Go Hard

It is possible to find some form of reference to justify almost any nutritional guideline. A lot of these will even appear to be good science. Throw in all the opinion pieces and ideologies on the topic of what food you should be eating there is no end to contradictions. In my view nutrition is important. Day to day nutrition won't win you a race, but poor nutrition can cost you a race. Amongst other things, I believe a less than adequate approach to my food contributed to my hamstring injuries. Why? A combination of laziness and an over emphasis of hitting a certain race weight. I had falling into the habit of not planning ahead with my food, and often grabbing what was faster and easier. This isn't an ideal approach and becomes magnified when work shifts encompass two meals. On top of this I tried to keep a limit on my intake in order to shed a couple of kilograms to be lighter for the marathon. As the time went on I found I had to eat less and less to lose a small amount o...

Finally a long run came together. Great weather, great trails and the running felt good. Despite being well away from the paces I'd really like to be hitting, everything else appears to be on track. Not quite what I'd call a therapeutic but it was a good indicator my body is finally getting back into shape. At the moment the numbers and science is somewhat distracting, and makes it harder to hit a good mindset about my training. This particular run helped highlight that focusing on the process, the now and the art of running does more than just feel good. The numbers do not mean much if there isn't the rhythm, fluidity or naturalness to my running. There is a big difference between forcing the legs to hit a certain pace versus that pace being the final outcome of getting it right .

Despite describing my training plan in my last post, I haven't exactly followed it this week. Nothing to with my fitness or motivation. Sometimes other things in life trump what essentially comes down to recreation. Nothing too bad, but when one of the little ones has a tonsillectomy, the recovery for them means lots of time by his side, very regular medications and not much sleep. So naturally that takes the place of training. From a running point of view the week has been wiped. One thing to learn from this episode is how important sleep is. While in theory I do know this, and should have learnt from past mistakes that  sleep deprivation is a bad thing . Being a shift worker I am very familiar with running on reduced shut-eye. That familiarity also means I tend to underestimate just how tired I am and can persist in pushing through when I shouldn't. I tried getting in some training, but it is amazing just how sore the body can become purely from a lack ...

I'm starting to feel like a runner again. This really just comes from the fact that I've been for a run nearly every day for the last couple of weeks. I've had to rethink my approach so as not to develop the same problems that limited the marathon. Those problems still exist to a certain extent, so there is a good deal of rehabilitation required within the training. So here's the basic outline of my current training approach... I only have two races planned at this stage. First up is as part of a relay team at the Surfcoast Century in September where I'll be covering 28km in the hilly section. Second on the list is the Two Bays Trail 56km in January. I am hoping to throw a few more events in, but I'll see how the body goes. With those races in mind, the basic structure is a 9 day cycle that looks little something like this... easy Intervals easy Hill sprints easy Threshold easy Long easy The easy runs are exactly that, easy. Something between 40...