Go Hard

After sooking my way through the cold of winter I've been quite pleased by the warm weather lately. So have the reptiles too apparently. A blue tongue lizard tried to make a home in our yard. I haven't seen my friend Tigey yet. With the extra sunshine comes a few changes. Longer days and shorter nights welcome in daylight savings and luckily we remember to change our and clocks and Prime Minister (or something like that). The most obvious difference when running is the increased need for water. For the most part I am guided by thirst. This works fine during the colder weather. When it heats up I find thirst sometimes isn't quite enough of a stimulus for some of the moderate to longer runs. It could just be habits, but I tend to fall on the under-drinking side of the scale. It's fine in the short term, but once the distance extends out the lack of hydration starts to show up. While I like the concept of listening to the body, sometimes it's the interpretation th...

Like every other aspect of my racing I do apply a drinking and carbohydrate strategy during the race. The best way to describe this is cover what I actually did during the race and give some reasoning along the way. The carbohydrate loading leading was covered in Carbohydrate Loading - Melbourne Marathon . Pre-race: 2.5 hours prior to race start: 60g cornflakes 150g peaches & pears 200ml low-fat milk Espresso 500ml Gatorade  This topped up my liver glycogen stores that get depleted during the overnight sleep.  The timeframe allows everything to settle and pass through my stomach to minimise the risk of gastrointestinal problems during the race. The water within the gatorade combined with the hydration strategy as part of the carbohydrate loading over the previous days should have me adequately hydrated for the race start. 45min prior to race start: 300mg caffeine 10min prior to race start: 200ml water This was preceded by a 15 minute easy war...