Is your diet helping you to rise to the Challenge?

While I was out indulging in cheese purchasing at the markets, 8000 participants braved the wind and rain on Wednesday to compete in the annual JP Morgan Corporate Challenge - a 5.6km race around Centennial Park.

I would like to pay tribute to 2 runners who finished this event with awesome results. A friend Mike Conway, and my husband Grant Chamberlain, both 41 and both have super-intense long-hour jobs in stockbroking and investment banking respectively. They both eat a largely unprocessed traditional wholefoods diet and shun conventional sports "foods".

Mike finished the race in 19 minutes- his personal best- coming 32 out of 8000! Mike leads a running group in the city during lunch hours a few days a week.

Grant typically competes in longer-distance events (eg iron man). Nonetheless he finished at 23.42 minutes. As he said his result is nothing to rave home about compared to Mike's effort BUT what I think is important is that Grant was able to maintain the exact time he last ran that race 5 years ago, give or take a few seconds AND he only maanged to squeeze in a few training runs for this event AND he blew the doors off the much younger members of his work team who also competed.

This shows yet again that an unprocessed traditional wholefoods diet allows you to achieve stellar athletic results well past your 20s, into your 40s and be able to maintain your fitness without the need to pound the pavement on a daily basis.

I think both these men would agree that there is no way that they could have achieved these results and maintain their level of fitness on a conventional diet. Of course getting plenty of sleep and rest, managing stress, engaging in pleasurable activities, soaking up sunshine and breathing well also lay the foundation to our health and fitness. But a wholefoods diet is a "critical enabler" as Grant eloquently put it last night. Nail the diet and you'll be miles ahead of pack.

Well done guys!

For related blogs regarding diet and athletic performance click here, here and here.