Looking Ahead

Well as usual i have not been completely focused on this blogging thing. I think because I don't get paid for my 2 cents I don't really take it very seriously. What has happened since my last couple of posts about successful weight loss, strong running and culinary advancement? In a nut shell the following happened:

1) Failure and a lesson in humility. I did not realize I needed some self reflection but this makes you feel as if there is some higher being who understands and knows what you require more than yourself. I plan on writing a post about this so I do not want to give to much away.

2) Physical exploitation envisaged, some of my running goals have been set. I do feel that they are a little ambitious but I shall also highlight them in a future post.

3) advancement of this blog, I've been seriously thinking about adjusting this blog to include all the knowledge, training, farming (yes farming), pictures and possibly making money of this avenue.

4) Recording and taking pictures of all my paleo, natualist, banting, mumbo jumbo eating and cooking exploits. These shall be highlighted weekly and I hope to introduce a video of my cooking.

The third point is what prompted this post on December 1st 2014. I want to hit the ground running in my blogging going into 2015.

Below are the physical markers that I have used so far. They are a little rudimentary but I plan on setting new markers to monitor going into the fifteens.

	Jan	Feb	May	June	July	Sept	Nov
Weight (kg)	82,8	79,2	77,1	77,4	76,6	77,2	73,2
% fat	23,5	20,5	18,6	19,7	20,9	18,9	16,8
Mass fat (kg)	19,5	16,2	14,3	15,2	16,0	14,6	12,3

The numbers are looking very good. I have a adopted a more natural life style and ramped up my training. This is evidenced in the change between Sept and Nov. 

My old man does not approve of this new form. Maybe I'm now half the son I is used to be (start of a song). He is just worried I might be sick with something. You never know this could also be a reason. 

My running club, ACE, are giving me really awesome encouragement and are very inspired (I hope) by my results. The true results are the Comrades marathon and we shall see how my progress is effected. 

I qualified for the 2 demons of south African running, ok ok, 1 demon the other is just a stroll past 2 pretty hills ;). My marathon time was not great but I did qualify. The holes in my game where exposed and I have set about correcting them. I qualified at the beautiful Kaapsehoop marathon but I shall also write a post about that. 

This is my training program for this week. I am looking to possibly entering my first Ironman in 2016. To my loyal readers I hope to service you with more quality posts. Enjoy. Oh! I got a new Vibram five fingers, the Bikila LS, doesn't feel as great yet but I suppose I need to get into it. I got it from rather good website http://thesavage.biz/, enjoy

	Monday	Tuesday	Wed	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning	Rest	weights, 1km swim	1km swim, spinning	Rest	Rest	20km	Abs, Swimming Intervals
Evening	10km jog	speed training	Rest	10km Timetrial	Rest	Rest	Rest

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

The year of experimentation is producing some interesting results for me. I have been 1 month into the paleoish/naturalist/high fat (PNHF) diet again, starting in august. You might be wondering why I use the term that has just been introduced ,PNHF, its simple I do not feel like writing that out all the time. If you are wondering why I do not use a generally accepted term like HFLC,  I believe my understanding is still in its infancy and I shall shift to a generally accepted term as I sort out my knowledge base. The progress has been great. The next step would be to conduct tests using a lab, but I am cheap so using a lab is way out of my budget. I might look at a glucometer which can also measure ketones. If you want to know what is the link between my blog and these measurements, I suggest to stop being lazy and Google it. The numbers indicated in the table below show my progress, I think it is fairly self explanatory but there is some commentary after the table.

	1	2	3	4	5	6
	23-Jan	20-Feb	04-May	16-Jun	29-Jul	05-Sep
Weight	82.8	79.2	77.1	77.4	76.6	77.2
Body Fat Percentage	23.5	20.5	18.6	19.7	20.9	18.9
Body Fat	19.5	16.2	14.3	15.2	16.0	14.6
muscle, bone, organs	63.3	63.0	62.8	62.2	60.6	62.6

Things to note are as follows:
measurements 1 - 3, my diet was PNHF, weight and fat steadily decrease and for the first time in my life the body fat percentage is below 20%. muscle etc remains largely in the same range, i.e minimal drop 500g in 2 months.

measurements 3-5, my diet adjusts to the "norm" more carbs less fat, weight decreases (awesome), body fat increases (huh!) I put on 1.7 kg in 3 months and muscle etc content drops by 2.2 kg, what the hell. not happy and I see the benefits of PNHF diet.

measurement 6, latest measurement, I have not been 100% PNHF but closer to 70% on the other hand I am preparing for comrades 2015. The numbers show that I put on 2kg of muscle and lost 1.4 kg of body fat. The overall result is that my weight has increased by 600g.

This is another reason not to let the scale dictate your mood. Verdict the PNHF is working largely in the right direction.

Working out:
My workouts are not excessive mileage on the road but quite abit of cross training. The result is I have time for my other pursuits and I do not spend hours in/on the gym/road/water.

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Morning	rest	heavy weights - 30mins	rest	ads - 30mins	rest	long run (21km or more)	rest
Evening	rest	alternate between weeks hillwork and sprints (1 hour max)	rest	club run - 10km	rest	rest	rest

3 workout days a week and Saturday morning being my

The next question that would not have crossed your mind but should because everybody should think like me (WHAT!), is how is my performance improved. The most exciting thing is that I am enjoying training again (infomercial voice) and I have set personal bests in all running categories so far:
5km - 26:45 (improvement by 1:15)
10km - 55:00 (improvement by 3:55)
15km - 1:28:30 (improvement by 1:30)
21km - 2:06:00 (improvement by 2mins)

Some of my personal bests have not been bettered in about 2-3 years. I would love to attribute it to my diet but I think it has more to do with my running club, ACE, where the new underground moto is "you train with tigers you become a tiger".

Naruto level healing? unexpected side effect

This week so far I have been natural/paleo style eating approximately 90% of the time. I got 2 injuries, in the past 5 days and they are detailed as follows with healing:

Split big toe nail
While running at the ACE club run I kicked a sleeping policeman (Ala top gear) or speed bump (not a speed hump there is a difference). I split my big toe nail and when I took off my vibrams there was quite abit of blood and it did not look too good.

The odd thing is that the nail on my big toe grew faster relative to the rest of my toe nails. Meaning that by Monday I simply clipped off the injured nail and everything was back to normal. Previous experience tells me that this would have at least 7 to 10 days to recover.
Another note I have not taken any medication for the injuries both orally or by ointment.

Blisters
I played squash on  Sunday morning (with "split toe nail"). It had been quite a while ,at least 6 months since I last played, and there were blisters on my thumb and middle finger, very sore, skin peeled and with abit of blood on my racket handle. 24 hours later the blisters were no longer sensitive, and I continued with normal functioning (not even acknowledging the blister) and the skin layer has steadily returned to normal day by day. My experience says that a week healing is required.

Anyway I attribute this healing to my eating habits and on another note my bowel movements are more consistent and I am not as flatulent. As a muslim I need to keep my wudhu (flatulence breaks my wudhu) when I pray and if I am trying to control flatulence, my spiritually is not focused on my prayer but rather my bowel movements. This is a spiritually downlifting process.

First league race

The time had come to test my vibram five fingers in a race. The training had gone really well, although Thor might not have agreed.

We did easy kays the weekend before approximately 18km.

Weights on Tuesday, just deadlifts and push ups all with negative lifts. 15min of pain.

Thursday we did the club run. We belong to athletics club eesterust or the acronym ACE. The club run is described as "relatively flat with a few hills". For the record this is not true and it should be a runners swear word like "undulating".

But that is training if it ain't tough how will you cope when it does get tough, or consider all the money you have wasted to not complete.  I've seen finance being a greater motivator than disappointment especially for an Indian. That is why there are not many Indian sports stars, the risk of the cosy is too much.
The heat at 515 pm was crazy. So the club run was especially tough.

My paleo mission was going smoothly except for Friday I ate relatively well.

So race day, this was a league race so there were alot of people. My official time 1hr10mins, time from start to finish 1hr5min. That means I spent 5mins doing nothing.it was 9km/hr and I was relatively new at this minimalist thing it was a good time. 

This was the PWC George classen. One of the more tougher races to start the year.  I felt so good that I bypassed 2 water points and only took in water at 9km. I felt comfortable the only stress was the social damage of wearing the vibrams.

Runners etiquette, don't use all manner of perfumes before a race especially if the smell could suffocate fellow runners and who does up their hair before a race, that's environmentally unfriendly.

Some dude was running in front of me and he let of some rear end fire works. I felt like I inhaled all the Carbo loading aroma from the night before, it was very aromatic and I think this guy had spagetti. He is someone that I would advocate to go paleo and control his bowels or better still collect the methane and protect himself from load shedding, which ironically is what he is trying to do.

Untill next time Safe running

Feeling out process

We have completed 1 week of training for comrades 2015. Herewith below is a summary of the week:

Eating-
I only ate when I was hungry.
I tried to limit my food intake to a third of my fist size.
I ate mostly a protein and a vegetable.
I did not drink (no alcohol) and eat at the same sitting but rather alternated the 2 functions.
No sugar with my tea and coffee or at all for that matter.

All of this went fine until Friday afternoon when I ate KFC for lunch and then again for supper. 3 soft drinks, chips (crisps) and a cheese burger in 6 hours. Felt terrible. Why the change, because I was out with friends, I need to control myself during these outings.

Saturday was abit better until late afternoon where I ate chips and ice cream. My wife's stir fry was awesome.

Sunday was much better. Ate an awesome breakfast, coffee was divine (freshly ground Ethiopian dark roast). Supper was a steak and vegetable tagine. I shall post a video soon on my tagine cooking. I learnt this style from a YouTube video posted by an old Moroccan lady was awesome. There is hardly any admin during the preparation phase. easy and the taste is incredible.

Training-

I use endomondo to track my training on the road and my Garmin 310 XT as back up. The endomondo PC interface is very good and easy to navigate.

Tuesday - took my at a park - sprint training barefoot. warm up with 5 sprint runs of approximately 80m. Thor my training partner is much quicker than me. My challenge is to try to get close to beating him.

Thursday - 8 km time trial - We only did 7 km. I wanted to join my running club Athletics Club Eersterust (ACE) but the traffic became abit much to get to the venue. I am also going to have to make a plan to get of work a little bit earlier. It was quite hot and we were still sore from Tuesday.

Saturday - We took a break from training because Thor's legs were still quite sore and it was probably that his body is adjusting to the rigors of consistent training. Now is that a reason for me not too train. Not at all, I was being flipping lazy.

Sunday morning we did 10km in an easy fashion, approximately 8min/km.

I need to somehow post progress on this blog but at the same time keep personal information to my self. I shall post something soon and outline progress on a monthly basis. This blog is more a report back. The paleo eating is quite good in that I do not feel as hungry as often. The minimalist running style leaves my with sore-ish calves but my recovery is getting better and not as sore as earlier in my minimalist career. I need to start incorporating drills into my training process.

Take care, yours in training