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

Running bug - new challenge

I have not placed a post on this blog for the last year and a half. The reason is that I have not done anything exciting from a personally challenging perspective. I have not attempted a personally physically challenging undertaking due to studying commitments, which I will hopefully complete this year.

So late last year my cousin informs me that he would like to undertake and complete the comrades marathon and asked me for advice. At roughly the same time I am intrigued by the prospect of running in minimalist shoes specifically those vibram 5 finger items. The sources of this intrigue are the book "born to run", the website "Marks daily apple" and general curiosity. The last point is the reason I keep cats, and not those pretty cats the really ugly ones who work for your attention.

So my challenge is to train with my cousin and focus on comrades 2015. He is starting from a flat base and I shall be starting with these minimalist shoes. Points that I have learnt in my time of completing 2 comrades.
- You do not need to train every day or painfully hard
-When you do train the training must be beneficial
- Allow lots of rest and recovery
- Include some sort of gyming (I used to have excellent sessions at the "Real world Fitness" crossfit box. I have not gone there for a few reasons the main one being laziness with I attribute to owning cats)
- cross training with sports like swimming, cycling, hiking

I plan on starting a website outlining my own wisdom with respect to what I have learnt in all my endeavours and shall post it when it is available. I hope the website becomes beneficial to those who feel extreme physical undertakings are not for them and only for people who are bio - mechanically set up. I was and am still quite a chubby item. (I cannot make this sentence less fluffy)

I have sent Dr.Tim Noakes an e-mail with respect to this carbohydrate intolerance theory that he speaks off and it seems like a viable solution for myself. I have read the Lore of Running(Dr Noake's book) and the medical fraternity seem to be behaving like bullies which forced me to take him more seriously.

Why would i look at a high fat/protein and minimal carbohydrate diet to improve my running performance.........because the current wisdom hasn't worked. I shall test the theory on myself and give feedback with respect to the progress.

I have continued running across the last 1,5 years and my 10km times have remained stable but there has been no improvement.

My vital signs are good but my weight has increased but not to an out of control proportion. About 20% of my club members who participated in a particularly hot 2013 comrades race completed in under 11 hours. These athletes physical layout was quite lean (this seems rather obvious.....refer to the bio-mechanical excuse above) and if the conditions were better would have completed in a better time. Their 10km times were definitely less that 50mins. I think this should be my target and will refine this target as the training goes forward.

Yours in running