I have to start running again, not just for my health, but for the inner-peace it used to bring me. Running brings you face-to-face with your weaknesses and forces you to confront them. 

I have a pack of cigarettes with about 8 left in there. Eight more morning cigarettes with my coffee and then that’s it – I’m done. I’m at a point in my life where I am running out of time to put things off. I’m 27 years old, battling chronic depression, and I’ve let it creep back into my life because I got careless. Running allowed me to control it. I miss the control. I miss the old me. 

It isn’t going to be easy, but nothing worth having is.

Onwards and upwards.

I’m going to try making more of an effort on both counts so that I can meet my October half-marathon goal!

As much as I love running, I don’t credit much of my weight loss to it. It’s mostly been my diet. I’ve done a lot of reading, both about running, but also about nutrition and I’ve learned a lot. I’ll include a “further reading” section at the end for anyone interested.

My diet has been a combination of low-carb & low-calorie. In a nutshell, my daily goal is 1300 calories, which is made up of 10% carbs (33 grams), 30% protein (98 grams) and 60% fat (87 grams). I usually struggle to eat that much though, and hit roughly 1000 calories a day, which admittedly is a bit too low.

Why low-carb?
Basically, carbs and sugars elevate your blood sugar level, which triggers a release of insulin. Insulin is a hormone which regulates the levels of sugar in your blood, but as well as that, it works to store fat on your body.

So, what should I eat?
Meat, nuts, vegetables, cheese, eggs. I eat at least one salad a day, with some chicken, beef or fish. I used to love mashed potatoes, but potatoes are high in carbs so now I substitute it with mashed cauliflower. Add a bit of butter, salt & cream cheese. If you have a sweet tooth, sweeten things with stevia (you can get this from your supermarket). In the health food aisle of my local Woolworths, I get sugar-free chocolate by a brand called Well Naturally and that satisfies my chocolate addiction. I also love the Lo Carb ProteinFX bars by Aussie Bodies.

Further reading/viewing
The YouTube clip up there is an excerpt from a documentary called Fat Head. You can download it here. Basically, it’s about a guy who goes on a McDonald’s diet for a month but loses weight because he limits his carb intake to 100g a day (his fat intake was usually well over 100g a day – his doctors were perplexed).

The book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes (the title in Australia is “The Diet Delusion”). This book goes into quite a bit of detail about various studies which have been done and is a bit dry in parts, but if you aren’t convinced then you should read this book.

If you search YouTube for Gary Taubes, I’m sure you’ll find some interesting things.

Lastly, this thread will answer any questions  you have about low-carb dieting, as well as recipes and meal ideas. Bookmark it.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, there were 43 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 7 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 605kb.

The busiest day of the year was December 3rd with 254 views. The most popular post that day was About the author.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were reddit.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, iconfactory.com, and leposava.net.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for runners world training log, runners world training journal, runner’s world training journal, gi index pyramid, and where is the tibialis anterior muscle found.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

About the author August 2010

A more personal entry than usual. July 2010
6 comments

Keeping a running journal. October 2010
1 comment

20 minute milestone! October 2010
1 comment

Running and the lessons it’s taught me September 2010

It’s been almost two months since I ran my first ever 5k. What have I achieved since then? I’m pretty sad to report: nothing much. I ran 6k last week (at a glacial pace). It was still taking me 9 minutes to run a kilometre.

My past two runs I’ve used the RunKeeper Pro app on my iPhone. Just for fun, I decided to set my target pace as 8:30, with no intention of actually meeting it. Surprisingly, the first run my average pace was 8:33. Hmm, interesting. The next run I did, my average pace was 8:13.

Having the audio cues chime in every few minutes and tell me, “Your average pace is 8:23. You are ahead of your target pace by 7 seconds” makes me want to keep up with the faster running. Before using this app I was happy to just plod along.

It’s the best $12 a runner can spend.

I’ve also just started reading “50 Marathons, 50 Days” by Dean Karnazes. It’s a pretty good read and amazing that somebody can even consider, let alone complete, such an amazing feat of endurance. I’ll be happy with 1 marathon in 1 lifetime.

Happy running dudes!

Then there’s days like today, where every step I take sends sensations of pain and fatigue throughout my body and my entire thought process is cluttered with, “Just stop and walk for a minute”, “No, don’t do that! You know if you do that, you won’t be able to keep running”, “Yes, I will”, “No, no you won’t”.

Then something started making sense to me: running was never meant to be easy. It’s not easy. It’s hard. There is always going to be some manner of discomfort when I run. The problem here is not the pain or discomfort; it’s my unwillingness to accept it. Once I accept it, even see it as my ally, I can move through it.

The pain means I’m getting better and stronger. The pain means I’m pushing myself to new boundaries. Once I accepted the pain in my calves, my thighs, the stitch in my side, I knew that I had to keep going. That I could keep going.

I’m not advocating running through an injury here – if something hurts so bad that you have to alter your stride, stop. What I’m saying here is, if you want to run, and you want to get better and faster, accept that there will be some pain you inevitably must endure and that the pain is on your side. It’s a sign of strength, not weakness.

End rant.

My next goal is to bring that time right down. As happy as I am that I ran 5.2km, it’s not enough. I want more. So, with the advice of my brother, who has run some marathons in his time, I’ve come up with the following plan:

Run 3km during the week, with a weekly long run of 5km. Each week, these distances will increase by 10%. So, next week, 3km becomes 3.3km and the long run becomes 5.5km. These runs will stay at my current pace (roughly 9min/km).

When my weekly long run gets to 15km, that’s when I’ll start to increase my pace. By this point, I will have built up my endurance enough to step it up.

Happy running, dudes!

With all this in mind, I’ve had a look at the Victorian Running Calendar to try and build a timeline that’ll keep me motivated and give me a reason to keep training.

So, here’s my preliminary timeline for 2011, subject to change in case of injury/more interesting runs being posted:

Jan 9th: City2Bay 5km
Feb 27th: Yarra Boulevard Run 10km
April 24th: Princes Park 15km
October: Melbourne Marathon 21km

The ultimate goal being the full Melbourne marathon in 2012.

Now, onto the matter of ‘the nod’. The track I run along in Eltham attracts a lot of runners. Some like me, just starting out, and other runners that I call ‘serious runners’. I have gotten nods from both types of runners and it’s a nice moment between two strangers who share a common goal. A sort of silent camaraderie. It gives me an extra push and makes me feel good for being out there – not everyone’s laughing, some people think I’m a champ for not resigning myself to a life of sedentary misery.

Have you ever gotten a nod? Or have you been snubbed? I was, once, by a 7 foot tall monster who also thought it’d be a good idea to almost run the little redheaded girl off the side of the trail. Jerk.

A few posts back I wrote about the Runner’s World Training Journal that I bought. Above is what it looks like on the inside (this one isn’t mine) and I’ve been dutifully filling it out after every run for the past five weeks or so. It just sits on the coffee table most of the time and I scribble some details and thoughts in it when I get back.

Yesterday I had a flick through it and it was really interesting to see my progress. Little details that I forgot, like how elated I was after my first 5 minute jog! How bad my legs were hurting after my first 8 minute jog. It was nice to be able to go back through it and see what I was thinking and feeling at different points throughout this journey.

If you haven’t been already, you should definitely start a running journal, you’ll be glad you did. It doesn’t have to be the Runner’s World one, just a notebook with the date, time, distance and some notes will do. I’m just a sucker for a nice package, so that’s why I bought the one above.