Punishing, yet pleasant

The Olympian has a terrific piece on vegan ultramarathoner Scott Jurek (including pictures), of which this is merely an excerpt:

Tall and trim but a bit less lanky than many hard-core runners, Jurek logs 55-70 miles a week on average, and 100-120 as he's peaking before a big race -- running as many as he can on wooded trails. In recent years, he's added yoga, weightlifting and a vegan diet to his training regimen.

Instead of milk, eggs, steak and other staples of many meat-eating runners' diets, Jurek eats a lot of tofu, tempeh (a high-protein food made of cooked soybeans) and whole grains, and adds things such as almonds, hemp seed and protein powder to the smoothies he often blends up for breakfast.

It's all part of a regimen he says dramatically has improved how his body recovers from races and all-out training runs.

"Definitely the recovery is as important as training," he said. "I wouldn't say I had things totally wrong before. It's like a fine-tuning process I've tweaked and tweaked."

Tags: vegan | ultramarathon | Scott Jurek