week without having to change my plans, postpone appointments or face protests from my family.

Overenthusiastic floorball dad

Although, having said that, I got injured last weekend. At a floorball club family tournament. I’ve been involved in the scene for 30 years and it has rubbed off on my daughter, who’s been an active and enthusiastic floorball player with the Red Ants (website in German) in Winterthur since last autumn. So, it was obviously a matter of honour that we took part in the tournament.

Everything was fine for four and three-quarter games. Then came my last appearance in the last (12-minute) game and one last «sprint» – when I felt a pain in my right adductor. That’s what happens when a slightly overenthusiastic floorball dad has a little too much fun on the court.

That was on Saturday 15 June. Since then, my training programme’s been limited to core strength exercises on the yoga mat in my bedroom. I scheduled my first stress test for 22 June, a week after the injury, confident that I’d be able to train relatively normally again after that.

My three-pillar nutrition plan

But back to my 81.5-kilo body weight. I’m actually a bit proud of it. Tightening my belt – in the literal sense – doesn’t feel so bad after all. But it’s not down to a rigorous diet; it’s regular exercise, a bit more discipline with snacks and a few more conscious everyday shopping habits.

I’ve actually gone in-depth on the abundant and varied literature on the subject of nutrition and sport. At this point, I’m deliberately refraining from recommending any book, blog, author or programme. I definitely don’t have the expertise for that. And to be honest, the number and variety of claims, programmes and diets – which often completely contradict each other – put me off exclusively going with any one of them.

Nevertheless, I’ve made one or two adjustments in terms of nutrition. Firstly in terms of what, secondly in terms of when, and thirdly in terms of how much I eat.

1. The what: Neither low-carb, nor no-carb, nor extra protein, nor vegetarian, nor anything else in particular. But when I go shopping, I’m more conscious of choosing products that are easier to digest, I always have fruit and nuts in the kitchen as snacks, I buy pasta made from spelt, emmer or buckwheat instead of white wheat flour and I get my protein from dairy products, pulses and tofu rather than meat. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up meat altogether – I just prefer fish at the moment. Whether a qualified nutritionist or a self-proclaimed fitness food guru would consider all of this to be sensible doesn’t matter in the slightest to me. I feel great. It's working for me.

2. The when: For many years, I didn’t eat breakfast, eating a lot at lunch and dinner instead. And because I eat too quickly, I often ate more than was healthy. We should «eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper» according to the nutritionist my colleague Siri Schubert consulted last year while she was preparing for the «Hallwilerseelauf» half marathon. I don’t go quite that far, but I now eat breakfast every day – porridge with jam, crème fraîche or compote – and eat significantly less at lunch and dinner than I used to. And I rarely feel hungry between meals or get the urge to snack.

3. The how much: I’ve been wearing a Garmin sports watch (a Forerunner that’s no longer available to buy) for a long time now, and not just since I started this project with Claudio. One of the things it measures is how many calories my everyday (in)activity burns. The (overly) simple calculation would be: eat fewer calories than you burn and the weight should fall off. Of course, it’s not that simple. And I don’t want to lose lots of weight. Dropping a few kilos from the 84-odd I started with at the end of March is actually enough for me. To maintain this, I pay attention to how many calories I consume every day. And I enter everything I eat and drink into an app. Myfitnesspal works very well for me. But for me, it’s not about eating as little as possible or being in a constant calorie deficit; it’s primarily about not constantly consuming excess calories, which was definitely too often the case in the past.

So far, I’ve been doing really well with these three pillars when it comes to eating. I don’t have to force myself to do anything, stop myself from doing anything or restrict myself. On the contrary: I eat more consciously, enjoy meals more, and don’t feel starved or overfull. To be honest, I don’t rely on much more than my gut feeling and a little common sense – with a little technical support.

Body fat be gone

More important than body weight alone is body composition, especially body fat percentage. At around 1.77 metres tall, I’d personally find around 80 kilogrammes comfortable (without having a specific reason for this exact number). I had my body fat percentage measured in March at a medical nutrition and fitness centre using bioelectrical impedance analysis. The result a good three months ago was a percentage of 27.7.

For men between 40 and 60 years old, between 11 and 22 per cent is considered healthy – those who are physically active should aim for the lower end of the range. So, I was a few per cent above that. I hope and suspect that regular training has lowered this percentage naturally over the last three months. At the end of June – halfway through my half marathon preparation – I’ll do another analysis like this to see whether I really am on the right track.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you want to know what Claudio and I have achieved – or not achieved – in the last three months, you can read our previous updates here: