Akasia 3 in 1, eating roadblock, planning

Thor and myself participated in the Akasia 3 in 1 race in pta. The traffic before the race is abit much but course itself is relatively flat. We competed in the 10km race. My time improved by virtue of the course being easier than the PWC race but the time range was the same which was 1hr 5mins. My target is to complete 10km in 50mins by year end. This is a good race with good marshals and a lovely chilled atmosphere. I would certainly recommend this marathon especially if you are not bio- mechanically gifted like myself.

My eating this week was terrible. I was traveling for business purposes and I was found snacking on chips, sweets, bread treats really easy plus all the free food on the airplane. My inner indian means that I will not give up on free stuff.i would estimate this weeks paleo time was approximately 60%. Snacking on biltong and macadamia nuts is my solution.

I took some measurements to plot my progress and hope to place the information and progress on a table on this blog.

I formulated an eating plan which I shall post later in a format that is easier to read.

Both myself and Thor are travelling this week so our training will be a little relaxed but when we train the intensity will increase.
Sunday - squash in morning
               - explosive training in the          afternoon
Thursday - club run 8km
Saturday - 10km easy

After our race this past Saturday one of the funny things was over hearing a couple debating the merits of macdonalds vs kfc. The reasons are irrelevant because they both are fried with bread and/or chips and/or coke but they believe they earned this for running. Energy in equals energy out. ...... This simplistic thinking I might address later. The winner was kfc. ......lol

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

Back to Back comrade

Eish have I been lazy. I have not updated my blog in a year. From a training point of view much has changed and my challenges where on a different level. I also attempted other types of races. This year I truly earned my comrades medal.

After last years comrades I went into a program of rest and muscle building. The consequence is that I had the same body fat percentage but was heavier going into all races.

I took a pass on the 2 oceans. In retrospect it was a good decision, because the race was dubbed the 2 oceans swim.

I completed a gruelling Long tom ultra, which runs from Sabie to Lydenberg. This race is much tougher than oceans, and was quite a test of my endurance.

I also did the sunrise monster, which was also quite testing.

This year I found it incredibly difficult to training during the week, so I did all my training in the weekends. Bottom line it is simply not sufficient.

I also cycled the Argus cycle tour. I don't respect the race, or cycling in general. I just showed up and raced and completed comfortably. I have adjusted my view of cycling and the goal is excelling and not just finishing, a different set of parameters.Prior to Argus I had only used my bike twice, 10km and 80 km. The race is wonderful event but the temperatures where quite difficult to content with.

I showed up at the start of comrades, with less confidence than the previous year. I changed strategy quite a few times through the year, Dr tim noakes view of fat and carbs got me thinking about quick fixes. The bottom line you have to eat right and train consistently. I did not do that this year.

Each comrades route has preparation that goes into it. the down run has its own set of parameters. Less sleep and cold conditions are just some of them, in addition to running a further 2.5 km than the "up".

Comrades day
I got up at 12:30am, ate my breakfast and prepared for the race i.e clothes, shoes and prayer. At 2am I boarded the bus for Petermaritzburg. I arrived at PMB at around 230am. I had a toilet session. This was really uncomfortable, because I couldn't wash, just toilet paper.I got to the race start at 3:30 am. 2 whole hours before the race was due to start. The time felt like it went quickly but it was really really cold. I estimate the temperature was closer to the single digits.

5:15am all the festivities for the lead up to the race begin.National athem, shoshaloza, chariots of fire, the cockerel howl and bang. I don't listen to music but the lead up and atmosphere certainly build your confidence.

530am, it took 7mins to reach the start. My legs felt stiff, as if there was abit of lead on my ankles, but I trudged through. My pace was not bad. I met a few members from my running club. They were in good spirits.

I didn't see any water points for the 1st 10km, but I ran most of it. Only walking a few hills.We descended polly shorts, I was wondering how I got up this hill last year. Now I felt a breeze coming from the south. The cold plus the wind made running quite difficult. At quite afew points we had to run into the wind.It was cold for the 1st 40km. If this was a marathon, I would have had a good one, but this is comrades it is 2 marathons and then some.

The 11, and 2 off 12 hour buses past me, there speeds were ridiculous approximately 6:10-6:30 min/km. I couldn't keep up and decided to run my own race. I felt defeated, because as a rule of thumb if the 12 hour bus passes you, you are essentially finished. You will not finish in time.

The stress was getting to me, one runner actually started smoking in the middle of the race. I doubt he made it. I calmed down did some maths and pushed through at a adjusted strategy. I ran passed the orphaned children and they were so hopeful, smiles, singing, waving, my regret is that I didn't have the energy to high five a few of them. I just smiled and pushed on.

I ran passed harrison flats, and remembered where I had seen my wonderful supportive wife, I smiled and that gave me confidence. Because no matter what other people say I earned my right to be in this race and my wife understand and supports my sacrifices.

At inchanga the sun came out, and now I felt the energy returning. I passed the cut off points in good time.The down hills were quite helpful in terms of time but there is a trade off your knees take pounding. At a few points the ACE supporters were there giving their all. I ran a large portion of the race with my boy Arno, Irene, his mom, Roewyn, ACE president and Craig, ACE member. We became our own support crew.

The last 3 hours were treacherous. I was not planning on giving up, but at this point I was at my closest. I had to keep at 8 min/km after running for 9 hours for the last 20 odd km. I knew the terrain and it felt like the hills were just coming. The run through westville had the worst support because you can hear the people saying that he is not going to make it.

On 45th cutting I met my wonderful wife, she ran along side me, even though she is asthmatic and gave me a bottle of water, and urged me on. At the top of 45th was an Afrikaans dude, who gave some useful advice, 10km to go, keep this rate you will finish. Good luck. I ran all the down hills.

For the last 3 hours I counted every step. Ran 100 steps and walked 50 steps. It took every ounce of strength to remain focused, both mentally and physically. On toll gate came a guy on a bicycle, I would like to thank him personally, if I ever get the opportunity. he came next to us, he said , "don't worry about the rate and math, just run and I will talk you through it". That is what he did encouraged us all the way until the last km.

On the last km I heard azaan for the Magrib namaaz, I was running, I could see the stadium. I had 10mins to finish the last km. I had run walked my way to the stadium, kingsmead. The annoying run around the ground. I stopped just before the finish to take in the sight of being the center of attention, be it with other runners, and I ran to the finish with 4mins left to spare. I was exhilarated.

I picked up my trinkets (medal), and sat down to have a break. I could not even drink 200ml of energade, vomited it all out. I hobbled to the car. My in-laws mom and dad helped me out, my wife was there cheering and trying to carry me. I went home, had a bath and slept. I was not interested in eating/drinking.

The down run is definitely more difficult than the up. It felt as if there were more up hills on the down run than on the "up" run. the lead up to the finish is abit sterile. 2.5 km more is 2.5km. You feel it. I am happy and thankful to Allah for giving me the strength to finish, having great support and an awesome wife at my side.

Next up for this sucker for punishment, Ironman 2013! I will pledge to blog more on this new journey, god willing!

I am a comrade :)

It has been 3 weeks since I completed the comrades marathon, and its only started sinking in now what I have achieved. Its abit unbelievable. I completed in 11hr 54min. That is a long time to keep moving but I am over happy that I achieved what I set out to do at the start of this blog, almost 9 months ago.

Here is a brief recount of my race.

I was not nervous at all, in fact the racing bug had struck and I was just excited, so much so that I got up at 2:45am to start carbo loading. I took in 300 g of carbs in cereal and carb shakes. Then I changed into my gear. I felt quite fat because of the carbo loading and the tapering before the race.

My wife and father in law dropped me of at the start. Just walking towards my pen, I was taking in how beautiful durban looked. As I entered my pen and looked for the 11hour bus, my strategy was to take it easy. I met one of my friends and he had come just to race until drummond and then drop off. He had completed the down run the previous year and he was giving encouragement in that I was quite ready for the race.

The gates separating the pens when down and you could almost feel the energy. The national anthem played, I sang it with all the energy and thought this is what it must be like to play for your country...incredible. Then started shoshaloza, the energy was picking up pace. The cockerel, with so much history when of, chariots of fire and bang! it had all began, the 2011 comrades marathon.

I was into a small jog, but the energy of the supporters of extraordinary and you just wanted to move faster. On the N3, it seemed like a stadium, with supporters on all sides with the flood lights bright.

Along the way I saw a few friends who where quite shocked to see me running. I was equally shocked to see them supporting. I kept up with the 11hour bus quite comfortably. However I did stop to take a leak around the 35km mark and lost the bus all together.

I was on my own for quite awhile, keeping a good eye on my times. Inchanga was quite a beast long, hot, far, steep just plain hardcore. I did a status on facebook but essentially it goes like this chappies and constantia nek bow before inchanga.

Then onto the a rather flattish section, more undulating onto umlaas road(highest point of the race). Before then I was running around harrison flats which was abit boring and freaking hot and then I saw my loewely, beautiful babbi. She came running to give me some puri patha, I turned it down and my father in law trying to get the perfect shot of my running, i'd like to believe my speed surprised him, hahaha. My mom-in-law and sis-in-law where also there. It was one of my highlights.

Around camperdown, the 12 hour bus caught me up, I was so stressed, because if the 12 hour bus passes you, you rather drop off the race, or so I have been told. I looked at my timing charts and noted that this bus was ahead of schedule, way ahead. But I joined the bus than try to fight it and the energy and fun was quite refreshing. Faizels bus!.As approaching little pollys and big very beeg pollys, the wisdom of our pace came through. We had just under 2hours to complete 12 km. We walked little pollys. The legend was proven, people were vomiting on the way up, some guy offered me mountain dew, because the water tasted crap. I was in no mood for the squeezies I was taking. I reached the top and hit a chilled walk to the finish.

I ran to into the stadium and the emotion of finishing was string. I held back the tears. Males don't cry, weep any fluffy stuff. I had completed the greatest human race, the comrades ultra, I a mere mortal has challenged and conquered a most challenging of trial. Who would have though. I would not have succeeded without the support of my lovely wife, my in-laws and my dad, who came to pietermariztburg specially to see me finish.

whooo hoo!

I have done it, I accomplished completing the 2 oceans marathon. 6 hr 45mins, what an awesome awesome ultra marathon. Let me give a brief account off the race.

The race was due to start at 6:25am from Newlands in Cape town. I got up quite excited at 3am and promptly began carbo loading. I took in 2 servings of future life and 4 servings of a carbo hydrate supplement. That gave me a total of about 300 g of carbs. I stocked up on my Gu products (squeezie). I had discovered a few days earlier a product known as GU Roctane, what a good product.

I left nice and early for the race, parked at the high school close by and walked to the start. At the start it was abit cold but I was just relaxing and taking it easy. Already I spent time meeting new people and watching the energy of some of the closer nit teams. The anglo american team jumps to mind as they hopped in place, singing and jiving.

We approached the start of the race and there were a few speeches, some song and then the start gun. Everything moved sooo so fast.

I started the race nice and easy and not pushing myself to make up the time. Trying to keep my rate down at 6min 40sec per km. Trying to fight the adrenaline was hard work.

I had to stop for some plumbing early on, when I had completed my pit stop, the whole race had moved on. I was virtually last.......what a shock. Just taking it easy I caught up to the pack.

Between Newlands and muizenburg I have no idea how fast that moved, but I was there. I pulled out pacing chart and a couple of people behind me chirped me that I should whip that out at the 28km mark. But looking at how I was faring 15km in was comforting.

While at muizenburg I noticed that the conditions for running were perfect. No wind, sun was out and the cold did not have much of a bite.

I met a couple from Canada, and we spoke for a while on strategies, work life in canada and how I like watching GSP defeat one and all in the UFC welterweight division.

I passed the stig and Bob skinstad. I chirped Bob that he was ahead of the stig, however these rugby dude are quite abit taller than myself, and there was the stig.

At the half way point it was quite shocking to reach there that quickly, although its the way I felt, time wise I don't think I made there that quickly.

Nooerdhoek was abit tough because I am not a fan of flat sections, then we hit Chapman's peak, where I promptly instituted my strategy 100 steps jog, 50 steps walk. I felt like I crushed Chapman's peak, quite a boost. The down hill was quite fast and just relaxed and let this geoid bluberry marble's natural centripetal motion do the work.....LAZY!

Then running through hout bay, I just imagined hitting the fish and chips place with my wife, a post race celebration.....good thought and accomplished was sooo good and awesome company.

Constantia nek started off nicely enough and I hit into my strategy nicely, then the last 500m were hectic I increased my walk to about 60-70 steps. It was beautiful but all I remember were the bar one chocolates that were being given out. I ate 2 :)

From Constantia the end is palpable and the downhill section went quickly, a little stinging uphill before the run into UCT.

At the end all the tired ness just vanished and I put foot. When I completed I was abit sore, but no knee or ankle pains.

2 days later I hit the gym, feel good. Now I need to take it easy and taper comfortably for comrades.