Yesterday 4 of us competed in the In2Adventure Mountain Designs adventure race at The Cattai National park.

Myself, Darrin, Tristan and Jack all competed in the solo division.

Tristan did awesome and took first place!

I took 5th place, Darrin 7th and Jack 10th.

The race was awesome, we started with a sprint to the beach where we had to check a map and mark down our 3 first checkpoints.

From there it was over to transition area 1 and we had to swim across a very cold creek. We made out way on foot another couple of km’s via a couple more checkpoints to the bike drop.

After a quick spot inspection to ensure we were all carrying our first aid kits, we made our way on bike via another checkpoint to the kayaks.

A 5km kayak via 3 checkpoints brought us back to our bikes and we were off again for another 3 checkpoints which would bring us back to the creek crossing. This time however, we had to cross with our bikes. Thankfully there was a rope to hold onto as we crossed the creek carrying our bikes. Bear in mind, this creek was much deeper than we were tall. Swimming with a bike whilst fully clothed is no easy task!

We made our way back to race headquarters where we were given another map with 4 more checkpoints to collect on our mountain bikes.

This again brought us back to race headquarters where we had to mark down another 2 checkpoints on our map to collect on foot. Another nice little 3km run to top everything else off!

I crossed the line in 3hrs 45 mins. Darrin came in 2 mins after me and Jack about 15 mins later.

Tristan of course finished in 3hrs, smashing everyone!

I am going to take this opportunity to tell you how I carb loaded (not) before the race to give me the energy to take part in this 3+ hour race.

For breakfast I ate 2 boiled eggs, 3 pieces of eye bacon, 1.5 cups grapes, 2 mandarins and 20 cashew nuts. I also ate about 1/3 Purefit bar 30 mins before the race. I would have eaten the whole thing, but I wasn’t hungry.

So, 2 points to take away from this;

1. Adventure races are awesome! They are so much fun and a great way to test your fitness and navigational skills.

2. You don’t need to carb load. Get all of your nutrition from your food by combining good carbs with good protein and good fat.

Many of you already know that I have been eating in Zone ratios for about 2 years now. Originally with any food I liked and in the past 12 months using mainly Paleo foods (which I also like).

Recently I have been receiving regular updates from the Health blog of Dr Barry Sears, the founder of the Zone diet. I call it the Zone diet, but I prefer to think of it as eating in the Zone, the word diet has so many stigmas attached to it, and rightly so!

The Zone diet simply means balancing your protein, carbs and fats at every meal. It also shows you how big or small your portions should be at each meal. It has easy to read charts to reference portions sizes for protein, carbs and fat.

It is by no means a fad diet and by no means a high protein diet. The proportions that zone recommends are 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 30% fat. It is basically structured balanced eating. Something most of us don’t do (regardless of what we think we do).

Eating in the Zone simply means eating within a zone that keeps your blood sugar levels stable without spikes, thus reducing the amount of insulin circulating in the body and keeping inflammation in the body to a minimum. Inflammation is responsible for most health issues in our bodies along with increased weight gain.

It is a much easier approach to weight loss and inflammation reduction than Paleo eating, but when you get a handle on portion control, you should look to switch the majority of your eating to Paleo foods to get the best results for your health and weight loss.

So anyway, the reason for this post is to share with you some of the better updates I have received from Dr Sears Health blog.

I have been posting them regularly on the Fitta Bodies facebook page, but here they are for all of you to read through at your leisure. They are quite short and concise with loads of relevant info.

Enjoy!

Click on these links to read the full article;

Eat like our paleolithic ancestors
No excuses, eat your breakfast
The secret of blueberries
Coffee and diabetes
Polyphenols make probiotics work better
Blame weight gain on the brain
What’s the story on chocolate
New food trends may be dysfunctional
The latest useless fad diet
Gastric banding – admitting failure
Mythologies in treating childhood obesity
Good and Bad carbohydrates
Fish oil and fat loss
Where does fat go
The demise of the mediterranean diet

To stay up to date the easiest with all of my updates, simply join the facebook page here.