You could barely contain yourself, I know. If any of the forums I used to lurk on in order to promote the now defunct Runners Daily site (well, the main site is defunct, but I have revived the blog because I like blogging) present a typical profile of consumers, then people, including runners, put off purchasing something until they have asked on several forums about it, read all the reviews in review sites, read the reviews on the commercial sites, and even asked people who blog about it. (I've had a fair few queries from the blogosphere asking for more information about Fivefingers so that the questioner can make their mind up about a purchase). In fact I think they have more fun asking things like 'I'm a midfoot striker but tend to heel strike when I get tired, do you think these shoes would still suit me?' than actually buying the damn things and using them.

So you'll be bursting to hear how my Feelmax shoes are bearing up, especially since I mentioned that they seemed to have the potential for the sole to wear quickly. I've put in a fair few more miles in them, mainly walking, but when I 'walk' somewhere when I'm wearing Fivefingers or my Feelmaxes I almost always mix in a generous helping of easy jogging. The uppers have started to deform (in the best possible way) to mould themselves round my footshape. The soles are showing where my feet contact the ground first, as you'd expect, but the fabric that the soles are made from seems to be compressing rather than abrading away. If you can picture what a loose-stranded artifical fibre might look like after a flame is lightly applied to it - it seems to solidify - then that's the sort of effect I'm talking about.

So far, so good, then. I'm still sure that they offer more 'feel' for the ground than Fivefingers, and how they'd feel with the insole taken out, which I haven't got round to doing yet, well, I can but imagine. Or go to a load of forums and ask - they'll tell me what the experience is like so I don't have to undergo it myself.

Footnote: I am a little bit of a cautious, cagey consumer geek. I had to buy a new fridge a while ago, and read hundreds of reviews and forum entries. But with both the Fivefingers and the Feelmax, as soon as I saw them (online) I threw caution to the winds and took a punt on them. Sometimes life is too short to spend half of it wondering what something will be like. Better to know than wonder.

Of course only barefoot is barefoot. No matter what 'barefoot' shoes are on the market, and out there in the best possible faith (and I'm not talking about Nike Frees), there is no substitute for going barefoot.

There are shoes, however, that represent a step (see what I did there?) away from 20/21st century convention and towards a barefoot experience, most notably Vibram's brilliant Fivefingers (although I understand that recent models have thicker, rather than thinner soles).

And now I am in a position to talk about Feelmax shoes, or at least the pair I have. I know Feelmax sounds like a condom as much as a shoe (now there's a barefoot thought, why not stretch condoms over your feet? You heard it here first...). Feelmax shoes are very much like the types of shoes worn for centuries by Inuits and Native Americans, such as mukluks. The sole has no rigidity whatsoever - mukluks' soles are soft leather, Feelmax soles are a special fabric that is supposed to be hardwearing without sacrificing softness, flexibility and feel. The upper has taken minimalism to a refined degree, being constructed of an extremely lightweight mesh, with a rand of similar fabric to the sole. The model I have is the Niesa (see pic below) which is a low boot, and maybe not surprisingly, given that Feelmax is from rallying-crazy Finland, they are very similar to pro drivers' shoes.

Two things to point out immediately on wearing them for an hour or two. One, you feel the ground more, yes, more, than in Fivefingers. Two, beware of the seams over your toes! Having run many miles sockless in racing flats I know all too well that some shoes have rogue seams that will ruin the tops of your toes, and my pair of Niesas, worn sockless, did a fine job on my right foot, leaving a bloody scrape of flesh on one of my toes. Left shoe, fine.

So to make them bearably wearable, I have to wear socks. Sometimes I wear fingersocks (see pic, and thanks to Chris) for the barefoot vibe, sometimes my lightest run socks.

I have a high opinion of my Niesas. You get a proper feel for the ground and you can't ask for more than that from a 'barefoot shoe'. I'm sad that I have to wear socks, but on the other hand I do find that my feet get very cold in Fivefingers in winter, so socks + Feelmax are a great winter option.

The Niesa is supposed to be more water-resistant and durable than its predecessor, and as yet I can't comment on how long the sole will last. It looks a little flimsy, but the only test is that of time.

 

Two posts in one evening? What can be happening?

I'm blogging now about my run this afternoon. I'm in the habit of running, shod in trainers or my beloved Vibram Fivefingers, to my special venue, kicking off my shoes and doing a session with nothing between the earth and my soles and toes.

My special venue is a smallish clearing, surrounded by woodland, with a circular path round it that I use as a track to do reps on. As I arrived the sun had set, clouds were gathering over what had been a clear sky. A soft grey light covered the clearing as I started my reps, and the clouds suddenly blossomed into pink, as the sky behind grew darker. The ground underfoot was wet and as a drizzle started grew wetter.

I used to dislike running in the dusk light long ago when I was a road runner. It is treacherous: you think you can see well, but you can't judge distances. On a little path that I know well, I still had to concentrate, but there was no need to be constantly assessing the approaching surface as on the twilit road, when kerbs suddenly leap up, potholes jump in your way and little dips hide themselves until the last minute.

As the light faded, I was running more by feel than anything else, aided by the need to run carefully over the squelchy mud and grass. I was certainly concentrating, but what was wonderful was that I was in a kind of hyper-aware state, robbed of clear vision by the failing light. The effect was magnificent - otherworldly. The high barrier of trees around me turned the grey and pink sky into a bowl of soft light above, while the ground beneath me was hardly visible, and there was I, running fast through and over it all as if I was the only being existing in a slightly different universe.


Can't wait for the next rainy twilight run!

The moment the world - no, make that the universe - has been waiting for: I'm back blogging. Just a quickie to get back on track.

I was in 'prison workout' mode yesterday - getting a good, intense session in a restricted space, since I had November blues and couldn't be arsed to go out - and after a quarter of an hour of slightly aimless bouncing around and sprinting on the spot, I decided on this as the meat of my workout: 1 pull-up immediately followed by 5 press-ups, 20 times. I wanted to achieve 20 pull-ups, and I felt like doing a big wodge of press-ups too, so off I went. I varied the press-ups - some elevated, some split-grip, some wide, some narrow. After about 7 or 8 reps it started to feel pretty hard, but that levelled off straight away, and 20 pull-ups and 100 press-ups later I moved on to another segment of the workout (Tabata-style burpees) feeling well pleased. And now my chest is nice and sore!

I am proud to announce FitnessFarm's first outdoor training session is to be held on Sunday October 4th at 11 a.m. at Waltham Forest Pool and Track. (Not on the track, on the field at the side).

I'm back, for the moment anyway. With news of a Barefoot Running workshop.

James, one of my coachees, is selling his training bike. I said I'd mention it here.
55cm Ambrosio Alloy Frame with Semi Compact Geometry
Carbon Fork
Campag Xenon Group Set
Shimano FCR Hollowtech Compact Crank
Vualta XRP Crosser Aero Wheels
Bontrager X lite Tyres
In great condition only 2 years old, you wont get a better spec'd bike for the money.

£300

Call 0845 23007441/email james@humancapitalsolutions.com for pix/more info.

Time flies when you're writing blogs...

I have some gainful employment with www.runflux.com, and one of my jobs is to write a blog, which can be found at www.runflux.wordpress.com.

These are good blogs, and worth reading if you are a runner. Writing them has sucked a little of my fitnessfarm blog mojo, however, so that is why there has been something of a hiatus.

These blogs, here on fitnessfarm, are written primarily with the people I coach in mind, which is not good commercial blogging practice, but which makes me happy. As I write, I am addressing the people I am guiding as triathletes or runners, and that feels as though it is the right thing to do. So there you go.

I have just read 'Ultramarathon Man' by ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes, who has succeeded in becoming one of the best very long runners while still holding down a job (and writing his running story), so good on him. One non-running thing that struck me was his admission that (i) he is basically an obsessive-compulsive and (ii) he saw the woman he was later to marry at school and instantly fell in love with her. How would you feel if someone said, 'I love you I want to spend the rest of my life with you...by the way I'm an obsessive-compulsive, so it's not really love, more of an obsession...anyway, how about it?' She married him anyway, so she couldn't have found him that creepy.

There are two new Ironman World Champions as of today. One of them was a winner waiting to happen - Chris McCormack, one of the winningest triathletes ever, one of the fastest IM athletes ever (two sub-8hr races, I think), second at Hawaii last year, just failing to reel in the Norminator.

But the women's race was won by a near-unknown, near-novice Brit! And won at a canter. Chrissie Wellington only turned pro this year, and her coach persuaded her to enter IM Korea, which she won, to cement her place at Hawaii. But to turn over a field of experienced Ironwomen so easily (admittedly Natascha Badmann and Michellie Jones, the top two favourites had dropped out) is truly remarkable, and I applaud her effort. 

It's that time of year again. Time off training. Muffin tops coming back. Hair growing back on your legs, maybe. And maybe the excuse the Rugby World Cup gives to have more beers than usual. After a while guilt starts to make itself felt, and (rash) promises are made: to stop drinking forever; to never eat cake or chocolate, and especially not chocolate cake, again; to lose 5 kilos. And so on.

If you've done well this season, the chances are you want to do better next season. And if your season didn't go as well as you would have liked, then ditto. I've never heard, to my (admittedly faltering) memory, anyone say: 'I'd like my season to be just the same as the last one.'

So it makes sense to have a good winter before the racing season looms again. Now, for many people this is the time when all the talk is of 'building a base'. And for many people there is the assumption that this involves mainly endurance training, aerobic work at lowish heart rates and plenty of miles.

I want to question this assumption. Even when I started learning about training and this was the orthodoxy preached by the mags and the books, and I endorsed it to people I was helping, my gut was that it wasn't right. (I am reading 'Blink', by the way, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I recommend, and which deals with following your gut feeling). Nowadays I take the opposite view. It is better to get fast and bolt on endurance than to go long and try to bolt on speed. And my Very Long Race in France only emphasises that to me. I was able to go for nearly 10 hours - all right, I know I'm the new Captain Slow - on a diet of time-efficient threshold - and above - training in bike and run, with a few longer sessions nearer the time, and a laughably small amount of swimming, almost all of which was 'thinking swimming' or 'awareness swimming'. (Another story...)

Often I go about justifying this to my athletes like this: I ask, can you run 10 miles? Yes. Can you run 10 miles in, say, under 80 minutes? Yes, my PB is 77 minutes. OK, could you see yourself running 12 miles in 92-93 minutes, 13.1 miles in 100-105 minutes - this is about the same pace - next weekend? Er, yes. Easily? Fairly easily. Now, instead of going out and running longer, at the same pace, could you convert the extra effort you were going to expend on distance to speed, and run that 10 miles in 69 minutes? No. No? No, I can't run that fast. It's that simple. I'm sure you, dear reader, can adapt my example to fit your own experience and find some truth in it.

In most situations it is easy to add distance to a session or race with the fitness you already have; it is much, much harder - maybe even impossible - to sort out going faster, or significantly faster with that same fitness. So we should place a premium on our capacity to go faster or produce more power, and less emphasis on our capacity to go longer. And that is why an endurance base is, in my opinion, massively overrated.

Now you will see somewhere below photos of some rather unorthodox footwear. I got them a few weeks ago and wore them for the first time when I arrived in the Vosges for my Very Long Triathlon (see further below) to walk and jog in for 20 minutes or so. Today I did my first proper session in them, and this is how it went.

These 'shoes', or whatever one might want to call them, are made by the walking shoe sole company Vibram, and are called FiveFingers. There is a very thin rubber sole and a very lightweight upper with an elasticated cord to cinch them tight around your feet. And, of course, those individual toes, like the fingers of gloves.

The idea is that you wear them when you'd love to go barefoot but the ground underfoot would make it uncomfortable, or also, I suppose, if the pace you are going would make it uncomfortable. I can walk barefoot on gravel, for example, but running barefoot on gravel would not be bearable. The soles have a little bit of grip, and you also get grip due to the fact that your toes are working as they would when barefoot.

I ran in some normal shoes to my secret venue, which had: a short stretch of Tarmac, about 20 metres, which turned into cinder road, about 75 metres, then a grassy slope, very uneven, then a longish sloping path, not very steep and well-worn earth, and finally a steep and uneven grassy slope back down to the Tarmac starting point point. The whole loop may be around 500 metres, and I jogged it all except the longish slope, which I took at a very fast lick indeed. I changed into my FiveFingers when I got there and stashed my running shoes under a bush  and set off. On the cinder road I got a few sharp intakes of breath from landing directly on a cinder - you can feel it through the sole, but not nearly as painful as it would have been on naked skin. Everywhere else I ran without a hitch. On the fast stretch I had to stop to cinch the FiveFingers tighter, or they would have flown off in the sprint.

The last barefoot running I did was at the weekend, with two small boys, sons of friends, at Greenwich Park; we sprinted around for a while, either chasing a football or just chasing. Before that, I did some on a track while coaching, and before that some beach running in Canada. But barefoot running is not a regular and frequent thing with me, even though I walk around the house and garden and the immediate pavement barefoot as a matter of course. So I was a little wary of the whole thing maybe being a shock to the system. I needn't have worried. Going fast in the FiveFingers felt really good, I have to say. Underfoot the earth was firm, if rutted, and I did have to watch where I was going, but it just felt like I was enjoying the best of both worlds - the sensual pleasure, the feeling of freedom of running barefoot, and the protection of the soles of my relatively soft Westerner's feet.

I remember the first time I saw the film 'The Commitments' being amused by the scene where the older band member, an ex-session musician, got the group to congratulate themselves after a good rehearsal. He got the group to stand in a circle, and then, to their bemusement, to pat the person in front on the back. They soon got over the cheesiness of it - as did I - and realised that they did indeed have something to be proud of, having made some decent music together.

I've recently carried out review sessions with a couple of my athletes, who both, for different reasons, find it hard to applaud their own achievements. For me simply to say the words 'You've done really well' gave them pause for thought. Isn't sad that as adults living in a competitive world we find it so hard to give ourselves a pat on the back? To just say 'I've done well'?

It seems there might be two big, and different, reasons why this is so rare. The first is when you want more, more, more, and what you did wasn't the ultimate, so it wasn't really quite good enough. Not bad, maybe, but not yet good enough. Well, the ultimate may never arrive; so being happy with what you have done, without losing sight of what you want, is fine. The other reason self-praise may be rare is that praise in general is in short supply. In the first instance it's a case of - ok that was good but not good enough; in this second instance it's more like - nothing I ever do is particularly good, no one ever tells me so, why should this be any different?

This is the time of year when you should be reviewing your season in order to plan the next one. Part of that process is to look at where you succeeded. If you can't find anything good to say about your performances and your training maybe it's time to jack it all in? If the only pat you can give yourself is a cowpat (sorry, that was stretching things a bit) then have a word with yourself - you have done some good things this season, and you must recognise them, celebrate the fact and give yourself a big pat on the back. You've done really well!

* The swim: in a long race, it doesn't make much difference to your time, so take it easy. I swam around 1h 20, taking it extremely easy, and some of the elites at the very top end of the field swam over 1hr, but I can assure you that by the end there was just a little more than 18-19 minutes between us!

* Run shoes: I will lose two toenails soon, and one of those toes was damn sore during the race, adding to the list of pain areas to overcome. The shoes I chose were great for short and moderately long runs, but maybe I could have chosen another pair that wouldn't have caused me pain later on in the race. The reason? The ones I chose have a relatively narrow last, and I have ones with a broader last that would have allowed my feet to expand, as they undoubtedly would do in c8hrs of riding and running. Maybe this would have made my life a little easier, but it's hard to say.

* Comfort: I have some carbon-soled tri-shoes, but my battered old Sidi Genius are far more comfortable on long rides. OK so I couldn't leave them in the pedals and do a super-fast running mount, but then I wasn't going to do that anyway. Comfort is king. (See shoe mistake above!)

* Emotions: you get emotional in a long race. Towards the end of the run I passed a mother with a little girl who looked a lot like my Edith, and the next thing I knew an unstoppable wave of emotion barrelled up my throat and into my stupid eyes, which filled up for quite a few minutes afterwards.

If more points about this race or long events in general come to mind I'll post again soon. 

With 2k to go I got angry with shuffling along, mentally moaning in pain and engaging in pointless and very slow ding-dong battles with other such runners; 2k to go, you've run 28k, biked 120k in the mountains and swum a rather chilly 4k; you've done all that and you're just going to shuffle on home like the rest of them. So I tentatively lengthened my stride and speeded up and waited for the agony to increase. Nothing. A bit faster. All fine. So I ran, properly ran, those last 2k, blew away the plodders whose ranks I had been very much part of and crossed the line looking pretty good, all things considered.

The jewel in the crown of this race is the bike course. The Vosges mountains are challenging enough for Gérardmer to have hosted a stage of the Tour de France, and for Ironman France to have been run here for two years. For the XL, as this race is called, there were three 40k laps. Each lap had three climbs. The first was just over a mile - and came straight out of town; the second was about two miles; the third was about four miles. This last was the true winding ascent: you could see a line of riders stretched up ahead and behind  you as the road wound upwards. The descent from this summit was just as typical. With a system in operation that meant only traffic going the same way as the race was allowed, you could use the whole road to descend, confident that nothing would come round a blind bend and kill you. My one hairy moment came near the bottom of the second descent. Down at the bottom I could see a tractor pull out onto the road, the driver swearing and gesticulating at the marshal who was pointing at me and imploring the driver to stop. One of the tractor's massive tyres went over a large plastic road divider, shattering it and sending half of it spiralling up into the air - I was watching this in disbelief as I bore down at nearly 40mph - to land slap in the middle of the road, directly in my path. I think the poor marshal had his hands over his eyes. Thankfully this wasn't a lot different in principle to many an incident in London traffic, I was alert to the dangers, and a sharp brake and even sharper swerve saw me right, if a little shaken.

The lake at Gérardmer was about 16 degrees C, after as dismal a summer as we have suffered - indeed, the two days leading up to the race were cold, cloudy, drizzly and very  demoralising, as we found it hard to stay warm at our lovely campsite.  Race day was mercifully fine, but long sleeves were in order on the bike, after that chilly swim, and I welcomed them on those long descents. Some racers opted for tights, thermal jackets, overshoes - the whole Arctic lot. I noticed from the results that one racer spent 14 minutes in transition, presumably spent in getting thick lycra over his shivering limbs. The lake lies east-west, so the return leg of the swim was straight into the rising sun, and a lot of the less experienced swimmers around me were faffing and slowing down everyone else's progress. I stayed cool, carried on swimming long, smooth and slow, and came out totally unstressed albeit later than anticipated, and ready to ease myself round the bike course. My race plan was 'be sensible' on the bike. During the swim I reminded myself, whenever my patience wore a little thin and I wanted to get on with it, that there was plenty of race left and not to be stupid; for the bike the focus was getting to the run in good enough shape to do it some sort of justice, and that meant going slowly, no matter how many people passed me. And there were plenty, believe me.

The run was four laps of the lake, with a few little climbs into the forest to keep everyone honest. For 28km it was a question of maintaining focus, staying centred and working to stay on top of the mounting pain. The fact that the aid stations were giving out chocolate was an enormous bonus: I probably put on a few pounds that day.

I'm pleased that I did what I would have counselled my athletes to do: ignore the other racers, do your own thing, conserve your energy, finish the run well, slow down as little as possible on the run, focus, focus, focus and more focus. I didn't look at my watch once, not until I crossed the line, which I think was a major success in the game of staying in the moment. I'm happy I got round on such little preparation.

But never, never, did I think I would be out on the course for just under 10 hours. And that to me is embarrassing. I can come up with a row of excuses, from my 10 years of injury to the lack of specific preparation, having Edith, and so on, but ultimately I feel like I was there under false pretences, a tourist among racers. I won't lose any sleep, don't get me wrong, because the flip side is that I never would have guessed that I could make 10 hours of effort seem so easy, and that is something I am proud of, since it is an aspect of my racing and coaching that I give weight to.

This race will host the European LD Championships next year, so at least I am in a good position to offer advice on it! I am a little mystified as to why so few Brits did this race this year, although it did fall on the same day as the Vitruvian. But to go to one of the most beautiful regions of Europe, to get involved in a massive and extremely well-organised race, to ride real mountains, to do one of the true long-distance formats of 4k/120k/30k...to get CHOCOLATE at aid stations...start training now!

Irony of ironies. After urging a bevy of my athletes to do this 'Nice' distance race in France, and having been persuaded to do it by one of them, my pal Mark, it now turns out I am the ONLY one doing it. The words 'it's not fair' come to mind - along with 'you are the athletes, I am a broken, fat, unfit and very rickety coach. YOU do the races, I plan them.'

But no. The universe is having a little giggle at my expense, and that's fine, actually. As I write this, Wednesday, I am getting my stuff ready to go on a tri-road trip to Gerardmer with Mark, who will hold my coat, so to speak, as I get to grip with the mountains of the Vosges. Two Ironman races in the space of two months proved too much for him, and the spirit and flesh were both very weak when it came to this race.

Even though I am as far away from a fitness level that would allow me to 'perform' - if that were ever a possibility over such a long distance race - and in theory have no competitive juice to excite me, for some strange reason I am slightly excited. I am also mentally preparing for all the pain that the probable structural damage and low levels of endurance will inevitably entail.

I have bought a large pork pie to nourish us as we drive across France. A camp site slightly away from the hubbub of town has been located. I have chosen a bike for the race, like King Arthur choosing a knight for a special mission. I am resigned to my fate.

A massive round of applause please for Dean - though he's not happy with his race after having the swim of his life and then thinking he was behind, not in front of, his main rivals, and riding his legs off to catch up, then being drafted to death - Jill, top ten finish in second Worlds ever (second full season) - and Chris, in first full season and still getting over the knee injuries that prevented him turning pro a few years ago (not triathlon!). My hat goes off to you all.

My 'Nice-distance' event (I use the the word advisedly, rather than 'race', since I am unlikely to be racing it) is looming large on the horizon and in my mind. And just when I needed to get out for what would have to be my last long ride, I came down with a 24-hour bug that emptied my guts and gave me a short sharp fever to the extent that Caroline rented me out to the local pub as an outdoor heater (one that groaned quite a lot, so they asked her to take me back and got their rental fee back too, so no one was the winner in a rather sordid display of moneygrabbing).

The next day I risked a 'long' ride - 'long' for many long-distancers would be 80-100 miles. Right now, 60 was plenty for me. I hope the fact that I found it fairly hard, and that it put my back into spasm again was due to the short sick spell and not to worse levels of fitness than I thought. I didn't ride it easy, but pushed the pace a little, and trotted off afterwards for a 15- minute transition run to keep me honest.

It really is debatable how much this will help me on race day, with less than a fortnight for my ravaged body to try to absorb that workout in.  One advantage maybe was that I rode a 10.5 mile loop four times, which was mentally quite tough and required the application of more focus than I thought it would. I really wanted to stop after two loops, because my back and hamstring were really hurting, and I was thinking that going on would not help me on race day, any riding was worth something and I would have covered nearly 40 miles if I went home then, and I could save my big effort for race day - I really tried to persuade myself to go home. Luckily I failed, and by half-way through lap three I was feeling more positive, promising to do the fourth circuit, praising myself for sticking at it when home was so close and not in any more pain than earlier.

I have a strong suspicion that Mark, with whom I am supposed to be doing this race, has not entered it. The ultimate irony would be for me, who never intended  doing anything more than accompanying some of my committed athletes to a great long-distance race, to be the only one doing it, and to toddle off to France on my own. We will see.

This weekend is crunch time for Dean, Jill and Chris. Squaring up to the best athletes in the world (allegedly), and at least a higher level of racing than it is possible to have in domestic races. It should be good.

My thoughts, hopes, fears, nerves will be with you this weekend. Do good racing, guys.

With my little trip to France in September pretty much inked in, the urgency to get more training under my belt in order to limit what promises to be absolutely hideous damage on race day gets greater. To this end I accompanied a couple of my charges at a half-marathon on Sunday, held on a multi-lap course around Hackney Marsh.

To make things a little more real, I got out for a tough little ride beforehand, including a standing, big-ring ascent of Lippitts Hill, which is steep enough to suck most of the juice out of your legs when ridden up like that, followed by a longish TT effort to get home in time to get out again for the race. Job done, legs quite fatigued, even slightly sore, as I toed the line.

Part 2 of making it real was to go out a little too fast, in order to make the second half a battle against fatigue. Easy enough to go out a little too briskly, it doesn't hurt then! The heat added to the reality check.

This is a nice low-key race, and 6 laps didn't seem like trial at all; indeed it allows you to check your pacing, and even enjoy the rare pleasure of lapping other runners! My 'keep it real' strategies all worked, making the last 20-30 minutes a bit of a death march as my adductors seized up, my back caved in, one knee started begging for it all to stop, and my pace slowed to what may even be faster than my pace on Gerardmer race day. This course is billed as 13.5 miles - 6 x 3.6k - so I was pleased with 1hr 34 minutes and collapsed into a foetal position after crossing the line.

For the record, both of my companions put in very encouraging and competent performances, and I wish Nick well at Bedford and the Vitruvian, and Jon a happy New York marathon.

While I was slicing up a beautifullly ripe avocado for my lunch my mind wandered to Hawaii - I am rereading David Mitchell's brilliant novel 'Cloud Atlas', part of which is set in Hawaii - and then it wandered on to last year's duke-out between Stadler and McCormack. And it made me think about what 'race fitness' and 'the perfect race' are, and what our notions of being 'fully fit' are.

One of my athletes raced very well last weekend after a long lay-off, and said he was a long way from 'race fitness'. I understand his point, but I would also say that when you race, you have your race fitness for that day, and that is ALL you have! All you have is that moment (this moment), and you cannot know what your fitness will be in a month's time; and if you were a lot fitter a few years ago, then those moments are gone and you can never guarantee that you will be in a similar state. We change, the world changes around us, our race rivals change...

Which brings me back to Hawaii: Macca got stronger for Hawaii 2006, and a lot better, to win a race that he couldn't even finish the first time he went there (expecting to win, ironically) and at which he had constantly struggled to put in the really great race performance everyone knows he is capable of. And on race day, it's hard to argue that he could have gone any better. He possibly had his greatest ever performance, maybe even the perfect race for him at Hawaii. But who knew that Normann Stadler would steal several minutes off everyone by having a breakthrough swim, and turn the race on its head? All stormin' Normann had to do from T1 on was hold it steady - ride as usual (ie lightyears faster than anyone else) and put in a solid, no-frills run and victory was his, even though a hard-charging Macca was eating up the gap between them on the marathon, running like a man possessed.

You can have your perfect race and get a good spanking; be moderately fit, but execute everything well and have a good placing; feel like shit before a race and have a good one, and feel like a god before a race and die a dirty death. Triathletes train a lot, and race fairly infrequently, and often there is an expectation that those races should be perfect, and achieved in a state of top race fitness. My job and my passion is to get my athletes to higher performance levels, but no one should be fooled by how life works, and go chasing the Holy Grail of the perfect race and top fitness, since it is a horrible paradox that by ignoring them and making sure our NOW is working well that we may sneak closer to them. 

I was in Canada, on Vancouver Island, staying at a house on a lake.  One of the friends I was staying with has entered the New York marathon (race date Nov 4th) and thus far had not run for more than an hour. I got him to run for a tad under 90 minutes early in the week, and then pointed out that it would be a good thing to take the bull by the horns and get a 2-hour-plus run under his belt, a prospect that he found frankly terrifying.

I explained the importance of going beyond one's comfort zone, of getting closer to race duration, of building confidence, of just f***ing training instead of poring over the schedule, blah, blah, blah, and a few days later I accompanied him on his first ever run of over two hours, (2 hrs 12) during which we also covered over a half-marathon, a feat which amazed him no end. I helped, but he did it.

Then I thought how I had been avoiding my long swim. I had a wetsuit, a lake, enough time in any given day and I had been doing 25-30 minute swims instead of the 70-minute swim I had promised myself. And here I was giving it large to an inexperienced runner about not being afraid of the big sessions. So I got cross with myself, then went out and swam for 72 minutes, starting ve-ery easy and gradually building pace. And guess what, no one died.

Proponents of what is becoming known as Evolutionary Fitness and Primal Health take the view that regular high-end aerobic and threshold exercise goes against our adapted design - it puts too much strain on the heart and metabolism. One writer takes morbid glee in pointing out when an endurance star goes down with a modern metabolic disease - Steve Redgrave's diabetes, for example, due, it is supposed, to the vast quantities of sugary foods he consumed to fuel his gargantuan training efforts.

Well one of the greatest marathon runners of the modern era, Alberto Salazar, has had a serious heart attack at the age of 48. He won the New York marathon three times on the trot in the 80s (although his Olympic record was not remarkable), and returned from retirement in '94 to win the 53-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa. One of the fittest men on the planet in his day (according to conventional wisdom, anyway) has severe heart problems, and the EF people will be pointing to this as further evidence of the long-term damage caused by unrelenting high-intensity aerobic training.

So what can I pass on in terms of race execution that may be of help to you? What went well, what I did right in this half-IM - swim pacing and effort levels, definitely. Didn't really get any good long drafts, but when I did I swam catch-up and glided as best I could to save energy; I swam really good lines and didn't swim overdistance at all, unlike many people in front who were zigzagging plenty. I really focused on my stroke, on rotation and catch and glide, and this made 2k seem to go by in a flash. So I got out of the water quite happy, unstressed, calm and ready for the bike. Can't think of any mistakes on the swim.

T1 - I had an aerobar-mounted drinks bottle, and I hadn't fastened well enough. Weighed down with water - I had tested it unloaded, duh, and subjected to severe jiggling as I ran the bike over the ploughed field of transition, it started to come adrift, and I had to stop and redo it.  Lesson - test things as they will be in race circs.

Bike - I think I went out a bit fast for my fitness levels and training background; pacing is always an issue when you race so infrequently, and although I was clear in my mind what RPE I was going to work to on the bike, there was a little blast of adrenalin that clouded my pace judgement early on and caused fatigue later. Lesson - have a cue maybe at T1 to remind you to go at goal RPE or pace straight away and not when you remember after 20 mins. What went well - feeding. I didn't overcarb. That was key. Water in the aerobottle, light electrolyte solution in my other bottle and some carb support from a gel in laps 2 and 3. Weeing without having to stop - I hate stopping - was good, and also alleviated my back pain slightly.

Run - I hadn't bothered to put lace locks/elastic laces in my shoes because I didn't feel my race ambitions warranted it. Fine, but when a lace came undone I had to stop and retie it. I didn't lose much time, but bending down was agony! Lesson: plan to make life as easy as possible even if speed is not a factor. What went well - cadence. I think I actually ran better than my fitness and fatigue would have dictated. I know I ran a slow 20k but I think it actually could have been slower. What also went well was that I didn't give up in the face of a lot of severe pain - god, I'm tough - and didn't resort to walking. I know I wanted to!  So overall I think I achieved my goal of acquitting myself well in the context of what I brought to the race - I 'run what I brung'. I got a very high percentage of my available performance on the day, and that is what all racers should strive for.

The Beaver middle distance triathlon; swim 2k, bike 80k, run 20k.  The swim, a confusing asymmetric polka around a course  resembling a ski slalom, with T1 a good half-mile distant, up a slippery hill of a field, and the bike exit another few hundred metres on the other side of the field; the bike, three laps including one evilly steep grind and a lot of nasty lumps and twisty descents; the run, also three laps with a heartbreakingly long steep ascent just after the start of each lap, and a psychologically damaging extra out-and-back loop where you could see runners pulling away or being clawed back.

So the distances belie the evil, cruel nature of this race. Before the race my take on it was: 'I've done one or two decent long sessions, and I know I won't kick any arse, but I'll get round ok - how hard can it be?' Afterwards it was less a case of me walking my talk than hobbling my croak. I found it, once the easier bits were out of the way - swim, first lap of the bike - damnably hard.

My personal travails were compounded by the fact that my age-old injury problem reared its head quite soon into the proceedings, my back going into spasm after about 20 minutes on the bike, and pulsing in and out of it for the rest of the race; and to add insult to agony, I had some leg cramps, which was something totally new to me.

This is a great race. The swim is silty, the flailing limbs swirling up ever more mud to prevent you seeing more than an inch in front of your nose; the bike course is tough indeed, testing every facet of bike fitness and adroitness; the run is a bastard, and I doff my cap to those wonderful athletes who truly raced it. T1 is incredibly long, more like a mini-aquathlon thrown into the mix.

As I write this blog, the results have not yet been published, so I can't say how well or badly I did on my limited diet of training, my constant injury shadow and general laziness, but my time was five hours and 24 minutes and that seemed like an adequate return on the above investment.

Having watched six young men try to come to terms with a Tarahumara race I now realise that the programme is so much about them and their individual battles that you learn little about the running culture and the country they live in. It's not an anthropology programme after all.

The race that I was lucky enough to witness was similar: one shortish loop of about 3 miles (which my guide and I calculated by estimating the pace per mile of the various runners as they passed and timing the intervals between them passing in front of us) run about 20 times. The race was also a battle between two villages, and the distance was announced after much negotiating between the two village leaders immediately before the start. That really tickled us - imagine turning up for a race and having to wait while the distance is decided upon. One significant difference was the terrain: most of this race was run on a dry river bed rather than a mountain trail. We had to come up the river bed to get to the race start, and it was hard to walk on, let alone run fast on. And in huaraches! I've put some pix of my huaraches below. They're not for sale, but if anyone fancies a trip to the Copper Canyon to buy some and have a run, then let's talk!

Now that the Nationals are done I would like to say I how proud I am of three athletes who have done themselves proud so far this season. Chris Hill has beaten back a severe long-term injury problem to qualify for the Sprint Worlds in Hamburg. Dean Moy has qualified yet again for the Worlds, and comfortably won his age-group at the Dambuster. And Jill parker has not only qualified for the Worlds too, but has become national Champion in her age-group. My warmest congratulations go out to you.

In case this looks bad, I'm proud of ALL of my athletes, and there have been some really excellent efforts this season already, but I'm just thinking about the Worlds here, ok? 

Mark Cavendish, 22, is one of the few Brits in the Tour de France this year.  He has his priorities sorted, if this excerpt from a recent interview is anything to go by:
When you're out cycling up a big hill and it's cold and raining and you've 40 miles to go and you're aching all over and your directeur sportif is shouting abuse at you from the car, do you ever think to yourself: "What the hell am I doing here? I wish I had a proper job."
There's are times when you do think that, but I've worked in a bank before and I'd rather do 300km on the bike in the pissing rain every single day than go back to that.

I've only bleedin' been an' gawn an' entered a race, enn'I? The Beaver 1/2 IM race. July 15th. A few days away. Am I mad? When did I last race? Can't quite remember. How far was it? Standard distance. The feelings as I entered my payment details online were akin to those experienced just before walking out on stage, or entering a dental surgery, maybe. You know the feeling.

I'm not the impulsive sort, but this was pretty much an impulse buy. I believe that normally one trains for such an event, so I'll have to see how things go. I have a wetsuit, a bike and some running shoes. I can get to the race venue. I'm not thinking much further down the road than that, for further down that road madness lies. 

Second in my occasional series of 'not-in-the-training-plan' workouts to inspire you. I was rereading my account below of the ascent of a Pyrenee, and this one contrasts completely, being flat and urban, and run in cool conditions. I was living in Leyton (east London), and one Saturday Caroline and I were due to visit her cousins in Ruislip, west London/Middlesex. A quick glance at the A-Z showed me that there was a route there that went almost all on canal towpaths, and that I could send Caroline off on the Underground while I ran, setting off three hours earlier - I estimated the distance as 30 miles.

Armed with more knowledge and, crucially, more kit, I selected a large Camelbak and a few gels (yes, we have moved from the 80s to the 90s for this story), and decided my Asics DS Trainers were most apt. The night before, I scrawled a few route notes onto a scrap of paper.

This run divides neatly into four sections in my memory: the first stretch, while I was fresh, took me across Hackney Marsh and onto the canal, which I followed as far as Camden. This was a route I knew well; pacing was easy, and I looked out for favourite landmarks like Broadway Market in London Fields, and the City Road Basin at Angel, just before you have to climb up off the towpath and get back onto it in Pentonville. This was easy. Section 2 wasn't.

Just before Camden, the towpath was closed for repairs. Hmm, not in the plan. At this stage I felt I was only just on schedule, and as I tried to make my way round Camden Town I got lost, which caused a slightly tense acceleration as I tried to waste as little time as possible getting back to the canal. After running through the heart of Camden Market - and getting as many strange looks as a retro-clad indie rocker would get in a 10k - I asked a postman for directions, and looking at me in vest and shorts and run shoes, sweating, and breathing heavily, he said 'Are you in your car?' I got back to it near Regent's Park, well behind schedule, and suffering slightly from having run much harder than I ever intended. End of section 2, and about 12 miles covered.

Section 3 was lovely, just blissful: gentle spring sunlight, an even towpath, dogwalkers for company, and a nice, soft rhythmic feel to my running as I eased down and relaxed after the Camden excursion. I still had water, and I sucked down some gels and moved smoothly from 12 to about 22 miles taking in parts of London I had never seen, starting with Little Venice, then Wormwood Scrubs, then moving to the western edges of Alperton and Perivale.

Section 4 was after I left the canal and hit the roads that would take me to Ruislip. My last few metres on the towpath coincided with me using up my last drops of water and wringing out the last stickiness from my last gel packet. It wasn't long before I paid for my extra speed in Camden. The pain began to shoot through my legs and back, my mouth started to dry up and my will started to weaken. I made myself run to incredibly close targets - the next tree, the next lamppost - and then made myself go to the next and then the next. From spanning the broad sunny horizons of west London, my focus was now constrained to the grey pavement under my nose, and a chain of lampposts. This was not fun, but it was effective and lamppost by lamppost, tree by tree, telegraph pole by telegraph pole, I trudged to my destination, where to my idiotic and grinning surprise I was met by a cheering girlfriend and family, and even a poster to congratulate me, made by the youngest daughter. I made it 32 miles at least, with detour, and very little walking. Lunch tasted great. We both got the Tube back home.

The out-laws were staying with us last week to help look after Edith while our childminder was away on holiday. Edith really gets on with 'Mam-ma and dad-dad' (grandma and granddad) so it was a great help. Anyway, grandma cooked us a meal one evening that was fairly typical for her: lamb, with boiled carrots and roast potatoes. Nice. From the point of view of good protein, no problem. From the point of view of moving towards a successful day's consumption of fruit and vegetables, it was not good. She'd cooked two (large) carrots between four. And I don't really count potatoes boiled then doused in oil and roasted as a portion of veg. So I make that 1/2 a portion of veg for the meal. And the carrots were boiled - does that reduce their nutritive value? I think so. So that becomes maybe 1/4 of a portion.

Enter Captain Smug. So far today (just after lunch) I've had 1/2 a large avocado, one large beef tomato, a yellow pepper, a stick of celery, a pear, a nectarine and a large serving of raspberries, plus two lots of nuts and dried figs. I make that about seven portions, and in general I keep tabs on my intake to make sure I exceed five portions most days. I just don't think my out-laws pay too much attention to what is going in, even though if you asked them about the '5 portions of fruit and veg' thing they would be aware of it. If they were in excellent health I wouldn't feel justified in pointing this out, but they both suffer from inflammatory conditions - arthritis, back pain - which could be alleviated by changing their diet.

It's all a question of habits. Getting into the habit of eating and monitoring one's intake of plenty of fruit and veg is not necessarily easy, but in the grand scheme of things there are tougher assignments to take on. Aim for a minimum of five portions, and don't do what I have done today, which is to have more fruit than veg.

Time for me to get the latest tri-magazine/modern world blues off my chest, I suppose, and I'll lead into it with the 'two clocks' theory, which has its foundation in the work of that well-known triathlete Albert Einstein. When you're dealing with a long workout, problems tend to be a result of the you having two clocks to refer to. Consider an evening spent with someone you are falling in love with: it will seem to pass in an instant. That moment when you both look at your watches as the waiters pointedly start putting chairs on tables, when you both gasp in mock amazement at how the time has flown, and catch each other's eye in acknowledgement of how human chemistry has warped time. (Next is a cab home, and make it snappy...) Your own clock and the one in the restaurant were at odds, but the odds were in your favour.

Now, at some stage in a 5-hour ride, when your crotch is sore, you might be a little irritated when what feels like three hours of elapsed time turns out to be two. Since in general we tend to look at the segments of our days passing by in fairly short time-frames, this primal capacity to accept time for what it is is one we find difficult to apply.

Ideally we would like every activity or session we embark on to seem like a pleasurable and comfortable expenditure of time. Not long and boring, nor over too quickly to experience it. Both clocks in synch. And one of the key ways to achieve this is by association, which, as any sports psychologist will tell you, involves tuning in to yourself, your movement, your exertion, and your relationship with the world you are moving through. 'Etre engagé' as Camus would say. Being responsible for your own thoughts and actions instead of allowing them to be whitewashed over with a thick layer of externally manufactured input.

How do more and more people work out now? In gyms with harsh light bouncing off mirrors and polished chrome machinery, banks of TV screens set up in front of treadmills; spin, step and pump classes which resound to the thud and wail of track after track of hardcore disco; ubiquitous MP3 players plugged into the one-track minds of commuters, cyclists and runners. 'Please distract me!' sports people appear to be saying. 'I'm only exercising to avoid looking bad on the beach, not because I enjoy it, so sweeten the pill.'

Which brings me to an article whose strapline tells us that more and more triathletes are using music to aid their run performance. I believe that more and more people are using music to blot out the world and avoid having to pay any attention to what is going on in their minds and bodies. Citing one of the fastest runners in history, Haile Gebrselassie, having used music to run a fast time, or indeed any elite athlete, is disingenuous to say the least, and in the article the distinction between using music for arousal then going out and performing, and staying plugged in to an MP3 player for the duration of a workout is blurred. The former can be a good thing. The latter is denying you are alive.

Well 2.10 of Zen rhymed nicely (see post below), and this weekend I went for 2.15, but can't rhyme it as well. Last time I decided to do an 'over time' turbo, as in 'over distance' workout, I blithely programmed 60km into the turbo trainer, not thinking I would do it but wanting to throw down a hefty gauntlet to myself. This time I nervously entered 75km. Imagine my surprise when I cruised through 60km in 1.49. It was about then that it all started to feel a little stressful and instead of blissing out on high-end aerobic, and barely noticing the time pass, I was looking at the time every half-minute, it seemed, desperate for it to end. I had to snap myself out of it and get back to all the focuses that got me through last time, and that in itself was an effort, but there we are: 75km in 2h 15. And a sore crotch.

It is 50 years since the first broadcast of the famous 'Go to work on an egg' slogan. The British Egg Information Service planned to rerun a series of the original ads, featuring Tony Hancock, to commemorate the anniversary. Not so fast, you dirty egg-peddlers, said the corporate monsters! They have been told by the advertising watchdog the Broadcast Advertsing Clearance Centre that the ads are in breach of current advertsing rules on promoting a varied diet.

So let me get this straight. It is fine to run ads for breakfast cereals in which regular consumption is the religion. And unless I'm very much mistaken, Kellogg's used to run ads for its hideus unhealthy Crunchy Nut  Flakes in which people were shown eating the cereal in the evening as well as the morning. That's fine too, is it? But promoting a healthy and unprocessed food is not fine. Maybe someone at Kellogg's has had a word with the advertising watchdog. Cereals stink, they are bad for you; eggs don't stink (well, rotten ones do, but when was the last time you had a bad egg - I reckon I've had two in my lifetime) and are good for you. The food industry and ad industry in tandem are a powerful force for evil, aren't they?

Ages ago I came home from coaching a client and packed my kit away; then later when I looked for the shoes I had used for that session, one was missing. 'Silly, forgetful old Huw,' I told myself, with a wry smile, 'You've left one of your shoes at the track.' A month or two later, I threw out the survivor, with great regret, because it was one of my favourite pair of running shoes: adidas Davos. Designed for the niche market of mountain running, it became a firm favourite with XC runners because of its very low profile, with a tiny tad extra cushioning in the forefoot, and excellent grip. The upper has heavy duty, unrippable mesh, and no support whatsoever, so in effect it is like a top-end racing flat, just with a grippy sole and tough as f*ck. My first pair of Davos was so wonderful, in my eyes, that when I heard adidas had remodelled the shoe (it morphed into the 'Swoop', not nearly as good a shoe) I rang round a load of running shops until I found one that still had a pair of Davos in the stockroom, and bought them.

Well, silly, forgetful Huw just found the lost shoe. Silly, forgetful Huw had remembered to bring them both home, but had plonked one of them behind the box his shoes live in, and its partner, which suffered the wheelie-bin burial, in the box.

I picked this lovely old shoe up, about to dump it in the bin too, but took time for a few special final moments together; I looked at it admiringly from all angles, observing how the sole had worn, how the uppers were doing, mourned its lost partner (the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet springs to mind, doesn't it, one believes the other dead, so commits suicide, the other isn't dead, but finds the first dead and also tops self). And finally, I can get to the bloody point: the upper of this totally supportless shoe was leaning crazily inwards, proof that my foot pronates quite a lot. And as I replayed and reviewed training I had done in this pair of shoes it occurred to me that I never came in from a run in them thinking and feeling anything but good things. Whereas, for example, when I got a brand new pair of 2005 Saucony Grid Swerve (not tried on, but a mate got them at cost!), a lightweight racer-trainer supposedly designed for faster-paced running, that I foolishly guessed would suit my needs, all my runs were accompanied by feelings of not being able to put my foot down how I wanted, of my footstrike being interfered with. My legs grumbled afterwards and I suffered a vague and indefinable sense of frustration. So I took a sharp knife to them and cut away the stability bits, but they were still crap. Pronation is FINE. It is natural. If you run on your heels, pronation will take a lot longer in the gait cycle and can cause problems; but we haven't spent several hundred thousand years of honing our anatomies to become elegant bipeds to then piss it all away by running on our heels, have we? 

Just a quickie, really, on reading about Welsh 400m runner Tim Benjamin's return to form. Under the tutelage of Colin Jackson and his 'old school' methods, Benjamin has been running fast again, and went on record as saying that he was told by Jackson that core strength was vital for him to stay strong right through to the final metres of his race.

And this also ties in a little with a debate that must be carried on all round cyberfitnessworld  perpetually: is there merit in training the core on unstable mechanisms, or is it better trained on a stable base?

People are leaping onto their keyboards to defend both methods, but Benjamin is convinced that moving back to lifting weights as his primary provider of core strength and away from wobbly balancy ballerina stuff has been the (re-) making of him. I freely admit that when as a coach I took a deeper interest in strength training I was sucked in by the 'functional' hype surrounding swiss balls, wobble boards, bosu balls, and the like - to some extent I had no choice, since I was coaching as an assistant to the London Region coach on the junior programmes, and he swore by all this, and I was obliged to learn how to deliver his style of session.

Now I am confident that training for strength on a stable surface is and always has been the way to go. In the case of Tim Benjamin, core strength work involves lifting very heavily charged barbells. In the case of age-group triathletes, the same should be true, but the logistics of getting access to a serious bar + weights is limited, as is our experience and confidence in 'going heavy'. It would be great if every office had a weights room - wouldn't it?

So I emailed this American power-based bike-training expert about some impenetrable US slang in an article he wrote that I thought was very good, and he was kind enough to take time out of designing graphs with wiggly lines on to reply. 'What does "run what you brung" mean?' I asked him, since that was an imprecation in his article; and he said that in terms of power it meant that if you turn up to a race knowing you are a 280-watts man, and your opponents are 290-watts men, don't back out, but race anyway and just get on with it. He said it derives from car racing, where drivers would turn up with different sized engines, but still  race what they brought (brung).

And that made me think about all the things that psych out triathletes and make them negative about racing: knowing your VO2 max is only average, when your opponents may have higher values; knowing your body fat percentage is higher than your rivals' (or seeing that this is the case); having a bike that is too heavy, not aerodynamic enough, not carbon enough, wheels that are not disc enough; knowing you have a weakness in one of the three disciplines;  there are certainly more to add to the list, but it's late at night...

Run what you brung. Enjoy racing, be grateful you are alive, fit, healthy, and give what you have to give. maybe next time you'll have more to bring, whether it's a shiny new bike or stronger legs or better swim technique. The incomparable Mark Allen knew that: he frequently said that whatever he had available in a race, he made sure he gave 100% of it. Even when he was in meltdown at Hawaii, bleeding internally, and operating at, say, 10% of his usual powers, he gave 100% of that 10%. That is how to achieve success and fulfilment.

Bjarne Riis has been told that he no longer considered the winner of the 1996 Tour de France, after his admission that he took EPO when he won it. This is not news, so don't think I'm trying to be clever and blog a hot new story like what proper bloggers do in the sexy political blogging climate. Nor is it news that most of the rest of the Telekom team of that era have also fessed up, including the lovable Erik Zabel, who won the green jersey on many occasions, and showed himself to be that rare thing, a big-thighed animal of a sprinter who rode the whole Tour, mountains and all, with competence and good sense.

The big name missing here, of course, is that of Jan Ullrich. While he has been hit with a drugs ban, and subsequently retired from bike racing, he has not opened his mouth other than to protest his innocence, while his teammates are coming clean and at least earning a few points for honesty. Who does he think he is fooling? Are we to believe that when he finished a close second to a drugged-up Riis, most likely on team orders, and then won the year after, he was so naturally fit as to be stronger than EPO users?

Which may leave us thinking, what about the guy who constantly hammered Ullrich into submission, EPO and all - if Ullrich was an EPO user, that is. He too, so naturally fit that he could beat an EPO-enhanced Übermensch and indeed the rest of the dubious field?

This is the hell of drug admissions. One winner comes clean, says he was dirty (do you like the clever and slightly humorous use of metaphor there?) - and other winners are then looked at in the same light, including the greatest Tour winner of all time. 

OK bear with me on this. This site is set up by me through a very nifty package called Mr Site. I am not in the least bit web-savvy yet I set up this (more than) adequate site without the slightest difficulty, and now have the capacity to talk through my blog to my clients, and let new ones see what I can do for them. I'm a fan. If anyone goes to www.mrsite.co.uk/friends and enters the offer code: fitnessfarm.co.uk they will get Mr Site for a fiver off. Brilliant, eh? The fact  that the fiver goes to me has not in any way influenced this blog.

I have been doing some run coaching – technique – and it made me think about the whole idea of run technique as it is perceived by both athletes in general and the athletes I come across as a coach.

The Pose Method is something that a few athletes bring with them in their brains when I coach them, and I have observed that when I encourage a runner to do something, it is done with an overlay of Pose that I never asked for (nor wanted!)

So let me just give a few thoughts on my approach to run technique, and on the Pose Method.

We evolved from apes, who are not able to walk or run upright. Humans are bipeds, and we have a tush/booty/derriere/backside/situpon that apes don’t. (And ours don’t go bright blue when we are ‘in season’, which I am always grateful for). As we are now, we are adapted as runners; running is therefore an unlearned action, in the sense that it is not learned cognitively. I have not taught Edith to walk or run: she has done what all humans are born to do, and worked it out for herself. I just try to help her not trip up on things as she walks and runs and sprints with ever-increasing ease.

I like to think of running as a reflex. Indeed, if you were to stand on a downslope, and were to receive a gentle push in the back, gravity would pull you forward and down, and you would break into a run until you could control gravity.

So my approach is that if you have the mechanisms for good running inside you, so to speak, my job as a coach is to let you access those mechanisms.

Now, one of the things you will see immediately on the Pose website is a bunch of testimonials from people who say how much their running has improved since they ‘took up Pose’. Of course, if Romanov is to make a living, he has to have proof his stuff works. Same goes for me. But I put it to you that the whole perspective is arse-about.

‘Since I started Pose, I realised how poorly I used to run, and now I run more normally.’
‘Since I paid loads for a Pose workshop, I learned that I was weak in key areas and now I am stronger, and run more closely to how I am supposed to.’
‘Pose perfectly suits my left-brained western neurotic need to learn and apply a rigid system. I love it!’
Not testimonials Romanov would have on his site, but I think that this is the truth. I know there are fundamentals to good running, but I think that it is stretching the case a little for anyone to package them in a system and sell something we were born to do as a product. It’s almost like eating – imagine if people were to make money selling ideas on how to eat healthily, when the answers are both out in nature and within our own bodies. No, that would never happen, would it…

I never drink any fizzy drinks, so I suppose I tend to ignore news about them, because it doesn't apply to me (I generally ignore The News for exactly the same reason!). However, I was just reading a post on a forum about aspartame, which is the sweetener used in Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and  any other 'diet' drink, as well as in a range of low-fat foods and ready meals, and desserts, yogurts, hot chocolate drinks, mints, chewing gum and whatever else.

When I did a quick check on aspartame, one item that kept cropping up was a 1996 study that proclaimed that aspartame was safe because it didn't cause cancer. Phew. But the post I was just reading pointed to a 1996 study that separated out all the aspartame studies into those sponsored by The Industry, and independent studies. I quote:

"Analysis Shows Nearly 100% of Independent Research Finds Problems With
Aspartame
October 17, 1996

An analysis of peer reviewed medical literature using MEDLINE and
other databases was conducted by Ralph G. Walton, MD, Chairman, The
Center for Behavioral Medicine, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry,
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. Dr. Walton
analyzed 164 studies which were felt to have relevance to human safety
questions. Of those studies, 74 studies had aspartame industry-related
sponsorship and 90 were funded without any industry money.

Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or
more problems with aspartame. Of the 7 studies which did not find a
problems, 6 of those studies were conducted by the FDA. Given that a
number of FDA officials went to work for the aspartame industry
immediately following approval (including the former FDA
Commissioner), many consider these studies to be equivalent to
industry-sponsored research.

Of the 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies, all 74 (100%) claimed
that no problems were found with aspartame. This is reminiscent of
tobacco industry research where it is primarily the tobacco research
which never finds problems with the product, but nearly all of the
independent studies do find problems.

The 74 aspartame industry-sponsored studies are those which one
inveriably sees cited in PR/news reports and reported by organizations
funded by Monsanto/Benevia/NutraSweet (e.g., IFIC, ADA). These studies
have severe design deficiencies which help to guarantee the "desired"
outcomes. These design deficiencies may not be apparent to the
inexperienced scientist. Please see the documentation in the
scientific section of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center web
page for more detailed information about these and other studies or
email mgold@tiac.net for more information."

(Me again) The post, too long to quote in full here, goes on to highlight the dangers of what happens when aspartame is heated above 30 degrees C, and cites the illnesses suffered by US Desert Storm troops who were handed huge quantities of diet drinks that had been heated up in the desert sun.

I'm just reaffirming the importance of avoiding food and drinks that come out of factories, and to disbelieve the corporations who stand to profit from their consumption when they assert that adding chemicals to food is perfectly healthy. Eat food, not food products.

I said in an earlier post that I would describe some of my most fulfilling solo workouts, partly to underscore my assertion that you don't have to pay for a big race to do something that you can remember for the rest of your life, barring senility, and partly to remind all you athletes out there that changing the rules of how you train every now and then can bring great benefits.

So there I was, living in the Spanish Pyrenees, and not that much into endurance, still in limbo between team sports, now forsaken, squash, not much chance in Spain, and the occasional run that I knew would keep me ticking over. My boss, on the other hand, loved running, and during the two-and-a-bit months I was there, turned my occasional into frequent, and changed my horizons from short flat road to long mountainous trail.

I wanted my last weekend there to be a good one, and decided to run up Peña de Oroel, the mountain just below the town of Jaca, where I was living.  Jaca is at about 800m, and the summit is about 1,800m, so I made that a round 1,000 of climbing, plus the run to the base and back. Being August it was going to be hot, damned hot, so I thought ahead and put a 2l bottle of water in my old canvas rucksack, along with some cheese and an apple or two, put out my rugby shorts and a T-shirt (hey, cotton was all there was in those days) and my squash shoes and set my alarm for very early o'clock. That, in the background of the picture below, was my challenge, and I wasn't even an endurance athlete in training: I was close to being an ex-sportsman, who drank and smoked and made half-hearted attempts at keeping in shape.

























I got to the foot of the mountain, to the top, down, and back to town, mostly running, and achieving my goal of getting back in time for dinner and a drink. I had never really attempted anything like this before, and rather than feeling like the ascent was a grind, I felt free, alert, aware; I felt light and powerful (in real life I was neither!) and ran all but the steepest, twistiest bits, emerging onto the plateau of the summit to see an eagle hovering and gliding dozens of feet below me. The euphoria stayed with me until I hit the flat stretch back in to town, when, after a day of exertion, my water and food long gone, everything suddenly began to fail - legs, feet, and mind too. But I was too close to home to give up, and I wanted food and my bed.

I think what made this so wonderful, apart from the obvious beauty of the setting (although after a couple of months there I was used to that view, it was what I woke up to every day), was the simplicity with which I approached it, almost as an excursion with a difference - it was a run not a walk - rather than an endurance challenge. No carbo drinks, no bi-directionally soled trail shoes, no Oakleys, no Coolmax; no training plan and no taper. And no nerves. I just woke up one morning and went and did it.
Below is the summit, not really a plateau, and you can see a cross in the background which is where I sat and ate my cheese and apples and watched more eagles below me.

Granny in 'The Beverly Hillbillies' used to refer to the swimming pool in their luxury mansion as the cee-ment pond. That's pretty much what Waltham Forest College pool is, a postwar 33 1/3 yard concrete box hidden away in the basement of what used to be Walthamstow Art College (where Peter Greenaway met Ian Dury, if you're interested, which is why Dury had a part in Greenaway's 'The Cook, The Thief, His wife and Her Lover', but that's moving away from blogmessage).

It is ugly, unsophisticated, a bit grubby, and it is for swimming in. No funky jets of water, islands or mock beaches to distract kids from the serious business of swimming. No lockers, so no need to wait 10 minutes for a pool attendant to come and retrieve your pound coin when it gets stuck. No diving boards. No mermaid mural. No palm trees, the only vegetation being the film of mould around parts of the changing rooms.

But as a swimming resource, as used by Waltham Forest's top swim squad, the Gators, and home to East London triathletes, and erstwhile Swimfortri courses, it has more than done its job. It is quiet, plain and unassuming, sensible - and runs at a loss. The College, which as an educational establishment is of course all about balancing books first and foremost, and 'delivering' educational 'products' to its 'customers', can no longer to afford to have a grubby white elephant sitting in its basement, and has announced its closure at the end of the next term. In just a few weeks we will lose a much-loved and - by those who know it and love it - much used resource.

I am honestly very upset, and I know that users and staff are too. I don't know how negotiable this is. Clearly once it is closed it will not be destroyed immediately; weeks, months or years will elapse while the pool still exists as a structure, so there is always hope. But is there any way of persuading the college bean counters that this pool is truly needed in the community? Does the recent study that showed that there were not enough pools in the borough count for nothing? What will happen to the Gators, who have produced and should continue to produce Olympians? There will be an outcry of protest - will it be enough?

You are all probably aware of the point I am about to make, and it is only one piece in the jigsaw, but it is a very important piece. I just read something that reminded me just how important this is, so I thought I'd share.

Insulin resistance is bad. Insulin sensitivity is good. Remember that. Next: the more carbohydrate you eat, the worse it is for you. And the less you eat the less harm it can do you. It's a bit like alcohol in this respect, and not like sunlight. Insulin resistance means blood sugar levels are hard to control, are usually elevated, and this leads to type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity, TOFI (thin on outside, fat on the inside, with intra-abdominal fat being a right killer) et al. The more sugar you eat, whether in the form of starch or sugary foods, the more resistant you become to the lifesaving effects of insulin. The less you eat, the better your endocrine system can control blood sugar levels when it has to. 

A recent study showed that obese individuals following a low GL (glycaemic load) diet lost more weight and kept it off longer than individuals on a low-fat diet. To stay healthy, lay off the carbs!

I was discussing with a client recently the pros and cons of doing a particular race he had his eye on in the medium term. The race in question is a long race, and a hard race, and the client in question would at best be surviving it rather than racing it. It brought me to the question of very long events such as Ironman, and one aspect, which is what the participants get out of them. Since median IM times are falling, we can assume that fewer entrants are racing, and more are participating, as if IM was a mass event with racing going on at the sharp end, like the big European bike events such as the Italian 'Granfondi' and the French 'cyclosportives".

Undoubtedly the completion of an Ironman brings with it a huge sense of achievement; the same can be said for a Granfondo or a major Audax event. In general, the event is a step up in terms of what the athlete was previously capable of and completing it is a major effort.

I've done some long events, but for one reason or another some of the physical efforts of which I've been proudest have been done solo, as one-off efforts, or unusual training sessions, just me working against my desire to give up, with no one running alongside with an energy drink, or screaming 'Wooo, great job fella!' as I totter past, no stream of fellow competitors to keep me going.

So I thought maybe I'd share some of them with you, partly as an exercise in neurotic self-actualisation and the pleasure of logging on to my own site and seeing something written by ME up there; and partly to give an idea of how there are wonderful, fulfilling things you can do without having to then have the IM logo tattooed on your ankle. Stay tuned.

Anyone remember when Evans Cycles consisted of a few stores based around south London? There was Croydon, Kingston, Waterloo, and the Spencer-Smith-sponsoring Wandsworth, a shop to which I made a humble pilgrimage shortly after my entry into the the world of triathlon, hoping that there would be some go-faster tri product that would suit my skinny wallet - there wasn't. Now there are 29 stores (at last count, but they seem to be springing up every other day at the moment), and they have branched out as far as Glasgow, Kendal (that's in the Lake District, for you Londocentrists) and York.

For an independent retailer in a difficult market, they've done an incredible job of brand-building and expansion, tapping into various demographics (that's groups of people, for you traditonal language-users) as they become aware of cycling in one form or another. And while they don't sponsor Spencer Smith any more, they do carry a decent range of triathlon bikes - just be prepared, as with pretty much everything they sell, to get something less than a bargain. They are selling the discounted Specialized Transition Comp 2006 for £100 more than other stores - £1099 to £999 - in fact stop press, just seen it for £979. If you'd like a sweet carbon Bianchi 928, 06 model, with 10-speed Veloce, they'll sell you one for £1,349, while it's available elsewhere for £1,200, and down at the bargain end, a Lemond Reno will cost you £549 from Evans, when you can get your feet on one for £500 if you look around.

So it remains a mystery to me why they do so well. Can anyone help me on this? Is it the customer service? (I had to argue long and hard at their Waterloo shop when I went to pick up a bike after its free service - yes, I bought a bike there - and it wasn't ready, despite both customer and manager arranging a time for pick-up). Is it the range of stock? Is it the nice colours, green and gold (which, incidentally, an ex- - very ex- - coaching colleague who also worked as a decorator swore blind they stole off his original idea)? Don't get me wrong, the more bike shops in the world the better, no question about that. But why do Evans do so well?

I am in the middle of marking a Level 3 candidate's coaching diaries and theory papers, and to the answer to a question on hydration the candidate added the comment that 'by the time you feel thirsty you're already dehydrated,' and further added that 'research shows that a drop in hydration levels of 2% leads to a performance decrease of 20%.'

Well I always had my doubts about the 'thirst means you are already dehydrated' thing; it just never seemed to make sense in the context of other bodily systems. And now I know more about the evolutionary model, it makes less sense.

The drop in performance? Does 4% dehydration mean a drop in performance of 40%? I'd like to think not. 20% sounds like an enormous amount doesn't it? If you were pedalling at threshold holding 300 watts and you were stupid enough to go 2% dehydrated, this would mean you would go from 300w to 240w, or 25mph to 20mph, say.

Both these 'facts' are very common currency, as well the 'you must drink 2 litres of water a day' myth. As a coach and coach educator I used to peddle these myths in good faith, especially since their appearance in the teaching materials implied a degree of scientific validity.

As long ago as 2002, one of the US's top physiologists, and an expert in kidney function and water balance, Professor Heinz Valtin, was pointing out that, a a result of many reviews of research into that area, he could see no evidence to support either that thirst means dehydration or that we need to consume 2 litres of water every day just to stay ahead of the game. It would seem that in the 90s the American Food and Nutrition Board stated that 1ml of water was required for each calorie of food consumed, and for healthy adults living in a temperate climate that would represent about 2L; but their study also stated that almost all of this water was obtainable from food and any beverages (doncha just hate that word?) consumed, and it's almost as if this qualification of the equation was left off when the facts were reported. So if you eat plenty of fruit and veg - and of course you eat little else, don't you? - then the water content of your diet is ample for your basic needs. And when you train, you can add more water to the mix to cover extra fluid loss due to heat and exertion. Above all, don't feel obliged to sip endlessly from a bottle when you are not thirsty - you'll gain nothing but toilet time.

As I was trawling Google for ideas for a logo, I came across my own name attached to an article. And was reminded that I'd written one for a very wonderful guy called Micah True when I spent some time with him in Mexico researching a book I was writing.
If you have a minute or two and are interested in the little-known Mexican canyonlands, then follow (or paste?) this url to what I wrote for his website - he edited a little, but I don't mind.

http://www.caballoblanco.com/article.html

I have a client who, when I recently took him on (for the third time, but that's another story), had scaled down his ambitions from doing a triathlon to just losing a skipload of weight and getting fitter. Very wise, to start at the beginning and put himself into a position to move on to the next goal. Anyway, this chap (and he is I hope reading this, so again congratulations on doing a GREAT job and really turning things around) mentioned to me that many of his colleagues carried out the same dire routine of lunching on beer and crisps and entertaining clients with wine and more wine and fat dinners, yet they were skinny. And he was fat. I pointed out that although they had bodyshapes that he craved they were not necessarily healthy. And that he, as an ex-rower, had the potential to be much fitter then them (like it's a competition!), regardless of bodyshape. At that stage I'm not sure how much that sank in, because he was just not happy about his weight (SO much happier now, though). But I came across an article the other day that summed it all up, and highlighted the perils of focusing on bodyshape above health.

So if you go here, http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1619307,00.html you can read about TOFIs, people who are Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside.

As the lowering sky...er, lowered, in a grey, soggy kind of way, I made my way into the garage, naked save for a tatty pair of bike shorts and a HRM chest-strap. It was 'long ride on the turbo' time. My goals recently on the bike have been to get around 3hrs of aero riding at aerobic to high aerobic effort, and I had been successful enough on my last three fortnightly rides to allow myself to be turned away from the attractions of the Epping road by the torrential rain and seek salvation on the turbo.

I was wondering how long I could go (rather than telling myself how long I would go) and just for a laugh I programmed 60km into the turbo, and, just like getting quickly into cold water, hopped on and started pedalling veree, veree gently. Didn't think about anything, just pedalling, and just going easy in the aero position. Half an hour of gentle, HR barely rising above 100, went by as if it were a few minutes, so I started the arithmetic, decided I didn't want 4hrs of turbo, and set about chasing the average, converting distance and time into average speed whenever the numbers were convenient and watching average speed slowly go up. Still focusing on the pedalling, mind, and still keeping relaxed and aero. To cut a long story of arithmetic and pedalling short, I got to 1hr 40 with 10k to go, ie I had gone from an average of around 24kph (15mph) to over 30kph (18-19 mph) - on this turbo, I must emphasise, not to be confused with true road speeds - and getting to 60km in just under 2hrs turned out to be rather easy, the main stress being crotch rather than legs or brain. In fact I carried on up to 2hrs 10 so that I could say I'd ridden 40 miles, (on that turbo) and it still felt fine. RPE 14-15 max, HR no higher than 138, if that is of any value to anyone other than me. Cadence in low 90s all the way through.

What helped me to sit there for 2hrs 10 almost as if it were 2 minutes and 10 seconds? I believe it was a strong focus on the process, allied to a deep feeling of relaxation. I was comfortable for the most part, which is down to the saddle and the bike fit and the bike position; this in turn enabled me to direct my mind to where I wanted it to go, which was either on working out average speed and counting down time versus distance remaining (process-oriented) or on my riding, my pedalling, my shoulders, my toes, my hips, etc etc (process-oriented). I paid attention to my breathing and its rhythms; I spent periods of time with my eyes closed, using this either to 'feel' my pedal stroke and leg actions or to visualise myself riding smoothly and easily on the road.

Next time I do this, I will be surrounded by kneeling devotees, clad in simple robes, each concentrating on a single candle and chanting 'Guru, Guru'. That's my bike, by the way. It's a Guru, but I'm not.

I tried to edge past the latest copy of Runner's World without catching its eye, but failed again. It always gets my goat. Usually there is a front cover shot of a good-looking girl grinning inanely into the camera and doing running on a beach or a lovely forest trail. And the production people obviously think it's better to catch her mid-stride, looks dynamic, but it always shows a heel-striking straight-legged gait that entails running along the trail to injury. Like this:


The latest copy showed a pretty girl 'stretching her quads', holding her foot right at the end, in a way that guarantees she'd stretch her toes, feet, ankle ligaments, knee ligaments, and maybe after all that her quads, although since her hips were ever so slightly flexed there would not have been a lot of good quad stretching going on. I don't know if this is the cover or another one, but it looks like this:

When I first learned about the advent of a new concept in swimming wetsuits, the De Soto T1, a two-piece suit, I was swayed by the article that introduced the idea, and then subsequent reviews. And I made a mental note that if ever I got the chance to trade up to this clever and deeply intuitive design, then I would. And I have. And after two lake swims in it, I'm giving it a shout, as I believe modern DJs say.

When a design resonates with me I don't really mind going with it even if - or maybe because, but that is a winding and overgrown path into my psychology/childhood that we don't want to hack our way down just now, do we - it is 'a bit different' (as dull people say about things that aren't really different at all). Triathlon geometry makes so much sense to me, and I still remember my very first outing on my race bike, nearly two-and-a-half hours, most of it aero, followed by an insanely easy 45-minute steady run. It didn't seem quite right that the run was so easy; part of me wanted it to be the struggle I had become used to.

A two-piece wetsuit also makes a lot of sense to me, and as someone who has always felt vaguely cheated by the constant proclamations that swimming is easier in a wetsuit - the promise was never quite fulfilled for me - then I feel that finally I have arrived at a good wetsuit place. There are two keys to it with this suit, but first a little more history: the idea was not, I believe, Emilio De Soto's, although it was his (usually innovative and funky) company that makes them. It was Dan Empfield who pushed the design towards Emilio and helped him make it reality. Now you may not know Empfield's name, but you know his impact. He founded Quintana Roo. He basically pioneered the triathlon wetsuit as we know it today. He advocated, and built, triathlon bikes with their specialised geometry. If the man behind the tri-wetsuit and the tri-bike decides a two-piece suit is the way to go, then who am I to argue?

So for me, those two big pluses: no pull at the neck. For me this is massive, and something that I'm sure slowed me down - and irritated the hell out of me - in my other suits, the constant tug and tightness at the back of my neck and around my shoulder girdle. And what feels like a loose, flowing arm action, easier to get good rotation and hence to swim with less energy. When I tried to step on the gas, in this suit I got a response. Add on the fact that it comes off as easily as underwear in a rude film and I am a happy open water swimmer.

As I scanned the internet and munched on the second course of breakfast (first course was 1/2 avocado, small chicken breast sliced finely, red grapes, tomato, a few small chunks of a nice Welsh cheddar, lemon juice and olive oil, oh yum) I came across tri247's advice on running shoe buying. It was 'Question of the month', and it's a shame it didn't get 'Answer of the month'. It got, as you may expect, the clichéd, bland, anodyne, pappy answer that the writer could just as easily have copied out of a random issue of any running magazine, don't go to a High St shop, blah, blah, go to a specialist shop, blah, they know about shoes, blah, blah.

But one piece of idiocy did catch my eye and I thought I'd share it. The writer said that the people who serve you in a specialist running shop: 'are regularly trained by the manufacturers (my italics) to give you the best advice they possibly can.'

Now then, and hmmmm. If I ran a multi-billion dollar sports shoe business, and made my money from selling cushioned and stabilised shoes that no one really needs, and which have been shown to increase injury, but I still wanted my big business to be profitable...you know what? I'd send my guys out to 'train' people in running shoe shops too! The staff would then be really 'knowledgeable' and you'd leave with a well-cushioned anti-pronation shoe (maybe even one made by my company) secure in the knowledge that had been passed on to you by the 'trained' staff that these shoes would be perfect for 'your gait'.

Can't you see the madness?

Quite a few years ago, hanging out in a running shop, I watched while an Asics rep demonstrated Asics's super new gel that would provide even better cushioning. He had a square of gel-reinforced plastic on the floor, and he dropped an egg from about shoulder height onto it. The egg didn't break, and I'm sure the owner of the shop put in a big order for shoes. But even then, being more ignorant and stupid than I am now, and knowing less about the principle of specificity, I went away thinking that there was something deeply counterintuitive about a man throwing eggs at cushioned plastic in order to show how it would help such a complex structure as the human frame deal with the high impact forces of running. 

One blog, two sections:
1 Recent breakfasts:
* large bowl of garden peas with a liberal sloosh of olive oil, some lemon juice and soy sauce (shoyu, the one with out all the additives); small bowl of dried figs (2), nuts and raisins; freshly ground coffee (made in espresso machine)
* 1 wokked egg, 1/2 avocado, couple of sliced tomatoes, lemon juice and olive oil over the saladies; coffee and fig/nut/raisin bowl
* finely sliced celery, carrot, 1/2 avocado + couple of dollops of last night's (VERY hot) chilli con carne; milky coffee (changed seal in espresso and it is now boiling the living crap out of my lovely Ethiopian bean, so milk is required to make it drinkable); nuts, dates and raisins (those dates taste very sweet compared to the figs), milky coffee
* goat's cheese omelette with herbs (2 eggs); dates and nuts and coffee (espresso seal seems to be working, so back to black, as Amy Winehouse might have it)

2 Brief thoughts on getting faster
There's this idea that we are at any moment the sum of all the choices we have made in our life, whatever aspect you choose to look at - sport, career, relationships, body composition...

It's a hard thought to entertain sometimes, since it implies a huge amount of personal responsibility for your life. One thing that makes one athlete faster (for free, in a sense) is how much fat they carry in relation to muscle. A little less fat, a little more lean muscle mass, and VO2 max is a little higher, and power-to-weight ratio is better. I used to smoke, gave up on 3rd April, 1990, and for a long while had to choose not to smoke, which was a tough choice to make, but one which I managed to carry out every day until the desire went away, and accept that I had previously chosen to smoke. No one was making me smoke. Body composition is down to some simple (but not necessarily easy to execute) choices. What you choose to eat, and what training you choose to do. No one decides what you eat except you; I may guide you in your training, but only you decide whether to do it or not, or to do it at a lower (or higher) intensity or for a shorter (or longer) duration.

The other day I was lucky enough to win an item in a bid on a well-known auction site, the item in question being a titanium-railed triathlon-specific saddle made by those clever triathlon kit designers, Profile.

The saddle my lovely Guru was originally kitted out with is a nice saddle, indeed one of the better ones I have ridden, but it is a road saddle, with a cut-out and softer areas towards the rear, while its nose is more than a little firm, and the effect after riding on it for three hours is not a pleasant one.

With the dollar being as weak as George Bush's intellect, and with me being keen a) to carry on walking my tri-bike talk and kit it out properly and b) to have a pain-free bottom, I found a new Tri-Stryke saddle on offer, bid, won, cheered at the cheapness of it, waited patiently, fitted it to my bike and today rode on it for three hours in the aero position.

What can I report back to you? One pleasing aspect of its design is its length, so you can shift up and down the nose and still enjoy the perfectly placed and suitably plush padding that sits at the front of the saddle where it needs to be when you ride in the aero position. It has a cut-out, and again that is precisely located so that there is little or no pressure on the perineum. The padding right at the nose is actually a bulbosity that stands proud of the level of the saddle. Sorry if that sounds like it was referring to something else. It works really well, in my first feel of it. I was riding in bike shorts not tri-shorts, true, but they are eight-year old bike shorts, and the padding is not dissimilar to that in my tri-shorts. But I need to test that bulbosity's powers in tri-shorts for three hours, before I give a final verdict on this style of saddle, but the first impression is excellent. And my god, those titanium rails!

...as I fell off my smug zero-grain-especially-wheat-wagon on Sunday. The background - my longest, hardest run of the year (probably the longest and hardest for two years, actually); it took place at lunchtime, instead of having lunch. Breakfast had been a little on the thin side - a bowl of peas, followed by some figs and nuts. And some friends of Caroline's were due round for afternoon tea and a demonstration of their newish baby, so when I arrived back after 1h 45 of steady-to-brisk running - I reckon I just got over 13 miles, maybe 13.5 - suffering from a brilliant negative energy balance that the evolutionary fitness people would have told me to guard jealously in order to get a good shunt of human growth hormone coursing my veins, the house was full of biscuits.

I limped downstairs afer my shower, plated them all up, offered them around, and then hoovered them up one by one, benefiting from the guests' apparent disdain for Fair Trade stem ginger cookies and Dutch syrup waffles. After they left, Caroline decided she'd like a cup of tea and a biscuit. But all the biscuits had gone to replace my dangerously low glycogen stores, so I had to go out and get more. And carry on eating them, plain digestives this time. I didn't feel like eating fruit, I didn't fancy any dried fruit and nuts, I had no urge to get outside a salad, even though ripe avocados were sitting in the bowl winking at me. I'd really emptied the tank, and all I wanted were biscuits.

Two things to think about: one, I will pay the price and get back some wheat-and-sugar cravings, which I will have to work at to quell; two, according to the 85%-15% rule, everything is pretty much ok, and there is nothing to feel despondent about. I am easily achieving 85% of my aim to abstain from grain and sugar, and the results are encouraging. Onwards and upwards, draw a line under it and pay attention to the next moment I can control.

Out of work and happy to be on the dole? Chipping away at a six-figure trust fund that keeps you in the carbon-and titanium-based style to which you have become accustomed? Awash with sponsorship deals that mean you can train like the pros? Got a boss who smiles with glee as you absent yourself for three days every week using a variety of excuses while you wear out your bike chain?

Thought not. You have quite a lot of time commitments, don't you? And you need to work for a living. And that work is generally of a sedentary nature, maybe? And you train a little each day and rather more at the weekends?

Then suddenly one day you arrive in a Mediterranean country, one with mountains and good roads, and you go from one long ride a week to one long week of riding. Oh, and a few runs in there too, and just to add to the fatigue-fest, some swimming. Add in a few late nights converting training volume to booze volume, and you have a good way of increasing your chances of getting injured, overreached and even overtrained. (Overreaching is the bit before overtraining). It's the training equivalent of package holiday sunburn.

My question is, are training camps something one does because, well, loads of other triathletes do, and of course the pros go to Mallorca or Lanzarote every April; or are they a carefully considered component of a training plan? Does it make sense to jump from 6-10 hours of training in a week to 20+ hours? How long after the training camp will any fitness gains be maintained? And what fitness gains do you intend to make by training that way? Clearly I am now addressing my readers as if every last one is a sinfully serial training camper, so don't take this personally, but just as one week's holiday a year away from a demanding job, in the blazing sun, with a spouse and child you rarely see tends to lead to sunburn, arguments and a scarred childhood for the nipper, so a week of high volume training randomly inserted into a training year may not necessarily be a positive thing. All coaches know that consistency is key. I would back an athlete who does the work week in, week out over several years to do better than an athlete who turns up at all the cool camps and puts in a massive week but who has lots of downtime and inexplicable injuries as a result.

That's why if or when I lead a training camp, it will be a low-volume learning experience, not a high-volume jolt.

A week ago a Slovenian marathon swimmer, Martin Strel, became the first man to swim the entire length of the Amazon river, an undertaking that required 66 days to complete, as Strel covered the 3,375 miles of the world's greatest (and second longest - 100km shorter than the Nile) river.

Strel didn't take on this nearly soul-destroying achievement just 'because it was there'. In 2000 Strel swam the 1,773 miles of the Danube to promote peace, friendship and free navigation on the waterway, and as an ambassador for the World Wide Fund for Nature. Swimming with and alongside the wildlife of the waterway is an important feature of his efforts, whether positive, as when he was greeted by the pink Amazon river dolphins, or potentially negative, when having to avoid piranhas and alligators.

In 2002 Strel swam the 2,360 miles of the Mississippi, with same message of peace, friendship, and the importance of clean, usable rivers. There was the additional bonus of a Guinness world record for the longest swim, which he again broke on the Amazon, and the satisfaction of conquering something no-one has ever conquered before, but the environmental aspect was also a very strong motivation. He spoke about the Amazon allowing him to complete the swim, and how the wildlife followed him along as he progressed towards the end.

Six-time Hawaii Ironman winner Natascha Badmann is noted for her spiritual connection to the Big Island, completing the race and soaking up all the pain and discomfort with a peaceful smile that rarely leaves her face. It is as if she is grateful for the chance to express her physicality in such a powerful natural environment.

It is easy, all too easy to forget, one, just how lucky we are to be able to train and race, and two, that we rely on our environment in order to do so. We don't have to swim the Amazon or win Hawaii to connect with nature and ourselves - we can remind ourselves of it every time we're out for a run or a ride. Try it - say thank you to nature and smile next time you're out there and see if it doesn't make you feel a little more peaceful.

Britain's wonderful triathlon magazine popped through my letterbox the other day, and I eagerly ripped open the packaging, glancing only briefly at my watch to time how long it took to get rid of all the shit, sorry, targeted marketing information, that accompanies it.

Just at the time of the year when an even vaguely authoritative voice such as that of this august publication should be encouraging triathletes to make their training as specific as possible, there this magazine was, trumpeting the benefits of group riding. I could stop here, really, and you would get my point, but let me elaborate a little anyway. (You can stop reading if you want, anyway, no one's obliging you to carry on are they?)

Group riding isn't really race-specific, says the magazine article, but it can be very useful for the triathlete, and we'll explain how. Well, I was very interested to see how they were going to justify that one, because usually what comes out of anything in favour of group riding for triathletes is that it educates the ignorant triathlete in the various etiquettes and systems of, er, group riding, and makes, er, group riding a more enjoyable experience. Which is fine and desirable to an extent, but it is soooo not race specific - an end in itself, really, but of course this clever mag wasn't going to fall into that trap, was it?

So what did this article manage to come up with?  What were the 'huge benefits' it promised to reveal? Well there was a long description of the ride and the riders, which was absolutely fascinating and worth a year's subscription alone.  With fingers trembling in giddy anticipation, I turned the page to find a description of how drafting is a way of saving energy in a group situation - like at Windsor, or London, maybe - and that shouting in a loud voice can alert other riders to dangers ("draftbuster coming up!!!!").  No but seriously, there was a little line that stated how there were increases in intensity, which was useful for a triathlete. Staggering. And then a lot of lines on how a long ride increases aerobic endurance.  Wow, who knew? Then there was a lot of conflicting stuff about how athletes in the build phase should be doing intervals, but a long ride should ideally have a steady level of intensity, as shown in a mini-case study. Shame, things were going SO well up to that point, with the article very clearly showing exactly how wonderful group riding was good for triathletes in springtime. The one time when you would think a genuine benefit was there, when the group were to get stuck into some long descents - ask Mark Tempest what it was like at Nice, with the winding descents jampacked with clever continental riders, while the flatlander Brits trembled and fell off a lot - but alas, 'the group split' at this point, so they didn't learn how to descend en masse, which is a useful skill indeed.

So, I ask, does group riding confer any benefit that cannot be obtained riding alone? Not one rider in this group was on aerobars, for example. And, I continue, are there advantages to riding solo over group riding? And, I wonder, does this magazine have a vested interest in promoting group riding on road bikes, or are they just quite stupid? 

This weekend I rode my triathlon bike for longer than I have ridden it for over a year, a mammoth 40 miler over the challengingly flat Cheshire countryside. I spent very little time off the aero bars, because as you know that is how a triathlon bike is designed to be ridden, even though I was not often riding at speeds for which aero bars would confer a significant advantage, especially riding back into a very stiff wind, my legs in tatters and my low back having a word with me about riding for more than the duration of a typical turbo session.

There were one or two decent roadies out there and I detected some instinctive speed checking - he's riding aero, so he must be going fast...but he isn't! But I gave up trying to impress other cyclists long ago, and even though I am aware that to many cyclists it doesn't look right, I was a triathlete riding his tri bike for his first long ride of the year, staying down on the aero bars, spinning up the hills, putting some time in on those bars. And perfectly happy with that.

I was unable to ride hard, though, as I mentioned I would after my longish, hardish run, and maybe a short but slightly brutal deadlift session in the week may have sucked all the juice out of my legs; that, or the fact that the only carbs I had before setting off were three grapes (after a plate of scrambled eggs). Hopefully I oxidised a few fat molecules out there, but not much of the ride was anything but aerobic.

Next day - barely any stiffness in the neck. Low back stiff but that was the deadlifts, I think. And so another small vindication of how appropriate it is to ride tri geometry as it is supposed to be ridden, 95% - 100% on the aero bars, without it being a strain or stress. Next time maybe I'll ride it with some race speed too!

'So just extend your hand and arm further out in front of you and you'll be fine, your stroke will be longer. Off you go, 50m focusing on that'
'OK, so what was I doing wrong with my hand and arm then?'
'Look, what part of "extend your hand and arm further" did you not understand? Are you going to stand there asking stupid questions and getting cold or are you going actually to do some swimming? Did you understand what I asked you to do, extend your hand and arm further?'
'Er yes.'
'Then bloody well do it. 50m, now.'
A typical exchange in the life of your coaching guru. (I may have taken a creative liberty with the dialogue, but I'm sure you get the general picture.
Or.
'You looked more comfortable then, so just keep your striking foot right underneath your body using the techniques we've just gone over, and you'll move more smoothly. Try the first one we practised, and just run up to the cone and back.'
'So I'm still striking in front of my body? Damn, I thought I'd sorted that last week. How far in front is my foot? Is it less than before?'
'Just run up to the cone and back.'
'But how far in front is my foot? And are my arms still crossing my body? Are the two somehow linked?'
'Just run up to the f***ing cone and back.'
Again, a true life dialogue from my coaching past.
This is the conflict between problem-oriented thinking and outcome-directed thinking, as psychs call it. And much psychological research would seem to indicate that effective people use outcome-directed thinking. (And we can infer that sad losers are mired in problem-oriented thinking).
Problem-oriented thinking is something that I come across all the time as a coach, and it involves approaching the problem from questions like: 'Why? What is to blame? What's causing it? Will I ever solve it? I can see things hindering me from getting past this, how can I remove them?'
Outcome-directed thinking asks: 'What state do I want to achieve? What will make me realise I've achieved it? What will I gain from achieving it? What do I need to do to achieve it - or what's the first thing I need to do to move me towards achieving it?'
I would say it does you NO GOOD to worry about what you are doing wrong, and it is VERY HELPFUL to focus on what you need to do right and what you need to do to move you forward. When you take the outcome-directed approach, in fact, you are in a way not acknowledging there is a problem, just identifying ways in which you can improve something. This is a very positive way to be. So get on with it.

I did my first major brick for quite some time today, and it went astonishingly well: 30 mins on the turbo, about 3 mins of run drills as soon as my backside left the saddle, immediately followed by16 deadlifts (with a wimpy 45kg) before transitioning into a 60-minute 'lek' run - not true fartlek, because I am not fit enough to hit the really high intensities off the bike, but a mixed pace run, working hard on hills, pushing on now and then as if trying to drop someone (and succeeding in dropping myself on occasion), easing back here and there, at an average that may have equated to 10k pace off the bike. I ran strongly for 60 minutes, never jogged, was able to push the pace and make sure I was quite fatigued by 55 minutes.

I haven't run for more than 50 minutes since the end of October last year, which is almost five months ago. And I haven't run substantially off the bike since the end of July last year (a long trawl through my training log required to winkle out that data). That would be eight months ago. Yet I was able to run effectively for about 14km after a by-no-means easy turbo session plus a smidge of extra leg fatigue from the deadlifts.

Since I am not a superfit, superdurable, uninjured 20-30 year-old, I was pleased that all my conditioning work, and judicious use of intensity on the few and brief occasions when I can run or get on the turbo, appear to have some positive effects on my endurance. Whether I could have run 30k today, which I will need to do in September, I very much doubt, certainly not at that pace, but I'm sure I could have run easily for around 20k had I needed to. I think good control over technique helps too, in channelling all my effort into forward motion with no 'energy leaks' as they say.

Time for a similar type of effort on the bike soon, then, to see if my current training can endow enhanced endurance (lovely alliteration, there, don't you think?) over a longer duration at a decent lick - no fannying around at low aerobic levels.

We're accustomed to 5,000m and 10,000m races on the track finishing with barely a whisker between the first two or three, most memorably at the last Olympics, when 0.6 of a second separated the first two women (and Paula Radcliffe stepped off the track) in the 10,000m, and Hicham El Guerrouj edged the 5,000m ahead of Kenenisa Bekele by 0.2 of a second. These are fast, tight races, unlike, say, marathon swimming. But...

The FINA World Swimming championships are under way in Melbourne, and the men's and women's 10k open water races have been contested. Swum over four 2.5k laps, the races were influenced by the presence of stinging jellyfish in the water - indeed the early leader in the women's race was stung in the mouth and dropped back to 11th. And what were the winning margins in these slow, arduous races? In the men's race, 0.6 of a second separated first and second. In the women's race, 1 second was the margin, with Brit Cassie Patten being overhauled in the very last few metres of the race. (In case you were wondering what sort of times these swimmers cover 10k in open water in, the men went about 1h 55m, and the women 2h 4m). The men's race actually went to a touch-out, the winner being the one who reached faster and further in the last stroke. It's a little difficult to believe that such long races could be so incredibly tight, but we have had sprint finishes in Ironman triathlons in the past - not often, admittedly, and never down to tenths of a second.

But how about this for a close finish in a long race? After nine hours, one minute and 54 seconds of swimming, in a 54-mile river swim race in Argentina, in 1999, the winner was just nine seconds ahead of second place, the two swimmers having played cat-and-mouse for all that time.

Readers, if you are out there and it ever comes to pass that you consume fizzy beverages, look at this:

Soft-drink quaffers consume the most calories
17 March 2007

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325953.500-softdrink-
quaffers-consume-the-most-calories.html

"SOFT drink intake is related to poor nutrition and raised risk for
obesity and diabetes." So says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd
Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, whose team has
reviewed 88 studies on the effects of soft-drink consumption in a
systematic trawl through the evidence.

Of 21 studies that met the most rigorous methodological standards, 19
showed that people who drank the most soft drinks also took in the
most calories overall (American Journal of Public Health, vol 97, p
667).

Part of the problem seems to be that sugary soft drinks don't make
people feel full. "With soft drinks, it seems that the calories are
invisible to the body," says Arne Astrup of the University of
Copenhagen in Denmark, a veteran of research on soft drinks and
obesity.

"With soft drinks, it seems that the calories are invisible to the
body"

A study by Astrup published last week in the British Journal of
Nutrition (vol 97, p 579) showed that people ate far less after
drinking cocoa-based drinks than after carbonated soft drinks.

The argument over whether sugary soft drinks have been contributing
to the rise in obesity in western countries has been raging for
years, and the American Beverage Association claims that Brownell's
review has picked on soft drinks unfairly.

Brownell agrees that obesity has many causes. "But you must start
somewhere," he says. He argues that soft drinks and the vending
machines used to dispense them should be banned from schools.

The ultimate recovery food.
Food.
And maybe not as often or as much as the Establishment would have you believe.
Current research in a variety of areas suggests that a glycogen depleted state is actually desirable for training adaptations to take place - or rather, for the metabolic scenario to be created that promotes training adaptations. One study showed how exercising in a glycogen depleted state made no difference to peak power output compared to the control - in itself encouraging news - but produced muscles that took longer to fatigue than the control, which had carbs refuelled after exercise.
It seeems also that Hgh, human growth hormone, is released more readily after exercise when glycogen levels are low, so again rapid refuelling with high GI carb drinks or energy bars may actually put a damper on fitness adaptations, and it has been suggested that one reason why some elite endurance athletes do so much training is to offset the slower adaptation rates incurred by the constant feeding on high GI recovery gels, drinks and bars.

My second point here may seem flippant at first sight - that it is better to eat food. But we live in a culture where actually we are not encouraged to eat food at all. We are encouraged to eat food products. Products derived from food. Products that are created in factories and delivered in packaging. Cereals, pasta sauces, baked beans, chips, pastries, sweets, processed cheese, pies and quiches and pasties, wafer thin ham - just thinking about what I see in the supermarket. But food is simple stuff - you need to cook it, sometimes, mind - apples, carrots, celery, spinach, eggs, nuts, green leaf, meat, fish...

If you train fairly hard, then rest, your body should make adaptations. If you only eat food, you will be hard put to pump high GI carbs into your body after training. And current research seems to suggest that this may actually be the most desirable state. The people at PowerBar and Gatorade (which has funded many a pro-energy drink study, astoundingly) may not like to hear this, but this is how our bodies have evolved to work.

There are so many vested interests involved in carbs and training that I would be surprised if this became common currency. Just as there are so many vested interests in manufacturing certain types of running shoe that the research that points to them increasing the incidence of injury is never likely to be shouted from the rooftops, so the idea that energy products don't enhance fitness is hardly likely to take root.

Just keep an open mind, be prepared to question the Establishment, and be prepared to carry out sports science experiments with a sample of one - yourself.

I was just having a little think about speed, as I did away with a lovely ripe avocado (attached to some scrambled egg and lightly fried tomatoes) this morning and remembered a calculation I once did out of curiosity. A good Ironman athlete is thought of as having little speed and lots of endurance; and a good ITU racer vice versa. And for age-groupers, the gulf between the two is huge. Or is it? I thought I'd see how fast elite athletes go in the real world.

Let's look at the splits of a decent elite Ironman athlete: swim 55 mins; bike 4h 45; run 3hrs 10 = 8h 50. That's someone who is good across the board, with a relatively slightly slow run (the best runners go 2.45 and faster for the marathon); and there will be 50 minute swimmers who run slower, or 4.40 bikers who swim slower, etc.

Purely in terms of IM race pace, 55 minutes for 3.8k = 21.40 for 1500m; 4h 45 for 180k = 63 minutes for 40k; 3.10 for a marathon = 45 minutes for 10k, which would add up to around 2h 10 for an olympic distance race, all at an intensity that would have to be 100% aerobic in order to complete Ironman. Let's not go anywhere near how a threshold effort would be for this typical athlete. Nor that a 2.50 marathon scales down to a 40 minute 10k, and our 'easy effort' olympic race now comes in at 2h 05! My point is that as AG athletes, we need to think carefully about how fast we can go and how fast we want to go; my view of most AG long-distance athletes is that they are slower than they could be because they focus on endurance. But the better triathletes, whether low-end elites or top AG, think more about speed. And you can see from the above figures that even 'slow' IM athletes actually go rather fast in real terms.

A perfect example of this happened a while ago, when an experienced club triathlete came to me ostensibly for a run technique session, a session which ended up mainly as an examination of his pace and what it cost him to achieve it. He told me he wanted to go sub-2h 30 for an olympic distance race, but when we ran at his fastest pace, which I estimated at not much above 8 mins/mile pace, he could keep it up for maybe 100 metres, meaning that he could not hope to run his race 10k in much below 65 minutes, and since his performance in bike and swim were similar, I was obliged to ask him where on earth he got the idea that he could maintain one aspect of 2h 30 pace - the run - in a race later that summer when he could not even get close to it over 100m. Yet this athlete was easily able to swim for an hour, ride for around 3 hours, run for 90 minutes, focusing on endurance and ignoring speed. It was a harsh awakening and an object lesson in the perils of training slowly!

Can't remember where I read it, nor any of the exact details, but in an American city a chiropractic clinic (or maybe a physio) offered free screenings including X-rays and discovered that there was a big discrepancy between pathology and reported pain. There were people walking round with some quite serious (supposedly) spinal problems - prolapsed discs, squashed discs - and reporting little or no pain or discomfort, the injury not intruding on their life in any significant way; and there were people with supposedly trivial pathologies reporting high levels of pain and severe intrusion of what ought to have been a minor condition into their daily lives.

Someone once said that the keys to a calm existence were threefold: not to judge others, not to compare, and not to ask why. Working through these could take years of philosophical discussion, but I'd like to highlight the importance of not comparing. If you are in pain, it is your pain, your experience and you need to do what you need to do to become better. If you got up from your chair awkwardly and your back seized up, don't dismiss it because the cause was so trivial, and anyone else would shrug it off in a few minutes. Or if your mate comes off his bike and is fine to ride and run in a couple of days, and you have a similar shunt and struggle for several days, don't compare yourself to him and try to get back too early.

Similarly, if you start to feel fit, and your performance indicators back it up with faster times, all on a small amount of training, and a mate is doing the same times off twice the training - don't compare, don't emulate their training to move forward. Triathletes and multisporters are supposed to be the ones who do things differently, but I often see people doing a sport that is new and different, but with the same mindset as people who are ostensibly more orthodox and conformist. And hence constantly comparing their colleagues' training and performances with their own. Our lives are so complex that no two people can possibly have the same stresses, not to mention the fact that they are unlikely to be physiologically identical. And most often we are racing for personal improvement, not outright wins.

In my last blog I mentioned how safe was in fact risky, and that easy can be difficult. We gauge a lot of what we consider to be safe and easy by aligning ourselves with our peers. 'Dave has £5,000 of credit card debt, and Sharon has over £2k on her cards, so it's fine for me to do the same.' Easier to spend than to budget, but difficult when all your lovely kit ends up in Cash Converters, with you gazing in at the window. Sometimes the comfortable comparisons stop us from identifying what is right action for us as individuals and from following through and making it happen. So do what is right for you. Don't compare yourself with others. Just remember when you show independence of mind your peers may find it a little uncomfortable, just as smokers try to entice a peer who has recently given up to smoke again.

I'm no  longer dazed and confused from my bike accident, but still more than a little bruised. And one potentially confusing thing I've been exposed to recently is a little paradox about changing habits or making changes in lifestyle. Now the change in life that I made a while ago that shattered my comfortable little world was to bring Edith into it. And since then I've been aware of the paradox that 'easy is hard', as a Zen text put it, or that 'safe is risky' as marketing guru Seth Godin says.

The paradox is that it is easy to not do things that may make your life better. Not doing stuff, not taking action is easier; but not doing them can make your life hard, or harder than it need be. Safe is sticking with what you know and not taking risks, but safe is risky when not taking risks makes you stagnate, or when not changing things makes you weaker, or less able to cope with change when it inevitably comes along. Safe is an illusion.



Here's an example form my own situation. Since Edith was born, and then a year later when Caroline went back to work, my intake of starchy and sugary foods gradually crept up, while my activity levels dropped as I had more childcare and less training time. Safe meant carrying on eating foods that, while not immediately damaging to my health, were not helping me in my less active state. The risks of staying with it were tooth problems, slight increase in weight, slight loss of muscle mass, and maybe one or two other things pushing me slowly along the continuum towards diabetes. So I made a big change, once it was crystal clear that it really was necessary, and gave up all grain in every form. Not an easy change to make in the short term, but I motivated myself by thinking how hard life would be if I had diabetes or heart disease. That is how I understood at last that the easy way can be the hard way. What helped also was something I gleaned from the Zen text, which was that there is always a price to pay. The price to pay for staying with an unhealthy eating pattern would be tooth pain, joint pain, cracked skin on the feet, etc. The price to pay for taking action and giving something up are things like hunger pangs, the discomfort of not being able to immediately comfort oneself with bread or a bagel. I told myself and continue to tell myself that this is a price I really can afford! (Whereas I cannot afford a carbon crankset, for example...)

Safe is risky. Easy is hard.

The title of this blog is a Led Zeppelin track, and I seem to be back into them, which is a tragic admission, and maybe a senile return to my teenage years. But the reason I am wandering about the house in a daze, slightly confused, and in some considerable pain, unable to settle at my work, is that I was taken down by a car last night.

There I was trundling along the Lea Bridge Road, almost home, looking forward to hearing about Edith's bedtime (well it's interesting to me...) when I saw a car starting to turn right into the side-road I was about to ride past. No problem, he's slowing, well actually he's not, that's weird, can't he see me, he's now accelerating into the road, accelerating straight at me...

I swerved and skidded and braked and held an arm out as the headlights bore into me, and just as I was inches from being splattered over the car bonnet - and everything was in slow motion by this point - the driver stopped, the last bits of my momentum took me to the other side of the car, where I hit the road hard, bike tangled on top of me. The driver swung his wheel over to make sure he didn't run over my bike and scrape his precious Fiesta, and drove briskly off, while I shouted things loudly but very incoherently.

I've got bruises, and road rash and strained muscles and a headache, and I am so, so lucky that I escaped with negligible harm.
If you look here http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/168010
you'll see how bad it gets.
And of course for Mr Moy this is pretty much a weekly occurrence.
But BE CAREFUL out there. Please.

Am I having a crisis of faith? I've had them before, notably when I was working as a reflexologist and hit a point where I decided that it was a scam, or if not a scam at least a highly dubious therapy in terms of efficacy, despite the fact that my clients were reporting improvements in their conditions.

We humans have come a long way from the savanna, that's for sure. It's thought these days that the first humans evolved away from primates about 6 million years ago, and then modern humans seemed to have developed about 200,000 years ago. What a lot of people are doing these days is looking at health and fitness from an evolutionary perspective, and it's something I've been aware of for a while now without it ever being a problem as a triathlon coach, or an endurance sports coach.

But now it might be.

I like studying conditioning and strength training, and I like studying nutrition. These are aspects of being a coach that really stimulate me. And from a nutritional prespective I've long been aware that there is a strong view that the digestive system and hormonal system that evolved 6 million years ago and stopped evolving 200,000 years ago can't handle Quality Street, McNuggets, Pop Tarts and loads of other stuff that wasn't around many millennia ago particularly well. Things like the Paleo Diet are doing well for their promoters. There's money in advocating Neanderthal Nutrition. That's all good.

And I was well aware that 'primal patterns' involve fitness based on power, multiplanar movements, balance, speed and the ability to whack a gnu on the head with a large rock. But recently a guru of evolutionary fitness has been pointing out that - in his professorial opinion - regular endurance training is not good. And the combination of regular endurance training and a high-carb diet is even worse. I was with him on the carb thing, I'm not a believer in it, but he was very compelling on the endurance thing. And it only takes the tragic death through heart failure of a promising young local triathlete, Dave Aitchison of Ful-On Tri - and our hearts go out to his family - to underline the message. We are not designed for daily distance, he says, our hearts can't take it, our bodies will revolt at some stage. Train hard and short, and rest a lot, he says.

We humans have come a long way from the savanna. We are adaptable, intelligent and have the capacity to deal with all sorts of different conditions and existences. Xan Bushmen run for hours to chase down wounded antelopes. The Tarahumara Indians of Mexico run crazy distances in their paradise Copper Canyon (I've been there, witnessed it). American Indians prized and revered those who could carry messages - on foot, running - hundreds of miles. Endurance is not a 20th or 21st century thing. Maybe the frequency of training is, though. Maybe we can all train a little less and eat less starch and save our efforts for the big days. Because when those Bushmen catch their antelope you can bet they will be full of meat for a few days and not keen on running for six hours again.

I'm not having a crisis of faith, not quite. But there is a lot of food for thought out there at the moment, lots to ponder on.

Yesterday I ran a coaching day for East London Triathletes, the second of a series of three days aimed at improvers and middle-of-the-pack triathletes.


I'd like to thank Mark K for his organisation, kettle and Jaffa cakes, and the attendees for their enthusiasm and stream of good questions and feedback.


Mark K






I enjoyed  the day immensely. We covered: planning for the pre-competition phase of the year; a practical strength and conditioning session, a turbo session that included some visualisations for better pedalling technique and some tips for a thorough warm-up; and a run technique session looking mainly at posture. Jumping outdoors from a warm, heated hall into a bitingly cold wind didn't appear to dampen anyone's enthusiasm and the occasional little sprint challenges seemed to keep everyone warm. Here's to the next one!

'Ident-itee, it's the crisis, can't you see-ee, ident-itee, ident-itee-eee,' sang Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex in 1978. 'When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself?' she continued, and that is what I am moved to write about today.

There's a very strong tendency to build our identity using things that are part of our outer selves. Our jobs, our hobbies, our cultural tastes, our position in communities such as a family.  And of course, sport. We need to be careful, because we are not these things; our identity is not 'IT consultant' or 'wife' or 'triathlete', and especially not 'owner of a Subaru Impreza WRX' or 'rider of a titanium Litespeed Blade with Dura-Ace and Zipps'. If you walk out on your husband and cease to be a wife, if the filth ban you from driving your pimped-up Impreza, if you injure your knee and can no longer ride your Blade or race triathlons, are you still the same person?

 








In both Zen and in sport psychology exists the concept of detachment: not being attached. Sports psychologists distinguish between process-orientation and outcome-orientation, and note that absorption in the process generally produces better performances than focusing on the result - and needing the result to be good in order to be good.

The idea of not identifying your self with your outer world has another facet: what if you are 'the person who can't run a sub-38 min 10k', or 'the person who performs badly on hilly courses'? If you banish the link between your outer world and your perception of who you are, suddenly broader horizons open up. Concentrate on the process of your sport, love it, be absorbed in it for what it is, and be detached from outcomes.

A metaphor sprang into my mind the other day as I did swiftly away with a lovely ripe avocado. I observed how I dealt with the avocado, and asked myself, 'How much of a vehicle do I really need?'


Would I be able to get by in life with a Smart car, or a Citroën C2? (I used to get by very well indeed with a Citroën Dyane, in fact). Or do I actually need a Toyota Land Cruiser when the most I tote around is a small child in a car seat and a boot full of toys, pushchair, cases and maybe a bike?

The vehicle I used to wolf down the avocado was bread. (All right, and butter). I just felt, as I eyed up the avocado sitting in the fruit basket, that I had to put it into some kind of carb-starchy context in order for it to be palatable. But in doing so, obviously, I was comitting nutritonally unsound practice and had no real way of justifying it. A lifetime of carbs of the high GI variety, a lifetime of using more vehicle than necessary to drive the good stuff down my gullet.  Often bread, especially in the form of the sandwich, so ingrained in our consciousness that it barely appears on the 'unsound practice' radar, but also things like pasta and jacket potatoes (neither of which I myself eat much of). Too high a proportion of high GI starch as a vehicle to get the really nutritious stuff down. Need protein and vitamins? Have tuna and tomato and peppers - with a tub of pasta! Need some good fat and minerals? Eat avocado and rocket and basil - inside a ciabatta!

So I'm trying to think 'Smart car' when refuelling after a hard morning at the keyboard, when high GI is the last thing I need. Chop that avocado into a bowl, drizzle with lemon juice, a little slurp of tabasco or soy and enjoy.
 

Britain's only triathlon publication popped through my letterbox this morning to barely disguised yawns. Oh, it's not as irreverent as when I used to contribute to it. But that is not the point of my blog today. As my baby daughter tried to stop me flicking through the mag while 'looking after' her (honestly, Dad, how rude), I just managed to look at the head-to-head bike reviews. Finally, after years and years of blinkered attitudes, the mainstream has cottoned on to the fact that there are these machines called triathlon bikes, optimised for racing triathlon (note my terminology for later) and has started reviewing them instead of road bikes, which are optimised for, yes, road riding.

So forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but I was under the impression that in a race, athletes are required to run after riding their bikes (and this is one of the key elements to a tri-bike, that it facilitates running off the bike). So forgive me for asking an impertinent question, but how are we supposed to know how good a triathlon-specific bike is if the review fails to include how well we can run after riding it? What if a bike is so light and aerodynamic that it lops two minutes off your ride, and designed with thoughtless geometry so that it then adds them back on again on the run?




I read the reviews, because I am interested, but they never tell me how one will race a whole race with that bike, only how one might feel while riding it. So how about some REAL tests, including a 5k run and a 2-hour run. How about testing them in real races? (That's the best way to test athletes, but that's a whole nother thing).

Just an ordinary little journey in the life of a cyclist, two 20 minute there-and-back rides.  Midmorning, bright conditions, broad daylight, not a huge amount of traffic about either. So why, when a van coming up a road towards me veered over to my side of the road in order to turn, did the driver not see me, keep veering and oblige me to jump into the gap between two parked cars for safety? Why when I was riding round Whipps Cross roundabout (fortunately very close to the A and E dept at the hospital) did one driver speed onto the roundabout just in front of me, causing me to brake quickly, and another driver almost drive into the back of me seconds later, and look surprised, then annoyed, that there was a bike on the roundabout in his way?

Why are we invisible?



After a decade of riding round London I am never, ever surprised by drivers' behaviour. And I know I am very lucky that my balance in the account of car-induced cycling injuries amounts to just a few bruises (and lots of near-misses) - due partly to luck, partly to vigilance. But I still find it perplexing that we are so often so invisible, and disturbing always knowing that an accident could be just round the corner.

Ironically, since the congestion charge came into force, cycling in the city has become a little safer, I feel, while cycling locally has become a little less safe. But drivers still like to pretend we don't exist wherever we are riding. I'm not going to stop riding round town, but drivers aren't going to stop driving like blind, drunken idiots either. Maybe the driving test should be changed to include a section on coping with cycle traffic. Maybe Mayor Ken can do more to make the city's drivers bike-aware. If you look at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cycles/, you'll see that cyclists are not being ignored, but what is being done to re-educate motorists? Maybe that is the solution to our invisiblity.

On a freezing New Year's Day in  gale-stricken Newcastle-upon-Tyne I gingerly stripped off my fleece and tights as I finished warming up for a 9k cross-country race organised by the friends I was visiting over the New Year. My entry fee and a donation went to Amnesty International and WaterAid, so I was in a good position to rationalise my participation as an effort for charity rather than anything to do with actually competing. And I had lots of good reasons to expect my effort to be a flabby trudge round the very challenging course near the back of the field, since it is around the 10th anniversary of my being told to give up racing; and because in the 15 months since the birth of my beautiful baby girl I have not once raced; and because in the 14 weeks since Caroline went back to work I have had to pretty much give up all training, and have run exactly twice.




In the seconds leading up to the start of the race my mind was fairly empty - no surprises there - since I could think of very little to focus on. No rivals to keep an eye on; no course PB to think about; no training cycle in which to fit a hard run. So I just let my casual, relaxed frame of mind stay with me as I set off and hoped I wasn't going out too hard, tried not to overdo the nastily steep little hills and work to an even effort. After the usual rush at the start, everyone settled in, and it wasn't until the beginning of the second lap that the placings got shaken up a bit, as the early heroes tired in the gale-force winds and boggy footing, and the canny runners moved through. A few guys eased past me but with a couple of ks to go I found I had kept something back to start hurting myself, and ran up to 20th, using anyone who had passed me first as targets and then as pursuers to stay in front of. OK so there were a few hungover runners out there, but most of the 119 who ran were keen club runners, and most knew the course well too.

Is there a point to this? If you've read this far then I can say that there is, and it's about reversibility of fitness in an average individual. Despite a decade of mild detraining, I've kept a decent level of aerobic fitness: endurance. Endurance is slow to go. Most of the running I regularly did before Caroline went back to work was at or just above threshold; and the only training I have regularly done in the last 3-4 months has been 10-15 minute kettlebell sessions 3-4 times a week and a few cycle commutes. Not much, but very focused on leg strength, and short but high intensity sessions. So it looks as though threshold work can help maintain both endurance and threshold, and explosive work can help keep a little of the top end alive. There's no other explanation for how a slightly overweight and very undertrained endurance athlete can beat a lot of 'well-trained' runners.

I have recently been under attack from one of the candidates on a coaching course I tutored. As a result, the Coach Education Office required me to defend myself, ie they put themselves in the position of endorsing to some extent the content of the attack. I am so disillusioned with the BTA education - having to deliver badly organised courses, with malfunctioning equipment, in poor venues and above all to groups far too large for them to get the attention and input they need and deserve and have paid for - that this nasty little episode may mean an end to my commitment to tutoring. But while it has been unpleasant, I was thinking about things that have happened to other coaches. Brett Sutton, banned from coaching for having sex with one his swimmers, aged 15. Bill Sweetenham accused of bullying his swimmers. Two US high school coaches accused of having put a starting pistol to a student's head. Korean speed skating coaches accused of beating women athletes. A kids' baseball coach accused of getting some of his kids to hurt an autistic kid so that he couldn't play. Hundreds of coaches accused of sexual misconduct ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.
 
Thankfully, knowing about the depths to which what should be a life-enhancing relationship can sink, I am now able to deal with such accusations as putting my arm in front of the slide projector, not correcting candidates on their coaching skills (because they were fully competent in the first place), and disagreeing with the content of a slide, in some kind of perspective. As angry as this candidate may have felt, and I feel sorry that he as such anger in him, compared to the dreadful things that have happened, are happening now and will continue to happen in coaching and education, this is not something that has damaged him too deeply, and hopefully one day he will realise how trivial this all is. A peaceful outlook goes a long way!

I know it's Christmas not Easter, but recently I  a) enjoyed a particularly delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs (with a dash of Tabasco and a few slices of ripe avocado on the side) and b) saw a programme about Japanese cooking which included a kind of savoury and rather runny egg custard, and I was reminded about the power of The Egg, one of nature's finest foods and faster than most fast food.

Whenever I refer to the coach of the unparalleled Mark Allen, a man called Philip Maffetone, I do so with mixed feelings, since much of Maffetone's renown is due surely to the amazing qualities of Allen the athlete rather than Maffetone the coach, and the training principles that he extols as being applicable to every athlete are probably not. However, I feel he is very sound on nutrition, and he does have a thing about eggs too.

Maffetone regards eggs as the perfect food. "We can live almost entirely on eggs," he says, adding that they contain all our essential nutrients except niacin and vitamin C. So vitamins A, D, E, B1, B2, B6, folic acid and B12 are all there, as are all the amino acids (protein) required for growth and repair. Minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc and iron are all represented, and the fat in egg yolk is an excellent balance of 36% saturated to 64% unsaturated. Two EFAs, essential fatty acids, linoleic and linolenic, crucial in the regulation of blood cholesterol, are also there.

Maffetone cites a report in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine about "the egg man", an 88-year-old man who had a documented history of eating 25 eggs every day. Medical examinations found him to be in excellent health, with serum cholesterol levels of 150-200, where 250 is thought to be a little too high, of normal weight and good heart health.

But how do you eat 25 eggs a day? Is that five meals of five eggs? Three meals of eight eggs? One boiled egg first thing, then a 24-egg blowout at dinner? And did he use a variety of egg recipes? Souffles, scrambled, omelettes, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, poached, fried, custards...?