Do Or Diet For The Old Home Team

Disciples in search of a dietary master often find themselves outnumbered by masters in search of disciples, and nowhere so much as in sport. Consider the poor runner. He suspects that there is a connection between what he eats and how he performs. He watches frail-looking Olympians tear through staggering interval workouts and wonders at their secrets. But whose formula for fitness should he follow?

Percy Cerutty, a theorist of rather stunning originality, coached Australian Miler Herb Elliott to world records and Olympic gold and then put out a book entitled Be Fit or Be Damned. One of the things he damns heartily is milk. Any runner who still drinks the stuff has not been properly weaned, says Percy.

Regarding milk as something of a menace may seem startling to the uninitiated, but so goes the eccentric course of athletes' diets the world over. For example, according to The Runner's Diet, a booklet produced by Runner's World Magazine, there is something called the Are Waerland Diet in which milk is de rigueur—as long as it's sour—but one must shun meat, fish and eggs because they provide a "culture medium for putrefactive bacteria." A day's ration consists of: Breakfast—fresh fruit and sour milk. Lunch—whole grain cereal. Dinner—potatoes, baked or boiled in their skins, or mashed and topped with grated raw beets and carrots; salad greens, and sour milk.

Fortunately, there are other gurus among whom one may choose. For instance, Ernst van Aaken, a German coach and M.D. whose prot�g�, Harald Norpoth, is a three-time Olympian and perennial German champion at 1,500 and 5,000 meters. The doctor doesn't much care what a runner eats as long as it amounts to less than 2,000 calories a day. Since the average American consumes 3,300 calories a day, one begins to understand Norpoth's eerie resemblance to a cadaver. Distance runners, van Aaken says, should be 20% below the average weight for their height since the greater a runner's heart volume in relation to his body size, the more endurance he has.

To determine average weight, according to one formula, men should start with a base of 5 feet and 110 pounds. For every inch over 5 feet add 5� pounds. Women start with 5 feet and 100 pounds, adding five pounds for every inch over the base height.

Olympic Gold Medalist Frank Shorter, at 5'10�" and 134 pounds, is exactly 20% below the average weight for his height. So is my husband, fourth in the Munich marathon, at 6' and 141 pounds. On the other hand, Jon Anderson, 1973 Boston Marathon winner and Olympic 10,000-meter man, is 6'2" and 160 pounds, 10 pounds over the 20% mark, and says he likes to be even heavier for a marathon.

Another critic of van Aaken's theory is Steve Prefontaine. "He doesn't take into consideration a person's bone structure," argues the three-time NCAA cross-country champ. "I happen to have very heavy bones." At 5'9" Pre should weigh about 128 pounds, according to the German doctor. Instead he weighs 145 and says, "If I get under 138 I lose strength."

Van Aaken, however, believes that a runner can train his body to run on its "reserves." To do this, as well as to eliminate extra weight, he strongly recommends fasting while training and racing. There are trackmen like 10,000-meter-runner Jeff Galloway who substantially agree with this theory. "I'm convinced you run much better the skinnier you are," Galloway says, but he questions the wisdom of prolonged fasts while training hard or racing.

Whether they fast or not, world-class runners appear decidedly ectomorphic and generally use weight as one measure of fitness.

Almost diametrically opposed to van Aaken's call to deprivation is the Carbohydrate Loading Diet developed several years ago by Swedish doctor Per-Olof Astrand to use in preparation for a particular race. The underlying theory is that energy for an exercising athlete comes not from protein but from a mixture of carbohydrates and fats, especially carbohydrates. Since carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver, an athlete whose event takes longer than 30 minutes suffers pronounced discomfort when muscle glycogen is depleted.