Sunday 26 August 2007

Unflummoxed (maybe)

Further to my Flummoxed post of last week I may have found a reason for my lack of form. Apparently, a high protein and fat diet will result in a much lower endurance than a 'normal' mixed diet whereas a high carbohydate diet results in much higher endurance. We all know the carbo loading side of this but I wasn't aware of the effects of the protein diet.



Anyway, the night before my run I went to a barby and had two large mackerel. I also tried to get as much pasta as I could but there wasn't much around. I also don't know what my diet was leading up to that but it could have had a lot of protein in it as I'm a bit partial to fish. So, that combined with a deceptively warm day and insufficient fluids may be the cause of my problems. I'll keep telling myself that anyway.

I've been out a couple of times since and have felt fine. The hills are still fairly flat. My heel is still slightly sore but doesn't seemed to be getting any worse (or better) and I'm enjoying my running which is good. There's still that little mental niggle about burning up after 15 miles but I'll just have to change my strategy to mitigate that. I'm also very conscious that I've effectively blown my last chance to top off my training in these last weeks. The aim now is definitely to finish rather than get a good time although I'm still hoping to beat 5 hours.

Off out on the bike now. Can't waste the only sunny weekend we've had since records began.

2 comments:

Eddy said...

Best wishes for the marathon, thanks for the great photos of your training(gasp) run.I live in the flatlands of East Anglia and thus my training has been limited!But really looking forward to this one, my last marathon was Amsterdam october 06 and due to knee injury have not raced this year. I would be very pleased to complete within 5 hrs , but my main target is to finish, and I think I will have to pace myself carefully between Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen. Well Mick, I hope all go's well for you, if I see you there you can count on me for some sponsership to a very worthwhile cause. Pete Edmunds.

Mick said...

Pete, thanks for the message. We had a Dutch guy on the training week and he had the same flatlands problem as you. Just take smaller steps on the hills and enjoy the day. I'm going to treat the run to Lauterbrunnen as a gentle warmup jog. The real run starts after that. You can always sponsor me via the blog (see link on the left hand side). Hope you have a great run.