Run all you like.. but don’t forget about your Diet

As hard as I train, I am a self confessed shocker with what I eat. Ok, Im not that bad, but I have one hell of a sweet tooth. For majority of the day, I eat pretty healthy; Oats & Fruit for Breakfast, Chicken, Veges and brown Rice for Lunch, and an Omelette for Dinner (along with snacks ie. yoghurt, nuts, protein shake) – but it’s those late night cravings that bring all my hard work crashing down.

I can easily smash back a pack of biscuits followed by a chocolate bar in 20 minutes, and still want more! I am slowly getting better, and may only slip up 1-2 times per week now – but I know that as hard as I train, I won’t see results unless I eat clean.

It can be really disheartening if you get your sweat on 4 times per week, but still aren’t seeing results. Ask yourself this; are you really eating clean? You can’t get away with eating well during the week and blowing out with alcohol and fast food in the weekends – unfortunately it just doesn’t work like that. Not to say you can’t still enjoy a bevvy after a tough week, but the key is everything in moderation.

Try and allow yourself one “cheat meal” per week, whether that is dessert one night a week, Chocolate for the movies, or a very indulgent Pizza/Pasta. Treat this meal as your reward for all your hard work – as you should only have one a week, you will really start to appreciate it and look forward to your treat, rather eating junk out of habit. I should really listen to my own advice.

Working out is the easy part. But it takes real motivation and self-discipline to say no to that piece of Cake at work, or to that extra glass of red Wine. We have all heard it before; but weight loss and change in physique comes down to 30% exercise and 70% diet. Just 3 days eating clean, and you will start to notice your tummy is flatter, your skin looks better and you will have more energy than ever.

Quick tip; if you think you are hungry and craving something ‘naughty’ have a BIG drink of Water, usually we mistake hunger for thirst – if after 15 minutes you are still hungry, then make a healthy choice. This is my favourite quote below, I always think of this when the thought of Chocolate takes control.

Fail to Prepare – Prepare to Fail

Its always good to prepare for your run the day before – getting lots of water on board and making good food decisions. This is especially important if you are running for longer than an hour.

There are always those times where you don’t prepare – maybe its a spur of the moment run, or a Sunday afternoon run to cure a hangover. If you run for less than an hour your body can adjust and handle it, but if you plan to tackle a long distance without any thought then you might end up on the Highway to Hell a’la me last week. After trial and error, now I really understand the importance of the following tips. Follow them next time you go out, and see if they make a difference to your performance;

• Water

The day before your run, make sure you drink 2-3 Litres of water, and the morning of, consume at least a further litre. This is crucial if you are facing high temperatures.

• Food

Fuel your body the day before with healthy nourishing foods like protein, vegetables and carbohydrates. Stay away from high processed sugary foods that will only leave you feeling dehydrated and sluggish. A high calorie breakfast is also a must, to ensure you have enough energy to carry you throughout. A favourite pre run breakfast of mine is ½ cup of oats, milk, yoghurt, berries and a banana.

• Clothing

Make sure you wear comfortable clothing as the last thing you need is chafing or ‘pants up crack’ driving you insane. Shorts may be OK for 5km, but opt for spandex, a comfortable sports bra and proper running socks. Always make sure you wear a cap to protect your face from the Sun as well, no body likes premature aging. Its also a good idea to have a pocket handy to keep some money in there to buy water, and also a sports gel or a few lollies for energy.

• Motivation

Before you head out on your run, try and get into a good mindset. There is nothing worse than dreading the inevitable and feeling negative about it. Try watching a few of these youtube clips below and talk yourself into feeling good. Mind Over Matter. All these videos give me goosebumps – so if there is anything you take away from reading this, you must watch the below!!

Welcome to the Grind

My Redeemer Lives – Dick & Rick Hoyt

No Excuses 

WARNING: Do not eat a jar of Nutella for dinner the night before you run a Half Marathon..

Fact: You will have no energy and it will be the worse run of you life. I am living proof. As Ash is away for the week with work, my alto ego kicks in and I live life on the wild side. I felt like being a badass yesterday, so my diet consisted of French toast with maple syrup, followed by a chocolate donut, a peach for good measure, aannnnd an entire jar of Nutella. Yes, I was feeling sick about ¾ of the way through the jar – but I’ve said it before, I am not a quitter! So I kept spooning it back until it was all gone. Mission complete. I actually worked my way into a Nutella Coma and crashed out on the couch for a solid 2 hours. But it was oh, so worth it.

Now I didn’t decide to run 21.2km to punish myself, and I didn’t do it for fun, are you crazy? I ran the equivalent of a Half Marathon because my training programme told me to. I felt pretty good this morning, and after eating my porridge and banana for breakfast, I was pumped to go, kidding – bloody dreading it actually. I always run the long runs on Mondays to get it out of the way, and fortunately for Arnie and I, we have had a good run (excuse the pun) with the weather – usually cloudy and raining at some point – perfect to cool the body down. Now since Arnie has returned back to New Zealand for a holiday for 3 weeks, I have to really dig deep for motivation to ensure I don’t skip any trainings.

Do you think I had good weather today for my lonesome run? Hell yes I did – that’s if you want to lie by the pool and bake. Thats right. 32Degrees (celcius)!!! That is hot people!! After about 13km down, my mind started playing tricks on me “just stop, go home, you have done well to get this far, know one will no”. My knee was playing up, my mouth was like the Saraha Desert, and there was not a cloud in the sky. To say I was tempted to stop in an understatement – I thought about it every 3 seconds. But I had to live by my mantra, “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, never stop running”. So I chugged along, make that shuffled along, hallucinating about water and with 3 km to go, I almost stopped and sat on the footpath. Then I saw a convenience store – ahh my savour! As I was only meters from the bathroom, a sneaky Japanese lady popped out from nowhere and snuck in. Thank F*#K there was a wee hand basin outside the toilet, so I cupped my hands and drank, no doubt, contaminated radioactive water – but shit it was the goods.

With that wee surge of energy I made my way home, skulled back a 2 litre bottle of water and collapsed on the floor. Moral of the storey? I know it is ridiculous to be running that far in the heat, but I am actually quite used to the heat now – the issue was, my energy stores were completely depleted, I had not eaten well the day before and I paid for it. It really is important to be fuelling your body with the right food – how can you expect it to perform for you when you feed it junk. I vow to never make that same mistake again, and as of today, chicken, veggies and brown rice for me!

After a long, hard workout how do you pick yourself up?!

Personally, after a long run (yup it was 20km for me yesterday) I skull back around 1 litre of water, followed by a good five minute lie on the floor. Its hard to pick yourself up after you have drained all of your energy – even making my way into the shower seems tough in times like these. So what’s my secret? A Protein Shake.

I feel there is a huge misconception around ‘Protein Powder’, especially for girls. Yes I know you don’t want to bulk up, but I cannot stress enough how important a post workout Protein Shake is. Protein not only repairs your muscles, but also helps to grow them.

My typical shake includes:

1 Scoop of Protein Whey Powder (Chocolate flavoured)

half a banana

handful of frozen berries

tablespoon of natural yoghurt

tablespoon of coconut flakes

roughly half cup of soy milk

NB: THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY to make a shake – just use whatever you have at home! Some people like to include oats, chia seeds, honey, almonds, and if you can’t handle too much milk, then you can just use water. It really is that simple.

Enjoy x

Back in the saddle..

So the Marathon training begins, and when I say begins I mean punches me in the face. First run of the programme? 19Km. What the? If this is day one, I don’t want to know what day 30 has in store for me. I had a very busy day working on Sunday – a whole 5 hours of teaching, and shizer I was shattered at the end of it (someone needs a reality check). So when I saw the programme for Monday’s run, my first thought was “shit, we ran out of oats today”. Gutted. Actually we didn’t have much of anything. Supie shopping is on Mondays so by the time Sunday rolls around.. there isn’t much happening in our kitchen. Last resort finds me reaching into the “Goodie cupboard” stocked with Watties Spaghetti, Baked Beans, Cadbury Chocolate (nahhhht, that was gone the day it arrived) and a few other NZ treats including.. ta da, Weet Bix to the rescue. I had scheduled the run with Arnie for 9.30am, which meant eating breaky by 8.45am at the latest – my tummy needs a good 45 minutes to digest food, otherwise 5 mins into the run I will have stitch – find out what works for you, some may need an hour, and others only half an hour. Knowing I was running 19km called for a substantial breakfast to give me continued energy. I doused my 3 Weet Bix with hot water to make them mushy (mmm, I hear you say), with a bit of milk, natural yoghurt, LSA, a chopped banana and a coffee on the side.

With the Ipod charged and my Garmin watch locating satellites, I was ready to go. Well not really, actually when I met Arnie we were both very nervy and afraid of what was to come. You see, we have both run Marathons at some point – but that doesn’t mean we can just whip a 42km run out of our ass’ at any time. No no no. Fitness is a bastard of a thing, not like riding a bike, once you learn you will always have it. Fitness requires continual effort. I’m sure most of you reading this will at some point have worked your way up to a 5/10/15km etc run and felt pretty awesome, then you stopped. Life got busy, Winter hit – a Milo and a pack of Timtams cuddled up next to the fire watching TV suddenly seemed more exciting. Finally when you mustered up the time/motivation to start running again, you struggled to get through 3km – sound familiar?

So anyway, off on our run and we like to start with a wee debrief of the weekend, actually we ended up yarning for the first 12km which made time fly by. Then we hooked into our Ipods and thats when it started to get tough. As each km ticked over I was hurting more and more, but running with a buddy holds you accountable and its not so easy to stop. Finally on the home straight with 1km to go, Arnie and I both sucking in the big ones, decided to pick up the pace till we hit home. Before we started running, we didn’t care so much for the time, just to finish would have been a feat – we ended up doing it in 1:48mins.

Later I get a text from Arnie “how’s the body Ems, I feel like Iv’e been hit by a Shinkansen” yes not just a truck, but by a high speed Japanese bullet train. It doesn’t matter if you run 3km or 20km, or how fit you are – If you are exerting your body you are always going to feel something – but hey, No Pain No Gain, right?

Ems x