I decided that whenever I have a perfect performance day I will record it. What is perfect performance day? It is a day when you do certain kind of substantial physical or mental achievement with certain ease that surprises you.

I had one last Friday.

I am not a long distance runner and I don’t usually run to do my cardiovascular exercise. I prefer playing sports like soccer, tennis, surfing to get my aerobic exercise done and I am having a lot of fun with it. And nobody will ever get me on treadmill, because I prefer doing all my cardiovascular activities outside.

Last time I run was about a month ago. But last Friday I decided to go for a long run and was able to run 8 miles in 1 hour and 10 minutes. That speed would make me run a marathon under 4 hours. And it felt surprisingly easy. After I finished I felt like I could run another 8 miles with the same intensity.

I know, that this is not a great time and a lot of competitive runners can run this fast for this long easily anytime. The point is, that I am not a runner and I hardly ever go for a run. I have a personal reason for it – It bores me to death.

But last Friday I felt like I should try longer run. I felt very strong running those 8 miles, and I don’t usually feel that great running.  However strong I felt I know that eventually my joints would start to hurt since my body is not adapted for running long distances. So somewhere at a 15 mile mark I would have to stop.

Looking at my time and distance I covered and how great I felt, with some training I could become much faster and could run very long distances, even do, my ambitions are not becoming a long distance runner.

So what made me perform so great last Friday on running track?

I do some intensive physical activity almost every day and it it keeps me in a great shape. But I strongly believe that what I ate last Friday made a huge positive difference in my performance.

I got up at 6 AM and I had 2 peaches and 2 big spoons of unbleached, unsalted peanut butter with it and 16 oz of black coffee without sugar.

Than I had 2 training sessions with people I train.

After that at around 11: 00 AM I had 16 oz of whole cottage cheese which contains about 57 grams of protein, 2 wrist full of raw unsalted sunflower seeds and 1 lb of fresh figs.

Than I had another training session and after that I did my 8 mile run.

I strongly believe that that kind of diet free of  any kind of  bread, flour and sugar with large amount of protein – cottage cheese, optimal amount of good healthy fats – sunflower seeds and peanut butter, and naturally occurring carbohydrates in fruits made me perform this well.

I am going to remember this particular order and kind of foods I ate and I encourage you to try it some day. You should adjust the portions to your body’s needs. Those portions above are ideal for my body structure 6’3″ – 190 lb and activity level. Yours will be different.

Another thing to remember is, that running 8 miles requires certain fitness level and could be dangerous for somebody mainly inactive.

But if you are generally active, even without special running preparation, you should be able to perform, run in this case with a similar ease consuming that kind of nutrition.

Other factors are at play here too. It also makes a difference how rested you are. For example if you had hard interval training yesterday, you won’t be able to perform great today. Your body needs rest. Also, if you slept only 5 hours last night or your body is fighting certain virus, that will decrease your overall performance.

But if all is lined up in your favor, great diet will magnify your performance substantially.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 8:0 1 and is filed under Performance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.