Back and better

I haven't posted for a while but I've kept running. August has seen quite a shift for me in terms of pace.
In July my average pace for all my running was 5:54 per km, so far this month I've been averaging something like 5:30s per km. This has been very encouraging for me that I am on the right track, as has been the fact that my legs and specifically, my calves, seem to have made adaptations to the minimalist form.
This has inspired me to some extent and the result is that I am now beginning training for a new race here in Melbourne. It will happen in November and is 14km in distance, and this also means that I can use the 10k race at the Melbourne Marathon as a warm up. I've decided to use a training program closer to the half-marathon distance than a 10k program.
Hopefully with my training ramping up, I'll start to see some weight come off as well.

July

My running stats for July read like this:




69 kilometres at an average pace of 5:54 min per km



My weight is 93.5 kg



In June I ran the same number of kilometres at an average pace of 5:56 mpk and my weight was 93.8 kg.



Although both months were very similar I had 22 days of no running in July compared with 17 in June. What does it mean? It means I ran less frequently but when I ran, I ran longer. This wasn’t on purpose as at the start of the month, I had a whole week off because of a lower back complaint.



What’s ahead for August? Go beyond my longest run of 1 hour and try for at least 80 kilometres for the month. Hopefully, I can continue to bring my average pace down and also continue to lose some weight. I wasn’t very happy with the amount of weight I lost in July, but I didn’t exactly avoid some of my danger foods. I was good for brief periods but obviously not enough.

The weather in Melbourne is really nice at the moment considering its virtually mid-winter here. I’m really getting a sense of excitement about the coming warmer months and really ramping up my training and just generally enjoying all my runs.

My last run on Sunday was 35 minutes at 5:27 pace. What pleased me most about this was I wasn’t really trying to go that fast and I was just running how I felt like running. That was the result.

Happy days.

The Hungry Caterpillar

I’ve been reading ‘Zen and the Art of Running’ by Larry Shapiro and have been finding it quite a good read. I really like the idea of running as a form of meditation. It’s been dawning on me that this requires a lot of self focus and really listening to what you are doing. I used to run while listening to music but now I’m wondering if I wasn’t inadvertently ignoring signs of impending injury. Since I hurt my knee I run sans headphones, besides, I need all my concentration on my footstrike, posture and cadence.


Lately I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about the explosion of minimal shoes coming on to the market. I do quite like the look of some but I just can’t believe that any would be able to better the look and feel of Vibram Fivefingers. Vibram if you’re reading this, please don’t mess with existing models, especially KSOs.

I have found it surprisingly easy this week to avoid chocolate, in fact it’s been something like ten days since I had any and overall my diet’s been pretty good. It will be interesting to weigh in at the beginning of July. Speaking of July, I can’t wait for the southern hemisphere winter to be over. Now that I’m running consistently and without injury, I’m dreaming of the warmer weather and running topless in my fivefingers…

Discipline

Over the last few days I have been thinking about my running, health, fitness, body, ageing etc All the things that a man approaching 40 years of age probably thinks a bit about anyways, provided they’re interested in running of course.

Slowly my mind is formulating short, medium and long term plans for all these facets and I will be talking about these a lot in future posts. Here are the types of things floating through my mind at the moment and apologies if what you are about to read resembles a stream-of-conscience spew onto a page.



Running



Hopefully this is slowly taking care of itself and as I have stated before, I need to be patient and listen to my body. Doing this has produced two great runs in the last week. I will not try to stick to any rigid training program for now but simply aim to run 4 times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes each time. I will run less than this if my body dictates I must. The hard part here is getting deceived by my conscious mind telling me I can do something and not listening to the counter-argument from my sub-conscious. This is one event I’d like to participate in long term and there has already been some interest amongst work colleagues in putting a team together. My discipline here is to let things happen when they need to.



Health



This relates a lot to my diet and consequently my weight I think my ideal weight for doing the type of running that I really want to do is something between 75 and 80 kg. Currently I weigh in at 93 kg and I have a real battle with refined carbs-sugar-chocolate-ice cream that I need to get on top of. The way I am thinking of approaching this is to make small changes on a weekly basis and hopefully in the long term I’ll find myself on a diet that keeps me healthy, sustains my performance and brings me to my best running weight. My discipline will be simply to make the best choices about what to put in my mouth and decide whether I really need to eat as much as I think I do.



Fitness



My discipline here is to take full advantage of the gym membership I have and train my body to be strong and supplement/compliment my running. I need to try and do this a minimum of twice a week at best 3-4. If I do this the body will take care of itself and then…



Ageing



For the last 10 years I have been trying to convince myself that I was looking forward to getting older. Maybe because I was convinced by then I would be in the best shape of my life. Now that I am 39, I simply am not and am possibly in the worse shape of my life. This is my real spur to turn things around and my recent niggles and injuries have only reinforced this. My ultimate goal is to be in the best shape of my life in my fifties and sixties. My discipline is simply to do all the right things to make this happen. Simple right?

Warnnambool

After 8 days of no running, I decided that I felt pain-free enough on Saturday for a short, easy run.
I was away for the weekend with the family and was staying in Warnnambool for the annual school holiday kids festival. We were at a place close to the beach and I decided to head out along the main coastal walking path. Here's an example of the views I had on the run:

Within a few minutes, I was feeling great and was purely and simply running. Not looking at my watch, not worrying about my speed, not feeling my calves complain and not wondering if I'll ever be able to be a runner again. Everything felt as easy as it ever was and gave me renewed optimism and a determination to continue on this minimalist path. Me and my Vibrams. By the end, I had run 5.35 km in 32 minutes, my calves weren't sore and I knew that all I had to do from now on was just listen to my body and let it run when it wants to and rest when it wants to.
Today I had a scheduled follow up visit with my physio and my back is now nearly 100 % pain free and I'm assure that running wasn't causing any issues. In the coming days, I will be assessing my lifestyle and making some changes re diet and exercise. Stay tuned.

Fatso

July has not got off to a good start for me. I weighed in yesterday and discovered that I had gained 500 grams since the beginning of June, even though I managed to run 70 kilometers for the month. A big increase on the previous month. Clearly I am not out-training my atrocious diet. I should point out that I hardly tried to eat well, in fact I used my extra running as an excuse to eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate. So July will be the month of better eating and hopefully this will result in weight loss.
I think my extra weight is contributing to my latest injury. Just when my calves seemed to muffle their screams at me, I have now been afflicted with some lower back pain which is making it difficult to walk let alone run. So I canned my planned 50 minutes today and will see a physiotherapist early in the week for some treatment. Fingers crossed I won't be out of action for long and don't lose any gains I made in June.