Thursday, January 21, 2016

A streak of sorts

Normally I dont do running streaks, just love my leaba on a Sunday too much. I was surprised to see on my log last year that I did manage 41 Days and 380 miles last May to June. This year I have a different streak, 24 days of been able to plan a run without having to ensure proximity to a toilet, either close to home or in Lees Road. My colitis has thankfully gone into remission and Two things helped this.

Item one the prescrided scud missiles from the doctor. They came with what my daughter described as finger condoms and I found that vasealine has another use other then preventing chaffing. So no need to draw a picture on this one.

Item two Turmeric and black pepper. I was doing a job for Micheal of Plexus BioEnergy recently and this came up in conversation with his receptionist Frances. Basically sweat onions garlic tumeric powder and black pepper as a base for stews, curries and soups. Luckily I love black pepper and now every Sunday night I take to the kitchen to make up a weeks supply of Kale soup. Basically chop and sweet off onion, garlic, mushrooms and a green pepperin 2-3 tabnlespoons of cocunut oil. Add probably 1-2 tablespoons of tumeric powder with a tablespoon of ground black pepper, if it is pasting too much add a small driop of water. After ten minutes add tin of tomatoes, fistful or two of kale, potatoe and carrot washed, chopped and unpeeled (like the Cork lads eat them) and some dark cabbage, water bring to a simmer and leave for an  30 minute. Eat as is or liquidise it. You will need to add salt when eating as it does taste quite bland , but so far it is working a treat for me in the rear end departmernt

As regards running I have fully commited to ticking off my remaining 11 Marathons to get to 50 before I will start back at trying to improve the times in the shorter stuff. I am hoping to have this done before June leaving me the summer to attack some PB’s and finally dip my toe into some XC in the autumn.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Whats another Decade

Its the big one Year 50. If I teleported back Ten years to life approaching my 40th Birthday I could not have even dreamt up some of the things I have done since. A lot of stuff changed and for the better I may add. It all stemed from running up a hill one day getting to the top knackered and out of breath, deciding that turning back was not an option. So whats ahead for the next Ten (if I get that far) who knows but I am really looking forward to pushing out the boundaries on this.

Christmas Pudding

Yes that little thing that sits just below your stomach and appears every year without fail in the New Year. Had dreaded the stand on the scale on Monday morning and even threattent the scales with the bold corner if it did not behave. Well the scales are in the bold corner, up 10lbs since Frankfurt and I honestly cannot think of how that happened. Anyway its a good incentive to start the year on.

Goals for the Year

Before I can go about setting some I will need to get back to where I was last summer before a few niggles set me back. Currently my easy running pace is slow, the extra pudding is not helping. How would it. I have decided to complete the my 50th Marathon a bit quicker then planned, just get them done ASAP, and during this time I will try and get weekly mileage up a bit more so that I have a good solid base to come off. This means not racing a spring marathon or for that matter anything longer then 10K.

parkrun

As many now know Operation Transformation has joined up with parkrun this year. Well last week they where to film in Lees Road. We had heard they where coming but at 9:15 got a phone call with a request to delay the star until after 10. This didnt happen. parkrubn starts at 9:30 and changes for nobody. They duelly arrived at 10:15 when most of the runners had gone home. Spent the next hour filming and getting the poor remaining souls to shout “Operation Transformartion” and jump up and down. Roll on next week and we had our record attendance of 249, hopefully we can get these people to come back in March and April. Clearly the advantage of getting some national TV airtime outweigh the disadvantage of having to spend a morning in the cold with a film crew.