Break in the weather

Lots of good news for this post my friends, family and random Internet people!

First, the diet.  Going plant powered has thus far provided:

• A more balanced diet and therefore a more balanced energy system (no sleepy afternoons at work)
• A cheerier outlook on life (just feel more positive and less grumpy... No scientific backing for this one)
• I've attained my target weight (73kg, thanks for asking)
• I ran a 5km PB on Saturday (likely due to my running going well and carrying less fat around)
• I've found a bunch of new vegan and vegetarian friends at work (really lovely people)
• A way more varied diet (Julie and I have been experimenting with food, with some success!)
• Regular errr... movements (they don't tell you about constipation re: low carb and thus low fibre diets)

Not too shabby if you ask me.

Next up is a community service announcement.  If you are running for longer distances, make sure you cut your nails.  Otherwise you get this:

Yup, the long nail cuts into the toe next to it, leading to blood and pain and annoyingly difficult to clean socks.

In related news, did a long run today of 19km in absolutely lovely weather.  Not too bad a run, getting back into the higher mileage as I rebound from my calf injury.  Speaking of which, calf is awesome, no problems at all on flats now. Still some issues with hills, but I can work on that as the healing continues.  Never liked hills that much anyway.

Off for a walk

So on Sunday Julie and I hit the trails and did a jaunty 21km loop near Guildford:

I really enjoyed the walk... So much so that I'd want to do it as a run.  As you can probably guess, my leg is 90% healed and I'm back in business!

My recovery has been much hastened by going to a physio and getting the underlying issue sorted and the injured muscle mercilessly massaged.  From this I have decided that physios are awesome.  If you are a physio, give yourself a pat on the back.  If you are near a physio, and it wouldn't be totally weird, give him or her a hug in appreciation.

So my beloved physio has patched me up and given me a bunch of exercises to help avoid a repeat of the same injury.  Here's hoping for a incident free lead up to Edinburgh.

But I digress, back to the trek...  At around half way, we came across this great little sign:

Love it :)

While on the walk we got to see lots of quintessentially English countryside, including this path/tunnel/hobbit hole thingy:

Very Alice in Wonderland I thought.

Final thing for this update - the diet! All is going really well, energy levels are great, recovery is good, variety is... Well, that needs some work.  It is so easy to get stuck in a rut of always buying the same food you know how to prepare.  I need to break out and try new things.  Food is the source of our very beings and it deserves to have a bit of thought and effort put into selecting and preparing it.

This may lead to disaster, but hey, that's the fun part :)

Marathon Sponsorship!

Hiya everyone :)

Not content with doing a half marathon last year and raising over £1,000 for Royal Parks thanks to everyone’s generous support, I’ve decided to go the whole hog and run the Edinburgh Marathon in May this year!  None of that half marathon business, this time it will be the full 26.2 mile shebang.

…with the following likely outcome:

Anyway…  this time I’ll be supporting Breast Cancer Care, a fab charity that provides information and support for people (and their loved ones) that are afflicted by breast cancer cross the UK. The aim is to raise £750 for the charity directly, and have Barclays chip in another matching £750.  Lofty aspirations, but totally worth it!

You can donate using the this link: http://www.justgiving.com/MatthewToy

As a special reward for getting this far into the blog post, here I am in my oh-my-goodness-so-very-hot-pink race singlet.  I think I can carry it off…

I’m going to assume that has convinced you to donate now!

I'm back!

The post title says it all, I'm back baby! After nearly 6 weeks of no running due to a pulled calf muscle, I was able to bang out a slow 40 minute run last night.  Thank goodness.

So, a couple of lessons learnt:

1. See a physio and determine if you have any biomechanical issues.  This will help avoid injury in the first place.
2. Make sure you monitor your protein intake.  I'm pretty sure I was below 50g of protein a day around the injury time. Without protein your body can't repair itself between exercise sessions.  I've since invested in Clif Builders bars, which are both yummy and packed with 20g of vegan friendly protein per bar.

The diet is still going well. My weight has normalised around 74kg, only 1kg from my self imposed ideal weight. I'm also finding more and more food options, including everything from cakes to full vegan meals that is rounding out my diet nicely.

The next stage is to up the exercise to 6 runs a week (including recovery runs) and keep a close eye on the nutrition.  This combined with some exercises to target my weak spots, should give me the lead up to the Edinburgh Marathon that I want. Sub 3:30 marathon here I come!