Eat and Run, Scott Jurek.
Ok here goes the promised review of Scott Jurek’s, Eat and Run in a nutshell. A good read if you are interested in Sports Nutrition
Scott Jurek is an ultra-runner, probably one of the best we will ever witness. He makes running a 50 mile race sound like something we could all do. He often runs 8 miles in the morning and 10-20 that evening, with a long’ run at the week end, (or two!).
He does all this on a plant based diet…….
From a man who regularly ate McDonalds, to an ultra-runner who brings home made bean tortillas on his ultra runs and races, he charts his progress and rise to the ultimate 165km race. His main concern was that he would not get enough protein from a plant based diet but he discovered this wasn’t the case and introduced new foods that he had never eaten before into his diet,(such a key thing for us all to do). While he did try at one stage to eat a raw food diet he felt this was too time consuming.
Another interesting point is his lack of use of medicines including pain killers preferring to use the likes of pineapple to help reduce swelling and turmeric which both have anti-inflammatory properties.
This book makes an interesting read if you are interested in your health and would be a good starting point with some recipes thrown in.
If you are thinking about changing to a plant based diet then this book would give you the confidence that your training won’t suffer. It’s a good starting point and points out the various pitfalls that Scott expected to come across and how he dealt with them. No doubt the sheer amount of training and his very determined attitude got him through some very tough times on the trails, but it’s also very refreshing to see how much interest he takes in his diet and how he learned from the experts and saw what they were doing and what they were eating. Again I suppose this reinforces the need for a good diet and shows that long term a good diet has many benefits to us all, ultra runners or not!
Worth a read!
