What I listened to on my Sunday long run

Hiya! Another long run done, yeah!

Here’s Strava showing the route

https://www.strava.com/activities/499151218/embed/65c24488b7253b2ea32a7bc956ff19c77162aa60

My earbuds were in my ears during most of my run. Sometimes my head is just full of chaotic thoughts and adding tunes or podcast chatter while running turns the chaos into more chaos. However, this morning I was helped by and motivated by the tunes and chitchat 🙂 First off I listened to an episode of Trail Runner Nation podcast “The British are coming with Warren Pole.” Warren is a regular on TRN and I love the light hearted conversations between Scott, Don and Warren. Warren is very “British” and this is an “American” podcast. The combination is great, and Don and Scott always find something in Warren’s Britishness that tickles them. This conversation was on sports nutrition and although Warren was plugging his new product it was a cool, funny conversation. Check it out if you are an endurance runner.

Next up I listened to some tunes:

I only recently discovered I like Beyonce songs! Last night I started a new Spotify playlist. On it is “Drunk in Love” and boy it gets me fired up. I so want to sing along to the bit that goes la…ah…ah….. however, with me I’m yelling instead of singing as I just cannot sing a tune 🙂

Also on that playlist are Kiesza “Hideaway” (the video for that song is so cool) and Pavarotti with Nessun Dorma. This leads on to  another tune I have been listening to on my runs recently: Paolo Nutini-Iron Sky, from the awesome album Caustic Love. Like Pavarotti, Paolo has Italian genes; Paolo’s father is Italian. Paolo is Scottish and was born in Paisley, a stones throw across the River Clyde from my birthplace, Dumbarton. So, I like Paolo!

Seeing I am talking about Italians, last night I watched an inspiring running movie, rented from iTunes, called Spirit of the Marathon 2. It follows a few very different runners preparing for and running the Rome Marathon. It’s definitely worth a watch if you are a runner.

Back to my run, I listened to a few more tunes and finished off listening to Lauren Fleshman on the Running on Om podcast. I am a fan of Lauren and enjoyed this.

Here’s a pic taken from under the Trans Canada Highway; I passed here twice on my run today. As well as the graffiti you can see at ground level, there was more way up just under the carriageway. I stood and looked at it  and could not figure out how someone got up there to paint it! Somebody was brave and ingenious! It’s high!

Finally, to show it’s still winter here’s a pic I took snowshoeing on Mt Seymour in North Vancouver yesterday.

50th Birthday Marathon🎂

Yesterday, 14th February 2016, was my 50th birthday (also it was my twin brother, Graeme’s 50th birthday-Happy Birthday Graeme!). I love running on my birthday and I had sought out a marathon for the day. That marathon was the Birch Bay Marathon, not too far from home. It’s a low key marathon on a lovely course and takes in all that is beautiful about the Pacific North West. However, yesterday there were no ocean or mountain views, just chilly constant rain but I had a fantastic day. Peter and I travelled over the border on Friday evening and had a weekend away. As always Peter cheered me on from the roadside and had warm clothes for me at the finish.

I ran 4 hours 4 minutes and the second half was 4 minutes quicker than the first. A negative split! Pacing improves with age no doubt! I felt a wee bit tired throughout the event as I hadn’t tapered at all, this being a training run/birthday treat. I was ready for the bonk but it just didn’t happen. I finished feeling just a  bit worse than the start.

All I ate during the 4 hours was 3/4 of a tiny sample-size Cliff Bar (I looked at the wrapper-110 Calories, 17g of carbs). I had 2 or 3 gulps of water at each aid station-no gatorade. This is a large reduction in fuel compared to my previous marathons. Could I now be a fat burning machine?? LOL. I guess my consistent running with moderate mileage for the last 3 or 4 years has had a good training effect. Running long, eating “high fat” and running when fasted are techniques people use to improve fat burning. I enjoy my breakfast far too much to try running fasted and my diet is not “high fat”. My own experience shows me that fat burning for the average runner can be gained by consistency without fasting or eating a lot of fat (regular long runs will inevitably cause glycogen depletion and glycogen depletion is the stimulus for the body to adapt from carbohydrate burning to fat burning)

I enjoyed yesterday enormously and had a fantastic birthday. Roll on the 100 miles :))

 

Making My Goals Real

Like most people, I too often allow distractions to take over hours of my day. I know my wandering mind will be a huge obstacle to overcome if I am to successfully get through my 100-mile training journey. I am on a mission to find focus. With this in mind, one of my goals this week was to write down my running goals! This task has been on my to-do list for a while.

I recently bought from Amazon the great training journal written by Lauren Fleshman and Ro McGettigan-Dumas. It is a lovely item for any runner to own. I would highly recommend it. Here’s mine.

 

 

One of the first sections in the journal is about “Defining your goals”. I studied Ro and Lauren’s advice and eagerly read examples of their goals, reasons for their goals and steps they planned to take to reach their goals-wonderful. Motivated by their advice, I got started on my journal today by writing down my goal (Finish the Sinister 7 100 miles), reasons and steps. Then I made my first entry in the training log. It’s such a lovely journal that you want to write in it. My first entry was for yesterday (8th February-Family Day in BC, Canada) and described my easy 10K with Peter around Burnaby Lake. I was recovering after skiing the previous day at Whistler. For me, skiing is great strength training. I never fail to feel the lactic acid burn in my legs after a few minutes going down the piste!

 

Skiing with Eva, Peter and Mig on Sunday at Whistler. Strength training for runners!

 

Finally for today, a pic from one of my training days last week; fast hiking the BCMC trail in North Vancouver. It’s a 5.8k round trip with 790m of elevation up then down. I love it!

 

Winter training in Beautiful BC