The experiment is nearly over

In two days time this experiment will be over. The race would have been run and either I accomplished my goal time or I didn't. My goal for this experiment is to achieve a PB on the Kaveri Trail Marathon without losing any lean weight. Other than the race time the other results from this experiment can be measured now.

The result is simple: the marathon training has impacted the body building. My weight has remained steady as has my lean body mass. That's been a positive outcome but my body building has been affected. While I don't think the running itself has impacted the body building there are two clear affects preparing for the marathon has had on me.

Firstly, my clothes are hanging on me a bit more which suggests I have lost some mass. That could be nothing more than a lose of muscle pump you get from doing a weights session. The clothes aren't hanging really lose, only enough for me to know that I have lost some mass. Secondly, and more significantly, I have lost some strength. The reason for both of these outcomes is simple, I haven't been able to do strength training like I thought I would.

Throughout the last few months adding in 2-3 runs a week has pushed out my strength training sessions. I thought my schedule could fit in the extra runs without sacrificing my 3-4 strength training days. I was wrong. Life has been busier than I expected and adding the runs into my routine meant something had to go and since running has been the priority the strength training has progressively moved to the back of my priorities.

I tried to change my strength routines to full body workouts and that worked for a while but the closer I have come to the marathon the more time I have been giving myself to fully recover from the running. This has been especially true over these two final weeks . I am so conscious of getting injured that I am under strength training to ensure I don't hurt myself. The hip problem I had (have) put some fear into me and made me cautious.

It appears, to me at least, that the greatest impact preparing for the marathon has had on my strength training is that I was not able to balance both training routines at the same time. This is something I can learn from and seek to improve and plan for. This is just round one of the experiment after all - there's always next year.

2 sleeps to go.

The most difficult exercise in the final two weeks

In training for an event, any event, the closer I get to the starting line the more nervous I becomes. All the failures of training begin to haunt my mind. Doubts of achieving my goals become bigger and scarier. The desire to catch up on training grows. In the final two weeks of marathon preparation there is one exercise that is critical to me doing well. Rest.

With two weeks to go any endurance that has been gained is there. Any increases in speed have been gained. If I haven't developed the endurance and speed I wanted then it's too late. Now is the time to make the physical effort to back off from training and rest.

In the last 2 weeks if I try to compensate for missed training runs by running too fast or too long hard then there is the genuine risk that I will exhaust my body and not recover in time for the marathon. If my body is exhausted there is the risk I will catch some bug and get sick. I've run a marathon sick before and it's not pretty.

This phase of marathon preparation is called the taper. The amount of running one does significantly drops. Muscles recover. The immune system gets stronger. I still need to do some running, especially some short runs at marathon pace but no more than half of the weekly distances that I have been doing. I've been teaching my body to run for a while now so it is difficult to now tell it rest. But rest I must.

We live in a world that is already sleep deprived. We stay up late. The alarm gets us up early. Our bodies are so tired we think this is normal. Rest feels awkward and foreign. A luxury our lifestyle doesn't permit. That's what makes the exercise, the physical effort, of getting to bed early, of holding back from running, of sleeping well, so hard. That's what makes this so difficult an exercise but it's also the most important.

In your preparation for an event, physical or otherwise, do you taper? Do you allow yourself time to recover so that you are at 100% health before the event or do you train and keep trying right up to the starting line?

2 weeks to go.

Admit it so you can move on

I had my first significant setback this week. Bursitis of the hip. Bursitis is inflammation of the joint due to overuse - turns out I've tried to do too much too soon. It's not serious as I can still run on it but the problem isn't going away and it's not going to go away unless I stop and treat it properly.

The good news is that with proper treatment this problem should disappear within a week or so. So, I've skipped my long run for the week, got the noninflammatory lotions working and taken it easy. Thankfully, after only 2 days the pain has subsided significantly.

Mentally I'm fine. Yes, this pain has stopped me from running for the moment but it's just a setback. Setbacks are not the end. Setbacks are obstacles that need to be worked around and resolved. If I don't listen to the setback but push ahead regardless then there is the real risk that the setback will turn into something more permanent.

Listening to setbacks is difficult though. They appear permanent. They appear to stop one's goal from being realised. Objective thinking is hard when you want something and something else is standing in the way. To stop running in order to heal also means I'm not progressing in my running since I'm not running. Until I can admit to myself that a break from running will lead to better running I'll continue to run despite the pain. Denial delays acceptance of the setback.

When I finally accepted my pain was real and was not going away (which took three weeks) finding a solution and building hope didn't take long. A quick search on Google for "running hip pain" immediately led to several articles and a short video on hip problems and remedies. Fifteen minutes later I knew what the problem was, what the remedy was and knowing that I have 6 weeks to go allows me time to recover and finish my preparation. Did you notice the biggest problem I had with this setback? Admitting I had a problem.

Most setbacks in running, body building or life can be solved so long as they are identified before they cause permanent damage. Admitting there is a problem is the toughest part in working around a setback. Without the admission nothing changes. Actually, there are changes. Bad changes. Changes that make and will continue to make your life miserable. With admission comes healthy change.

What's hampering your progress? If something could change right now that would make you better what would that be? What's stopping it from happening?

6 weeks to go.

Embrace the pain.

I worked with Peter years ago. He ran lots of sub 3 hour marathons. He inspired me. Peter gave me some advice about marathons that I have always remember. He said, "If you are going to run a marathon then you had better get used to pain." Marathons are painful.

Getting out of bed 3 hours earlier to fit in the long run is painful. Changing diets to stay healthy is painful. Having to increase the discipline of my bed time routine is painful. Running when I am exhausted is painful. Running out of energy 7kms from home is painful. Getting blisters on my feet half way through the training run is painful. Dealing with my emotional baggage that turns up mid run is painful. Having my shirt rub my nipples raw is painful. Falling short of my goal that I spent months and months preparing for is painful. If you are going to run a marathon you will need to embrace pain.

If you are a body builder than you know this. You understand hitting failure. You understand DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). You understand the need to push your body beyond comfortable in order to make it stronger. The same applies to running a marathon - only the pain is different. In body building the effort is intense and short. In running marathons the effort is sustained and, obviously, long. But you get the principle - pain is not the enemy; pain is the evidence of your progress. You know the cliches and slogans.

For those of you who are inactive who are reading this please note that I am not talking about acute pain. Acute pain is not good. This week my lower back was so sore it hurt to walk. That's acute pain. I missed two running sessions because I had to rest my back. The back is healing well so I could run my yassos today. Yassos are a tough run. Interval training is tough. It needs to be because I'm training myself to run faster. If I run comfortably then I won't improve so I must run at an uncomfortable pace so that my legs get stronger and faster. This is the pain that I must embrace. In body building if I want to get stronger I must lift heavy weights. Lifting light weights is comfortable but it won't make me stronger. To improve I must embrace the pain of discomfort.

Yes, you will suffer as you prepare for your marathon. But it's worth it. You become a finisher. You become one of those people that can start with a big goal and break it down into little goals. You become one of those people who understand consistency and progress and set backs and effort. You become a better person. A stronger person. You become a finisher. And that's worth suffering for.

What pain have your endured in order to achieve your goal? Was it worth it? For those of you who have run long races what pain did you endure in your training? What pain did you endure on race day? Leave a comment below as an encouragement to those who are starting out.

10 weeks to go.

Conflicting Diets

Different diets produce different results.

Depending on what your goals are you need to find a diet (an eating plan) that matches your goals. My challenge is that body building and marathon running have two very different diets. The body building diet is high in protein because muscles need lots of protein to repair and grow. Protein doesn't make a good fuel source which is needed for running long distances. Protein is great as a building source but horrible as a fuel source.

Fuel well

For fuel the body requires carbohydrates. Before a strength training I take carbs to give myself the fuel to have an intense workout. But once the workout is done I don't need a lot of carbs for my lifestyle but I do need protein to repair and build the muscles. While protein is important for running a high carb diet is the norm. Strength training burns some calories but running burns a lot of calories. Today, for example, I burned over 2,000 calories during my long run. 2,000 calories is what I would normally eat for the entire day! That's a lot of fuel I'm burning. Having just a high protein diet won't help. A high carb diet is crucial to running a marathon.

So I have a conflicted diet. On one hand I need high protein for building muscle and for marathon prep I need high carbs. In order to balance both requirements I'm following a body building diet for most of the week but increasing my carbs on the running days. On the days I'm running, and therefore burning lots and lots of calories, I'm eating my normal amount of protein (and fat) and then eating a very healthy size of carbs to compensate.

This is what it looks like in practice. Before my run (which I do in the morning) I take some protein powder as my pre-run drink. I don't eat anything else. I want to run without a stomach full of carbs because I'm training my body to use fat as a secondary fuel source so I don't want carbs in the stomach - protein is fine. Today was a three hour run. I drink lots of water during and after the run. After the run I'll eat a really good meal full of protein, fat and carbs for recovery. My current calorie intact on a normal day is 2,000 calories. Adding what I've lost to running for 3 hours means I need to eat 4,000 calories today - that's not going to happen. I feel sick if I try and eat that many calories. So, today, I make sure that my protein and fat requirements are met and then I eat whatever I feel like in carbs knowing that I won't even come close to 4,000 calories.

On non-running days when I'm lifting I stick to my usual calorie intact.

In the midst of all of this I continue to monitor my body fat. If that's going down too much then I'm out of balance. If it's going up then I'm eating too much and I need to scale it back. As I'm increasing my running I need to be increasing what I eat on those days and monitoring my energy levels the other days.

How about you? Are you following any kind of diet to produce best results? Does your diet match your bodies requirements? I still feel like a novice in understanding what's best for fuel and dieting. Any pointers are greatly appreciated.

11 weeks to go.

Run Long, Run Yasso

You can't run fast what you can't run slow. In preparing for a marathon it is important to have some long runs under your belt. By long run I'm talking about 30+kms. I'm not fast so that's a big time investment. However, you either invest the time and do the long runs or you hit failure 15kms short of the finish line. That's a long walk home.

The purpose of the long run is to prepare the body for the distance. When I started strength training I couldn't do a one arm push up. My body didn't know how to do it and it wasn't strong enough. I had to develop and teach my body what to do. Same for the marathon. You can't skip the long runs. But, and here is an important but, the long run doesn't prepare you to finish fast, it only teaches you to finish.

Our bodies, like our minds, do what we have taught them to do. If I practice running long and slow guess what will happen on marathon day? I'll run long and slow. That's fine if my goal is to finish. But it's not. My goal is to finish with a better time than last time (without losing any lean body mass). Getting in enough long runs is essential to finishing but to finish in a better time I need to add speed.

I could simply run the long run at marathon pace but in practice that isn't a good idea. The marathon puts enormous strain on the body and training at that pace would lead to injuries and burn out. A different workout is required to help develop speed. Please welcome Mr Yasso.

I was introduced to the idea of running Yassos, and the story of Bart Yasso, reading The Runner's World "Complete book of running." You can read the same information online here and here. Essentially, you run and rest in minutes what you expect to run in hours, over 800m. When you can do 10 of these then you are in good shape to run the marathon in that time. Practically it looks like this: since I want to train for a 4 hr marathon I would run 800m in 4 mins, rest (slow jog) for 4 mins and then repeat 10 times. If I can do all 10 then I'm good to go. Assuming of course that I've been doing my long runs as well.

Not everyone thinks these are the best indicator or the best workout leading up to a marathon. Coach Jeff thinks that a fast finish long run is better than doing Yassos. Personally, I've never done the fast finish long run training but I do hope to include at least one of these going into this marathon. I have, however, used Yassos in the past and I find that they are a great workout and a great indicator, so I intend to stick with them.

To finish you need to train your body to go the distance. Do the long run.
To finish fast you need to train your body to run comfortably at a faster pace. Do Yassos.

12 weeks to go.

The right plan for the right goal

A good goal needs a good plan. If I want to get stronger in the chest then it doesn't matter how many kms I run nothing is going to happen to my chest. And if I want to get faster in my running then it doesn't matter how many push ups I can do. The right goal needs the right plan.

Post race swim at the end of the Kaveri Marathon

With one goal its often very simple to find a good plan. But life is way more complicated than that. Often there are competing goals in our lives and these goals require different plans - often these plans compete with each other. That's my situation here. I want to run a marathon while I keep doing my body building but these two goals don't match up. Here's why.

In order to build muscle you need to be eating more than your body is using. Our bodies use this excess energy to build muscle (and fat). Strength training tells the body to use the excess for building extra muscle. However, running burns a lot of calories - A LOT. In a 20km training run I burn up an entire day's worth of food. Putting on muscle and training for a marathon don't really go together. Goals need to be realistic so this isn't my goal. My goal is to maintain my lean body mass, that is, to keep all the muscle I have spent the last couple of years building. I need a plan that gets me to the finish line and achieve a PB over this course - hopefully a PB for all the marathons I have run. Two great runners have guided my planning.

Geoff Galloway, an Olympic runner, notes that "Research has shown that you need at least three days running per week for sustained improvement."  Galloway actually suggests the best option is to run 4-5 days per week. While 4-5 days would be better for my running it would cause havoc for  maintaining my muscle; I would simply burn too much energy. Also, I need time to do my strength training. Without the continued upper body strength training I'll definitely lose muscle. So I need to work around 3 days running per week.

Amby Burfoot, a winner of the Boston marathon in 1968, suggests the simplest running schedule I have ever seen:  "I do a Yasso workout in the middle of the week, a long run at the weekend and fill in the rest  of my training as best I can." The long run prepares me to run 42 km. The Yassos (I'll talk about these next week) help me run faster. These two runs form the backbone of my running. The long run gets me to the finish line while the Yassos get me there sooner than later.

This is my training plan. I believe this, along with my diet plan (to be discussed later) will get me a PB over the course and, perhaps, a PB overall. Do you have a goal you are working on? What's your plan for improvement? Does your plan and your goals match?

13 weeks to go.

Do what you can until you can do what you can't

When I first started body weight exercises for strength training I saw how push ups would move toward push ups with feet elevated to one handed push ups to one handed push ups with feet elevated. I had always wanted to do a one handed push up and I thought that perhaps, maybe, one day I would be able to accomplish a one arm push up - just one!

Fast forward 3 years. Yesterday I was doing my Push routine which includes push ups. I am current doing three sets of one handed push ups with my feet elevated. This means that I have far surpassed what I thought I would ever be able to accomplish. I was able to achieve this through small (very small) but consistent progress.

Whenever I do strength training I always write down what I am doing so I can see my progress but also so that the next time I do that routine I try to increase by one rep; just one rep. Once I get to three sets of 12 reps I up the exercise or weight so that I can only do three sets of eight reps. This means that every three months I'm adding weight or making the exercise more difficult. That's how I got to do one arm push ups. I did what I could and eventually I came to do what I couldn't do when I first started.

He did what he could until he could do what he couldn't
And then he ran the race and finished it - well done.

When I started push ups there was no way through sheer effort that I could do a one arm push up. Through consistent progress I am able to do them. This goes for other areas of strength too. I applying this same strategy to my running in preparation for the marathon.

There was a time when a 20 km run was a good start - no longer. For the past five years running has been almost non-existent. My 5 km run this week left me exhausted and discourage. This morning was my long run. My plan for my long run is to start off walking for 2 hours and build in running, moving to 3 hours and doing the same. 2 weeks ago I walked for 2 hours and was exhausted at the end of it. I felt discouraged, weak and disappointed. The idea of running and finishing a marathon with a PB wasn't happening.

I missed last weeks run because of this crippling thought but I was determined to give it a try this morning. Due to scheduling problems I could only get out for 1 1/2 hours. The thought of walking for an hour was ok but the thought of running for 30 mins wasn't helpful. But I could run for a minute and then walk for a minute. That I could do. It would be just like a strength workout - go hard for a minute then rest. Only I wouldn't go all intense, just run. And that's what I did.

It was awesome. For the first time in years I felt the joy of running. My body loved the run and loved the breaks. At the half way mark my mind was positively thinking about the marathon. For sure, there is still a long way to go but I made solid progress today and mind embraced it. My mind could see that progress will happen, that progress will get me to the starting line, and most importantly, I can enjoy the journey.

There are many tasks that appear beyond what we can imagine. From where we stand today they are not possible, not even remotely possible. If, however, we can begin the journey and make progress, however slow, step by step what was once impossible will slowly come within our sphere of possible. That happened for me today. What task is out of reach for you, a task you want to accomplish but seems impossible? What's one step you could take in that direction? What can you do right now that will extend yourself so that one day you can do what you can't right now?

On the journey