capultra

I recently read Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha by Adam Bornstein and John Romaniello.

It’s more than just another diet and exercise book - it covers the whole spectrum of manliness from behaviours and attitudes to diet and exercise, with a distinct focus on hormones.

The premise is that men aren’t manly any more because they’re hormones are all out-of-whack. I agree up to a point, but I find it hard to believe that it’s the source of all the obesity and disease in the world. I feel that “eat food, not too much, mostly plants, and exercise more” would be better advice for the majority of men.

The Limberlost Challenge (TLC) 2013 was my first trail race. I had been running the trails of Hardy Lake Provincial Park for several years but had never taken the next step, but after my marathon in May I decided that I wanted to focus on trail running.

The atmosphere at the start was very different to a road race. I find that the people at the start of a road race are usually limbering up or stretching or trying to get mentally focused. Very few people are chatting. At TLC many of the runners knew each other and were casually talking while eating muffins and sipping coffee. I managed to strike up 3 or 4 conversations before the race.

I said, “I didn’t know you were a cross-country skier.”

He replied, “Yeah. I did it competitively all through high-school, and continued into university. It was awesome! We used to go to the local ski hill and ski up the fucking thing for our training…”

The stories went on for twenty minutes and it was the most animated that I’ve seen Joe in years.

Joe is now middle-aged, overweight and plagued by health issues. Oh, and he recently lost his job. So did his wife. They’re not doing so well.

I finished the Toronto Marathon on May 5, 2013 in 3:54:10 and I’m satisfied with that result. Overall I found the race to be much more enjoyable than it was in 2005, mostly because of the improved course and better crowd support.

Getting to the start was a bit of a hassle, as it often is in Toronto. The subway gets to sleep in on Sundays here so there’s no public transit. I wish I had paid the extra $8 at registration for the shuttle bus from downtown but I didn’t think about it at the time, so I ended up having to take an expensive taxi.

The last marathon I ran was the Toronto marathon in 2005, and I finished in 3:57:36. I was shooting for a sub-4 so I was pretty stoked with that time.

Now, nearly 8 years later I’m excited to be running it again, but I’ve done a lot of things differently this time.

I’ve been running less. A lot less - only once per week. Last time I was training about 5 days a week and it really felt like a grind towards the end. The ramp-up was too fast, and I had several injuries throughout the training program including my knee and lower back. So this time around I decided to mix strength training and running so I’ve been lifting weights 3 times a week concentrating on the big compound movements, and running my long distances on the weekends. I have been virtually injury free and have not really felt like the runs were a grind - even those bitterly-cold pre-dawn winter runs.

Strength, stamina, fitness. These are the words that endurance athletes evoke, but these attributes play a much smaller role than one may think.

Endurance sports are about enduring pain.

It takes many hours of training to build up sufficient strength, stamina and fitness to be able to complete an event like a marathon or an Iron Man, but these will only take an athlete so far. Once you can run for an hour or two, you can run all day provided you can work through the pain.

I recently watched the Bones Brigade documentary/autobiography that covers the explosion of skating in the 1980s and 1990s. If you haven’t seen it then do yourself a favour and see it, even if you were never into skateboarding.

There are several parts of the film where the skaters talk about how they went about inventing tricks. You see, learning a trick merely requires practice because you’ve already seen someone else do it so you know that it’s possible. Your mind already believes it.

Here are some races I’m considering as preparation for the Vermont 50 miler. Prior to this year, my longest event was the Toronto marathon 8 years ago.

1. Sun May 5: Toronto Marathon
2. Sat May 25: Sulfur Springs (Hamilton 50km). Not sure about this one yet
3. Sat June 22: Niagara 50km road race
4. Sat July 6: Creemore Vertical Challenge 50km on hilly trails
5. Sat July 13: The Limberlost Challenge (Huntsville, 56km trails on a scenic 14km loop)
6. Sun Sept 29: Vermont 50 miler

Creemore and Limberlost look awesome and they’re only a week apart! The Vermont 50 miler will be the pinnacle of my season this year.

I used energy gels extensively when I was training for my first marathon back on 2005. I sucked one down every 45 minutes on my long runs, as directed on the packaging, and it definitely helped.

I never really thought much about their ingredients; all that mattered was that it helped me get to the next level of endurance running.

I’m a little older, and a little wiser now, and have started paying attention to just about everything that I put into my body, even those little 100-calorie energy gels. On closer examination, they came up lacking.

If you listen to the bodybuilding community, you’d be convinced that you need to eat shitloads of meat every day in order to put on muscle.

It’s a myth.

There’s nothing special about meat - it’s protein, not steriods. And you can get plenty of protein from non-animal sources like vegetables and quinoa.

If you want to build muscle then get your ass in the gym and start lifting heavy weights. It’s that simple. The harder you work, the more muscle you’ll pack on.