vegan_resources.md

Yo Ollie!

Finally as promised here I am! First of all, I should point out that I'm mostly plant-based but not 100% vegan.

I tried for a while, but occasionally I revert to eat some fish and some cheese, maybe some organic chicken breast. The reason is that "vegan" as you know carries quite a deep ethic and activist connotation I'm not sure I could quite fit in my lifestyle! Reason I turned mostly plant-based last year is quite interesting (at least is what I pretend is :D ) so I will do a bit of a digression. Around April 2015 I was still into running but decided to switch cold turkey to a soylent-based diet, specifically trying out Queal and Joylent. Bad idea! I got some severe bowel distress and at the same time I developed optic neuritis. The latter in the 30% of the cases is the earliest sympthom of Multiple Sclerosis, so I did all the checks (MRI, neurologic & optitian exams etc) and luckily it seems it's not my case; yes, I have some "brain scars" but they didn't change in 6 months time so it's likely they are somewhat "normal" (most people have them, but they never have any kind of sympthoms). Optic Neuritis is also caused by excess of vitamin A which could have been the culprit there, as I switched from a "normal" nutrient-poor diet to the soylent one which would provide every day 100% of the RDA. But that's another story.

In August, while waiting for November to come (for the second MRI to assess if mine was MS) I went into a bookshop, took a copy of The China Study between my hands and open it randomly. By pure chance (or was it an omen?) I was presented with the chapter about MS and immune system deseases. The chapter pointed me to Dr. Swank, which is a Doctor who devoted 30 years of his life studying MS and the impact diet has on it. Short story short (there as papers published in highly-regarded, high-impact-factor med journals) it seems that a low fat diet, scarce of animal products contributes to a remission or in any case to a non-increment of MS. I thought within myself "I have nothing to lose, so why not?".

Almost simultaneously to this, I started to get serious about running and discovered ultramarathons events like the Western State 100 or Leadville. It was the book Born to Run which planted the seed (no pun intended!) in my mind, so back from hols I started digging in this ultramarthons events and discovered a few, including 2 Italian ones called "Il passatore" (100Km) and "Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc". I started to watch YouTube vids featuring WS100 and Leadville vlogs and I started learning about ultra athlete as well, especially Micheal Arnstein, and I was blown away to learn that this guy was powered solely by fruit. This video was also incredibly inspiring.

I started reading books about ultra running, which I warmly recommend even if you are not into running at all, they are very inspirational. I learnt about Scott Jurek, capable of winning 10 Western States in a row, fueled by nothing but plant, than Marco Olmo, an Italian fellow which won - more than 50 years old - the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc 2 times in a row, which is not strictly vegan but is mostly plant based (I watched a documentary about this life). And this escalated. I know that's obviously a sort of cognitive bias, as there are plenty of elite athletes fueled by meat only, but the whole point of being plant based for me boiled down to:

• Being able to eat more, thanks to the fact plant are less calorie dense
• Being able to recover faster, as plants are much lighter on your stomach and digest faster
• Plants preserve the alkaline part of your body
• I don't feel "bad" for eating pigs & cow corpses :D

Now! After the deluge of info, back to your original question! Next after reading all the amazing stories about these ultra runners, I stumbled upon a couple of vegan athelete doing triathlon and IronMan, and things got interesting! I searched the web and discovered two resources which I think will be extremely spot on:

• This book. It seems to be there to answer your question! It's extremely well written by a plant based athlete, and talk about "eating for optimal health, endurance and performance". Does it ring a bell? ;)

• Rich Roll. He runs a podcast and he wrote his biography called Finding Ultra. Apart from being very inspirational and well written, it talks about plants as a means to achieve top athletic performance.

• (Bonus!) This guy is John Joseph lead singer of the Cro Mags, a punk band, and an IronMan. Again, the emphasis in on the "healing power" of plants in correlation to athletic performance, not the ethic side of things (check the part of the video when he in at the grocery store).

Rich Roll himself says that he likes to define himself as "plant based", because vegan is much more overloaded (see my original comment). In conclusion, I think those resources are very interesting to me as they come from top-notch athletes where the emphasis is put on the sport performance, not on the ethical reasons. Last but not least, I like the fact the majority are triathletes or cycling and not only runners, they inspire me to do more than 1 sport at time :D

Hope it helps!