Sunday 27 April 2014

February and March Diary



February
So, I was pretty chuffed with the ways things were going. I’d lost the weight I wanted to loose and was enjoying eating  healthy meals that make me feel full; I was not snacking on sandwiches between meals like I used to. 

I realised one important thing; you have to be prepared to do a lot of your own cooking. This is nothing new in our household but for many this could be a barrier to the use of LCHF. But there isn't really anything new here as most serious diets suggest that you buy, cook and eat REAL ROOD.

I travel sometimes for work and it can be hard finding the right food in hotels and restaurants. Instead of a restaurant I often buy a buffet selection from Marks and Spencer’s. This allows me to get just what I want, and it fits in well with evening runs and desk working in a hotel room. It also costs less than a restaurant meal.

I had a fun idea. For Sport Relief I decided to repeat my wife’s feat of running up and down the village high street (1 mile) 26 times for Sport Relief. The gang from We Run! Hassocks will be out to support me and our friend Marina, Jane’s partner at Aspire Fitness, who is also on the LCHF diet will run if too. This was exciting. I have never run for charity before as I wouldn’t ask someone to sponsor me to complete a run that they know is not that big a challenge for me.  But this was different; we would just be asking people to hand over the money that they had promised to donate when watching the Sport Relief show the night before. 

So I had plans, targets; I was getting back into serious running. Everything was going perfectly!
I have always been too competitive. I always wanted to be the fastest. And so it is now. I’d been aiming at the Brighton Half Marathon for a first serious test of ‘my new powers’. I had not been expecting too much but I was secretly hoping to get close to 1:30; a few minutes off my best but not bad considering the lack of consistent training. 

I started doing speed reps to up my pace and after a couple of weeks I just had to stick with the fast boys when we were doing a session of 12*300m reps at the track. Now I don’t pretend to be a sprinter, so why on earth I felt the need to do this session at full pace I do not know. I strained my left quad after 10 reps and so had to rethink my plans for the London Marathon; and the Sport Relief Marathon; and our ski holiday. Bad boy! After a week’s rest I ran the Brighton Half anyway, it’s hard not to with it being a big local event that almost everyone at my club Arena 80 runs.  I did not attempt to run fast; I just jogged along and made a few social calls when passing old mates in the crowd. But my leg was much too sore afterwards.

March
After another week of rest I put in a good week of training before going skiing. Now we had always planned to take a week off the diet for the ski holiday. I won’t pretend that that was for any reason other than wanting to indulge ourselves as much as possible. And this we did.  However I also picked up two further injuries that left me hobbling and unable to run at all for another week. Even then I had large bruises in my calf and backside that did not go away for some weeks.

My bad luck did not diminish my interest in the diet. I was reading more on the subject by now and talking the LCHF talk to just about everyone I met. It’s possible I might have bored a few of them.
 
So with one week to go to the Sport Relief Marathon I had done very little distance training. The only thing that was going well was the diet. I was back to fighting weight in no time after the ski holiday and ran three good long sessions in the week before the marathon with no tiredness, just a sore arse. 

The run itself was so much fun that I hardly noticed the time go by. We took 4 hours 15, a modest pace for me but this included shaking buckets and lots of stopping and chatting.  About 20 friends turned out to run with us or pester the villagers who were quite happy to hand over their tenners in abundance. We all wore our We Run! Hassocks T-shirts and Jane organised the collection. My 12 year-old son Cam ran his first half marathon and we raised over £700 and were very pleased with ourselves. I had 2 eggs and 3 slices of bacon for breakfast and 2 cups of soup during the run. 

And suddenly I had achieved one of the main goals of this diet.  I can run marathons on LCHF. What next?

       A Marathon Runner's Breakfast

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