Hugo Schwyzer

The San Francisco Marathon I ran this past Sunday was the first marathon I had trained for as a strict vegan. I’ve been flirting with veganism for years, but it was only at the beginning of 2007 that my wife and I made the decision to remove all animal products (including dairy, eggs, honey) from our diet.

When I started “ramping up” my training in May in preparation for the marathon, I was curious to see how my body would respond to 50-60 miles a week of running while eating vegan. I was encouraged, of course, by the example of a variety of other vegan athletes — especially Brendan Brazier, the Canadian 50K champion. I began to use his product, Vega, and I was able to have a long chat with him as we jogged the Mall in Washington in April.

But Brendan, as amazing an athlete and animal rights activist as he is, is more than a couple of years younger than I am. He’s also a professional, and I’m little more than a middle-aged weekend warrior. I hit 40 just as I began this now-concluded training season, and worried that my ageing muscles wouldn’t get replenished on plant-based nutrition alone. Of course, there was no way to find out if an average guy like me could train and run on a vegan diet without trying… so try I did.

After this past Sunday, with another slow-but-steady 3:52 in the bag, I can now say definitively that eating and training vegan is possible. (I wish I could say that eliminating all animal products from my diet made me magically as fast as I was in the late ’90s!) Because I was eating lighter, I was able to sleep less and feel rested — as my body didn’t have to work so hard to digest animal fats. That meant I could get up at 4:30AM, do a middle-distance run, and then give seven hours worth of lecture without feeling utterly exhausted. In that sense, eating vegan did enhance my performance.

I drank my Vega and my hemp protein supplements, but didn’t live on bars and processed “vegan junk” food. I ate a lot of nuts, a lot of dried fruit, a lot of whole wheat pasta. I began to eat vegetables I had once scorned, developing a genuine passion for kale. (I still don’t love broccoli.) I dropped some body fat, but kept my weight at a healthy level. No one told me that I looked gaunt, and I didn’t feel as if I were in a constant state of self-denial. My cravings for meat grew fewer (though every once in a while, I would still feel a pang of longing as I drove by my favorite taco stand). Those cravings are almost gone now.

And here’s the kicker: our household food budget went down. Yes, we bought a lot of organic veggies at Whole Foods (and when we could, at the local farmer’s market). But I also ate out less — instead of buying lunch, I packed it. A packed lunch made up of plant-based food bought at Whole Foods was still cheaper than a processed meal purchased on campus. When people tell me “I can’t afford to be vegan”, I note that my savings off being vegan this spring and summer were enough to (almost) pay for a very nice hotel room in San Francisco this past weekend.

Yes, I’m proselytizing. For reasons of human health and animal rights, I’m a passionate believer in veganism. It ties in to my feminism and my Christianity; long before I embraced a cruelty-free diet, my faith and my belief in women’s rights had convinced me that I am called to do justice and mercy in every action I take. Training for my fourteenth marathon as a first-time vegan was an opportunity to match my language and my life. And saving money in the process was a terrific bonus.