the end of the week...

My effort to post an entry everyday failed quickly. Nearly through the first week of my two week taper and I'm starting to feel aerobically fresh. Of course my legs are still sore and I have some niggles and a small injury which concerns me. My achilles are particularly sore but I'm hoping with some reduced volume next week and less running in my flats they will heal up.
My small injury is not of major concern but I managed to hurt my upper hamstring/glute and shin when climbing (and falling) over a steel fence on Wednesday. Should be OK though.

Training update (from memory):

Wednesday: AM) 70 minutes w/ ~7k @ threshold 1x3k, 1k, 6x500m + 15 minutes hill running @ 12.5%
Felt stronger as the session progressed.

Thursday: Noon) 75 minutes steady ~17km
Great run out to the Whitewater stadium and back. Took it out at a relaxed pace and gradually picked it up on the way back. Starting to feel my fitness coming on.

Friday (planned): Noon) 90-100 mins w/ 5 x 1600m @ HMP w/ 400m steady


Diet:

Decided not to carb deplete for this event after feeling like absolute crap during my runs on Monday and Tuesday. With the addition of some carbs (fruits) I have started feeling much better and my runs have continued to improve. Thinking about targeting a race in May which I would like to peak for instead.

The diet has been very simple and something along the lines of:
Breakfast: handfuls of nuts and seeds, and a little dried fruit (apple, dates, raisins) + black coffee
Snacks: Fruit - Bananas, etc
Lunch: salad with more nuts and seeds + green tea
Dinner: some protein with more salad and veggies

I'm trying to watch how much I eat as my training volume tails off as I get closer to the event.

tuesday 3 march

Training:

noon) 46 min easy w/ surges (about 10k)

While I planned on running 3 x 3k at lunch it ended up not fitting into my schedule. I had forgotten about a mandatory work function that I have to attend over the next two days which will make finding the time to train somewhat difficult. During my second run this afternoon I'll give the session a go if I'm feeling up to it.

Diet:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs (3) w/ spinach in olive oil
Snack: carrots (2), walnuts & sunflower seeds
Post-run: small yoghurt, peaches (2), banana - note: kept carbs to 1g/kg of bodyweight (~70g)
Lunch: sardines, carrots, cherry tomatoes
Dinner: Meat w/ steamed veggies

sunday to monday 1-2 March

Training:

Sunday - Long run 36km in 2:40 - Blaxland to Hawkesbury Heights LO out 'n' back

Felt terrible during the start of the run and I wasn't thinking that I was going to make it through but about 10 minutes in everything fell into place and the running got easy. I started feeling good and the pace picked up. Hit the turn around right on 1:20 and came back in the same time. Groin started feeling a little niggly at the turn around but was no trouble after. Have to keep an eye on it. Smoothie and ice bath helped with the recovery.

Monday - 1 hour easy w/ 4.5km @ marathon pace + 6 x The Sanctuary Drive Hills

Legs felt loose and relaxed but my left Achilles was a little sore before warming up. Parked the car at the River Road carpark. Ran easy for about 5 minutes then decided to pick it up to marathon pace running along the eastern river bank. Crossed over the river, headed for the hills and then ran six fast repeats up the notorious road (rise between 12 and 15 percent). Legs felt good during the repeats (averaging 3:30-3:40 pace) and the cardio was worked before heading back along the river for the cooldown.

Diet:

Breakfast: oats cooked in rice milk w/ 3 eggs and maple syrup (last carb meal)
Snack: peaches, walnuts
Lunch: sardines w/ chilies, avocado, cherry tomatoes, carrots + 4 fish oil capsules (immediately post-run)
Snack: carrots, walnuts
Dinner: porterhouse steak w/ fried peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes

Taper time again...

Yesterday's long run signaled the start of the taper period leading into my next race. A hilly off-road 45km ultramarathon. Usually not my happiest time as it usually brings around a lot of self-doubt and worries that I haven't done enough or perhaps I have done too much or.... well you get the idea!

My plan is to follow what worked for before the Cities Marathon in July last year but with a few tweaks here and there with my training. I'm going into this event a little under-trained compared to last time so I'm going to try and hold a little more volume in the first week before a big reduction in race week volume trying to freshen up.

Training plan:

sun - 36k in 2:40 (1:20 out/1:20 back) - already run
mon - 1h easy + 6 x short fast hills
tue - 20' warmup + 3-4 x 3k MP-LT + 1 x 2k fast (am) // 1h easy (pm)
wed - 45' easy (am) // 16k w/ 8k @ MP (noon)
thu - 90' easy (am)
fri - 13k w/ 10k MP
sat - 1h easy + 12k MP or 5 x 2k LT
sun - 90' easy
mon - 45' easy (am) // 1h w/ 4 x 1200m @ LT + 6 x 100m hill sprints (noon)
tue - 8k w/ 5k MP
wed - 6k w/ 3k MP
thu - REST
fri - 20-30' easy w/ last 2.5' fast/ 30" flat out (before carb load)
sat - RACE

Taper Diet:

- 9 days carb depletion
- 2 days start adding carbohydrates while reducing protein and fats
- 1 day carb load (10-12g carbohydrates per kg of bodyweight)

During the carb depletion phase I'll eliminate all carbohydrates except for a small amount in the post-exercise window following longer and hard workouts to allow for some glycogen replacement to provide for some recovery between sessions.

Pretty much the same taper program as last time which I felt worked and I hope will give me a similar result in two weeks time.

I'll try and post a daily account of my training, diet and thoughts leading up to race day as I did in the past.

Rest day?

After running about 400 miles in the last month and finishing up another hard running workout yesterday I am contemplating taking a day off. Off as in no running whatsoever. It is a hard thing to do as a running obsessed individual. Even knowing that taking a day off to allow my body to rest and repair itself will undoubtedly help me run faster and/or harder in the long term I struggle with the thought of not having a run today. Perhaps I'll just go out for an easy 45 minutes tonight after work.

Diet:

After reading the Paleo Diet for Athletes I have made a few changes but nothing too drastic. Just a few compromises in the primal diet to ensure that I restore my glycogen levels and aid recovery between sessions.

Today's diet:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms + black coffee
Snack: carrots, sunflower seeds
Lunch: garden salad w/ chicken
Snack: apple + green tea
Dinner: fish and veggies

Stats:

Weight: 167 lb - weighed myself for the first time in months
Legs: 4/10 - Achilles tight and sore
Sleep: 6hr - poor

Training update:

Last four weeks have averaged 90-110 miles per week with 2-3 quality sessions per week. Struggled for a few weeks with the higher mileage but have started feeling better during the last two weeks. The diet has helped with the recovery but I still need to focus on some other areas of recovery including hydration, ice baths, compression clothing, stretching etc.

A down week?

Last week was another hot week of training. Every day saw temperatures exceeding 35C. It made training much tougher...

DIET

I've gone back to eating a more primal diet with the inclusion of protein and fat at every meal and it has made an immediate improvement to my ability to recover between sessions. During the transition period while adjusting to the changes in my diet I'm finding my endurance and energy are lagging behind. Previous experience ensures me that it will only last a week or two before I see an improvement in my running.

Recent additions to diet: eggs, nuts (almonds and walnuts), lean and not-so-lean meat.

I've finally read the Paleo Diet for Athletes which I purchased over Christmas and will modify my primal diet to ensure that my glycogen levels are replenished between workouts to ensure a fast recovery. I do believe that working out in a semi-depleted glycogen state over a period of time can have significant performance gains in the short and long term but I will have to go over my old training and diet notes to work things out.

TRAINING

Another good mileage week but after a few bigger weeks it feels like a recovery week.

Monday:
AM) 6 mi Easy run - to work
Felt a bit during the morning's run to work.

PM) 7 mi Moderate run - work to home
Any run that starts out when the temp is hovering around 40C is always going to be hard. Throw in a 2 mile climb towards the end and you can see where things can go wrong. Actually legs felt stronger on climb.

Tuesday:
Three runs today -
AM) 8.8 miles - Easy run
Ran to work but took a longer route.

Noon) 5 miles w/ strides

PM) 7 miles
Another tough run home as it was hot again.

Wednesday:
N) 5 miles - Easy run
Planned an easy run during my lunch break with the ambitions of running a longer 13 mile run after work with some friends but ended up bailing out because of the heat.

Thursday:
AM) 6.2 mile Easy run

PM) 12 miles w/ intervals (7 x 4min w/ 2-3min easy)
Hit the trails with a friend. Ran the first four intervals running uphill before turning around and running the last three downhill back to the start. Felt stronger and averaged a good pace.

Friday:
AM) 4.4 mile Recovery run
Just an easy run around the shortest home loop.

Saturday:
AM) 22 mile Long run (2:50)
Started out running easy for the first hour before adding in some sections at marathon pace. After two hours of running the heat and humidity finally kicked in which hurt making the climb back home.

Sunday:
AM) 7 mile Fartlek run
Felt good on this run and decided to try and run with a little more intensity and see if I could add some life back into my legs. Felt good to be running fast again.

Total running: 90.4 miles

Training

I've noticed people having been stopping it to check things out so I thought I had better get back to this blog thing. So here we go...

Diet-
Diet has been very good over the last few months. I have been eating mainly raw uncooked food and have even enjoyed the very primal activity of foraging for my food while on a long run in the urban fringe. Carrying a pack enables you to fill it with all sorts of goodies.

Weight is hoverying around 166lbs and with an important race only 6-7 weeks away I hope that I can get my weight around 155lbs by then. I'm confident that I'll get there. Race fit and ready!

Training-

Monday:
AM) Trail run - 12 miles (1:40)
After a steep drop down to the river the trail climbs for a steady 5 miles before swinging back onto the road for the return journey. Feeling tired.

Tuesday:
AM) Easy run - 15.8 miles (2:02) - 145HR
Good run in the rain. Legs starting feeling fatigued over the last 20 minutes. Need to work on that...

PM) Easy run - 7.5 miles (1:00)
Easy run home. Hot!

Wednesday:
AM) Easy run - 6 miles (0:42)
An easy run to work before the day gets hot although very humid. Legs felt a little fatigued from yesterday's run but about 20mins in they started feeling better. Finished up running the last 15mins around marathon pace.

PM) Will be the run home via the long way ~12 miles
The plan is to run hard for the first 6 miles before the start of the hills and then push myself on the climbs to work the legs. Already 33deg Celsius and rising... better start drinking water now!

Thursday:
AM) Recovery Run - 3 miles (0:22)

PM) Workout: 5 x 6mins hard w/ 4min easy - total 11 miles (1:40)
Ran the workout on the trails. The first three intervals were run uphill and the last two were run downhill back to the start. Tough session but one I need to repeat weekly if I'm going to run well at next month's race.

Friday:
AM) Easy run - 11.9 miles (1:31)
Met Simon early to run a few quarters at the track (cracked a fast one in 66 seconds) and followed up with 8 x 100m striders before heading off to run to work.

PM) Easy run - 6.2 miles (0:54)
Death march home. Another hot day left me baked on the exposed hill.

Saturday:
AM) Easy run - 4 miles (no time)

Sunday:
AM) Long 19.4 miles (2:30)
Ran down to the National Park to spend some time on the trails. Felt tired during the first hour, good in the second hour and then things went downhill quickly from there (although the course went uphill).

Total running: 108.8 miles

The wheels of change

The wheels have slowly started their rotational journey bringing my life onto the pathway of change. I’m not entirely sure where I am heading with all this but I like challenging myself when faced with the unknown.

After reading a rather interesting post by the paleo runner last week in which it lead me to read about Tim VanOrden and what he has achieved with running by adhering to a strictly 100% raw vegan diet has inspired me to make some changes in my own nutritional habits. His site also led me on a path to other raw eating websites, communities and podcast interviews and my interest has been captured.

My reasoning behind thinking about making the transition from the paleo diet to a largely raw vegan diet is based on a number of reasonings.

The main issue I have at the moment while following paleo/primal eating guidelines is that while the diet has provided everything that I expected from it and what others have claimed it would. It’s just not giving me everything I need. The diet stabilized my energy levels so that I don’t experience the post-carb lows that I used to have before but the trade-off was that I don’t seem to be experiencing any highs - physical, mental or spiritual. Everything feels just a bit - how do it say it - BLAH. I am also missing what I will call my vitality or life energy. Running is not the only thing in my life that defines who I am and what brings me joy and I am in need of feeding my other personas.

Vitality is something that I experienced strongly during my university years (my mid 20’s) when I ate basically as a vegetarian/vegan for three years and during the period of time I regularly practiced periods of fasting and raw food eating (mainly fruits). I read a lot of Arnold Ehret’s work I don’t ever remember thinking about my lack of energy for any of the numerous physical pursuits that made up much of my day. Perhaps too much at times when class lectures needed to be attended.

Arnold Ehret has been described as inspiring many prominent people in the raw food movement including Gabriel Cousens and David Wolfe amongst others whom I am yet familiar with. I still have on my bookshelf at home two of his books – RATIONAL FASTING and THE MUCUSLESS DIET HEALING SYSTEM. During my first year at uni these books became my bible. At the time I was searching to rejuvenate my physical, mental and spiritual aspects of my life and over a period of 12 months I had completed a big change.

Other reasons for wanting to make a transition are based on some changes that we have made in respect to the health of our children. We have virtually eliminated all preservatives from our menu due to health reasons and have introduced some non-dairy items as one of our children appears to be lactose intolerant. Our shopping cart is also being filled with more and more organic products as we are questioning the way products are grown and produced. This is also leading us on an ethical journey as our family is questioning how our food reaches the shelves of the supermarket and into our homes. I won’t go into ethical arguments here as there is a lot of information out there to provide some interesting reading for those so interested.

And finally on a last note I’m just starting to get sick of cooking and consuming large amounts of animal-based proteins. I’m even losing the taste and smell for it. It’s like listening to new music released on the radio – it sounds great at first but after listening to it over and over again you end up not being able to listen to it anymore.

The next challenge

Finally after months of waning motivation since running my marathon and 90km ultra run in July and August I have been presented with the next life challenge. With only a few weeks to get myself in shape it will be an interesting experience to see what I can do when push comes to shove.

During some quiet introspective thought last weekend I was toying with the idea of finding another challenge. I looked through my books, notes and blog favourites - ultra books, 50 marathons-50 days, detox, master cleanse, crossfit, raw food, primal blueprint, paleo diet, etc. By the time Sunday evening had rolled around I was ready. I had decided that I would jump back on the paleo diet but I had also set myself a daily mileage goal minimum of 21km which I would try and stick to for the next 21 days - 21 in 21 had a nice ring to it.

Well by the time Monday evening (day 1) was upon me, things didn't go quite to plan and thoughts of a 90 minute run were laid to rest with the setting of the sun. It also signalled the end of my motivation. However a text message from a friend which I read while getting the kids ready for bed was enough to change everything.

More details to follow....

A good start

Five days have passed and while I have been eating well following the paleo diet guidelines my running is lagging behind. I have had breaks up to 6 weeks due to injury or rest in the past and have found that I can usually jump straight back into and quickly rebuild my lost aerobic fitness. But this time around the running is a struggle. Not sure if my problem is physical or mental but I need to sort it out quickly as I need to get motivated.

I have run every day this week for about 20 to 50 minutes (covering about 3-6 miles) and together with my diet I have lost the 5 pounds that I gained during my holiday and exercise lay off. At least that is a good starting point for next week as I increase the volume of training.

While I had my break I spent some time thinking about my training and decided that I need to add more volume and increase the duration of my daily runs. I find that my fitness quickly improves when I increase my run duration to longer than 100 minutes of running. On some runs it takes about an hour for me to feel comfortable and I generally start running better for the remainder of the session. So as I like to have a written plan to follow I have roughly drafted my weekly schedule to look something like that shown below.

Monday - AM) Run easy 1h-1h40 (8-12 miles) PM) Ride home
Tuesday - AM) Ride + Short interval of fartlek session // Easy run
Wednesday - AM) Run easy 1h10 (10 miles) + Strides PM) Ride home
Thursday - AM) Tempo run + Hills (total 12-14 miles) PM) Run home 1h
Friday - AM) Long trail run 2-3h (20-25 miles) + Strides (barefoot)
Saturday - AM) Easy run 1h30 + drills, hill strides or bike if tired
Sunday - AM) Longer tempo run or long intervals

Along with all the running I'm hoping to get in at least two yoga sessions per week.

The Offseason

I have been away from it all from a while. Away from running, diet, work and other stresses. I have just returned from two weeks in Thailand with the family and after enjoying the break and the food I have decided that it is time to get back into it. The extra pounds I have also put on hear my body crying out for me to quit this offseason hedonism.

I started running again yesterday. Well actually that statement is not entirely true as I was forced to run to work yesterday as my stepson had borrowed the car while I was away on the weekend and drove several hours away to spend some time with some friends while he is over here on holidays from the UK.

The running felt OK but the heat was something I wasn't expecting and about 30 minutes into the run I was overheating. I also decided to wear the polar to see how my heartrate responded. Well it looks like I have some work to do as my HR drifted up to around 185bpm and sat there until I decided to walk to allow it to drop back down to a more acceptable 150bpm.

I just checked my Garmin and it is evident where I went wrong. The kilometre splits started out at 4:30 pace before dropping to 4:15 and then I followed it up with another two kilometres at sub 4:00 pace. Strangely this happens whenever I start back running as my legs are refreshed, refuelled and free of the usual niggles and fatigue that they are plagued with from the repeated abuse they receive.

Gradually after a few weeks building the volume back up my pace gradually goes back to a more sustainable pace and the HR drops.

Post-run my legs feel completely toasted and it took several hours before I could walk without discomfort. I'm not a fan of the transition period as my legs and body become reacquainted with their friends the road, pavements and trails.