capultra

I’ve been gradually building up my weekly mileage for the last 6 months peaking at around 100-120km per week for the last month. I’ve heard people saying that success in ultras is all about Time On Your Feet and I’ve come to agree during this last training cycle.

It feels like a flywheel. Each week of consistent, high mileage has added outsized benefits to my overall fitness and pace.

For many years, I’ve been limiting easy run pace to around 6:30 min/km in order to keep my HR at 140 bpm or less, which is technically Zone 3 for me, but it felt about as slow as I could practically run without sacrificing form. I’ve done several 6+ month blocks of strict Zone 2 training with little or no measurable benefit. I even did a lactate test to accurately find my Zone 2 heart rate.

In my local grocery store I have two choices for spinach both of which force me to choose between either health or environmental protection. I can either buy …

• Organic spinach in a plastic container, or
• Conventional spinach, bunched with an elastic band

This presents a conundrum. I don’t want the plastic because it’s bad for the environment, but I want to buy the organic spinach because it’s better for my health.

I had a bad cold for 7 days and it made me miserable. It morphed from blocked nose, to runny nose and sneezing, to dry cough, to hacking cough etc.

On the 7th day I’d had enough and decided to ‘go herbal’ in a last-ditch effort to kill the thing. I made two separate batches of this god-awful witch’s brew and drank it throughout the day, and now on day 8 the cold is basically gone.

I’m at the beginning of a weight-loss cycle but I’m going to approach it a little differently this time - I’m going to do it gradually.

I got the idea from Layne Norton, a coach, bodybuilder, powerlifter, with a PhD in nutrition, and I think he mentions his diet strategy in his Metabolic Damage video.

I typically go straight into a fairly extreme low-carb diet which produces great results in a short period of time, but Layne got me thinking that it might not be the most efficient way to lose fat because I’m probably losing more muscle than I need to and wrecking my metabolism too.

When it comes to making a change in life, there are two choices:

1. Commit to specific goals now, or
2. Admit that the goal is not important to you.

You must pick one.

Forcing yourself to choose one determines your dedication to the goal.

For example, a statement like “I want to get fit” needs to be followed immediately by a set of actionable commitments that will move you towards that goal. Be specific. “I will run for 15 minutes on Mon, Wed, and Fri at 7pm”.

I have just completed 6 weeks of doing a Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower (P.H.U.L.) Workout and was very pleased with the results.

I’d probably classify myself as an intermediate lifter - I’ve been lifting consistently for about 3 years and concentrate on strength-based routines grounded in the big compound lifts of squats, deadlifts, bench press and shoulder press.

I started the program in Sept after maintaining a pretty lean weight over the summer, and planned to use P.H.U.L as my first bulking period. I’m 5'10" tall and 39 years old and on day one I tipped the scales at 162lb. Today I weighed in at 175lb for a gain of 13lb. Not bad.

My brother and I had talked about running the CanLake 50km ultramarathon about 9 months ago, but fter my marathon in May I decided that I just didn’t want to invest the time in training that such an event would require and so I pulled out. He continued training and ran the race last weekend, and I couldn’t be more proud.

A few months ago he asked me to crew for him, and maybe pace him during the race. I hesitated for a while but eventually decided that I’d do it. My main concern was that the race was being held on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so when my family opted to have Thanksgiving dinner on Monday instead of Sunday I felt I could go.

In January I wrote down a few goals that I wanted to reach this year. Among them were my lifting goals of 225lb bench press, 225lb squat, 315lb deadlift.

Today I pulled 315lb for 3 reps on the deadlift, and 225lb for 5 reps in the squat. Unfortunately my bench press is lagging way back at 185lb but I’m hoping that I’ll get it to 200lb by the end of the year.

I recently watched two interesting documentaries/instructional films about bodybuilding. Now, I’m certainly no bodybuilder but I feel that there’s a lot that I can learn from the bodybuilding community.

The first was Layne Norton’s UNLEASHED, and the other was Ronnie Coleman’s The Cost of Redemption.

Layne Norton was eloquent, educated and entertaining to watch. He takes a science-based approach to his diet and workouts, and he appears healthy, strong and vibrant. At the end of the film I was convinced that I should try some variant of his Power/Hypertrophy workout at some point in the future and I particularly liked his approach to bulking which includes a short cut cycle every few weeks paired with a whole-food diet.

On Monday, I had a humbling experience - I got stuck under the bar on the bench press. I workout in the early morning so there aren’t usually a lot of people around, but fortunately one of the other pre-dawn regulars jumped in and helped out.

I got off lightly; my pride is the only thing that was injured.

I am currently working through a version of The Texas Method which involves varying volume and intensity throughout the week, with a personal record (PR) attempt on Friday. I had decided that I’d go for 5 rep max’s rather than 1RM but I got into trouble on the 3rd rep. A part of me thinks I shouldn’t have attempted the 3rd rep, but on the other hand I know that the only way to progress is to relentlessly push forward.