"How do you fuel your body for training and racing?"

Summary:
Thanks to those contributing their nutritional insights...Don, Rory, Joe, Lincoln, and the anonymous contributors.Based on your contributions, I've compiled your answers into this week's lunch specials:

Westchester Tri-Club lunch specials

• The Ed Muenster: "Muenster cheese and tomato sandwich on a toasted everything bagel, 20oz bottle of water"
• The Donny-Blue-Plate Special: "Chilli made with turkey meat, diced tomatoes with onions, fresh peppers, and one can of tomatoe paste for consistency. Also, one glass of seltzer and four fig newtowns."
• The Reis-es Pieces: "Chicken cutlet with raisins, olives, & peppers - Plain spaghetti - apple. Ok I couldn'r resist I had also had a peanut butter cookie. Water to drink all day long."
• The Rory Food-Group Meal: "non-fat yoghurt; whole wheat pita w/ small amt. of natural (no hydrogenated oil) peanut butter and cherry preserves; large orange, banana, and carrot. Lots of water."
• The Lincoln Memorial: "a slice of pizza and a bowl of split pea soup."
• The Anonymous: "Chicken and salad"

Re: Nutritional orientation Most of you affiliated yourselves with the "Moderate Party". The Red party received a couple of votes, with the qualification that meat be well-done rather than red. Single votes went to the "Green Party", and the "Independent Party" respectively (scroll this page upwards to recall the party descriptions).

Re: off-season and in-season diet changes: A shift to a theme of MORE -- more protein, more carbs, more calories. Thesemay be accompanied with a shift to to the 40-30-30 plan for one of us, and more soy protein shakes for another.

Details and additional notes...

Re: nutritional supplements: The responses to this may read like an "alphabet soup" of non-foods, with vitamin C being prominent.

• "C, E, and a multi, but I think none should be necessary with a healthy enough diet (take them as a precaution). If you consider it a supplement, I do make smoothies with either Metr-x Berry Blast or soy protein powder"
• "Vit C, glucosamine sulfate, e-tabs when racing"
• "Vitamin C 1000mg every day Vitamin B Complex 100mg every day Echinacea every day Endurox4 drink mix Endurox Excel"
• "Vitamin C and a multi"
• "Daily multi-vitamin"
• "nutritional pack purchased by the wife [from Jill]...next month...switching to Runner's Performance Pak,...Both include antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, ginseng etc. but I prefer to let the pros figure out the science of what endurance athletes need.

Miscellaneous comments:

• For an eating schedule during race season, Joe can actually stick to this every day!
  7:30am cereal (3 mixed - Total w/Raisin Bran/Rice Crispies/Multi-Grain Cherrios) with can of Ensure low fat milk supplement
  10:00am banana & half a bagle or half a corn muffin 12:30pm Plain white rice with mixed bag of frozen vegs & a large can of tuna. NO MAYO!!!
  4:00pm The other half of the bagle or muffin and an apple
  7:00pm Plain pasta, plain broiled chicken cutlet, steamed veggies
  9:30pm Two Oatmeal cookies and frozen yogurt
• And for some general nutritional advice contributed by Rory, ". . . I think Pritikin program basically gotit right (i.e. natural low-calorie-density carbs. though notsugar/processed carbs) as the foundation, although due to heavy training, triathletes may need extra protein (e.g. salmon, tofu, etc..). Humans are able to adapt to anamazingly varied range of diets, and I can believe thatsome percentage of people have trouble with carbs, butI still think that the high fat diets, even though they canwork in the short-term, can have bad long-term healthconsequences. Yes, Rich, I think Dr. Atkins *is* a quack(but I'm always happy to race anyone who chooses to bein a state of ketosis ;-). "
  [Note: ketosis is a condition in which an abnormal amountof compounds involved in lipid metabolism are present in the body.]