Small Steps

You find me in a buoyant mood, dear reader.

The period of reflection I went through after VLM has come to an end. The weather is slowly but surely improving and my lungs are being busted on the speed-work sessions associated with the summer months. I love speed work.

When thinking about the rights and wrongs of London, I realised that there were a lot of things I could have done better. If Nick my coach is doing everything in his power to get me to the start line in good shape, it had to be said that I didn’t feel I was keeping up my end of the bargain.

Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, rather than a ‘Big Bang’ of changes, I just tweaked my daily routine in subtle ways and have found I’m getting results already. Here’s how:

- Less Wine – I know, it kills me to admit it, but I was drinking too much wine, and there are A LOT of calories in wine. Someone once described to me that every large glass is the equivalent of eating a doughnut. I’ve had a lot of Doughnuts over the last few months. I’ve swapped (most but not all) the wine for Lime and Soda Water and the odd single glass of my favourite peaty Islay single malt instead. It’s nice to have one glass of that and savour it than down a bottle of red between us and think “where did that go?”

- Morning Runs –I’ve been very guilty of looking at the easy morning runs in my plan and doing them in the evening. I know full well the purpose of doing them before breakfast is to get the body more efficient at burning fat. This came back to haunt me in London so now there are no excuses. Up with the lark, quick cup of coffee and out I go. By switching easy days to the morning, I’m also getting an extra 12 hours recovery before the key session the next day. Good job all round.

- Running easy, on Grass – I find it so hard to run easy, but you don’t need to be winning Gold Medals on every run. I need to slow down man! - “Make the easy sessions easy so the hard sessions are hard”. By switching my easy runs onto the grass, I’ve started using previously unused muscles, brought control back into my running  and slowed down to a good pace for easy running. Also I thinking about the lower impact on my joints.

- 5-a-Day keeps the Physio away – I was not eating enough fruit and veg – in the rush to eat carbs I was loading up on rice and pasta (white), neglecting the vitamins and minerals from fruit and veg. So I make a conscious effort to by Wholemeal and  get the 5 F&V in – it makes your cooking a lot more interesting as well. Watching Secret Eaters over the last ew weeks has given me a few home truths about how I fuel my body to excess and lesson have been learnt.

- Down to the core – I’ve been very lazy at doing my core and strength work. I’m not where I want to be, but I’ve made a start by joining the #plankchallenge and #plankaday crew on Twitter. It’s easy to fit in a couple of minutes in your day to do a Plank and anything is better than doing nothing. Eventually it will become a habit and I can progress it further.

These are all little changes, but already I’m feeling better after a couple of weeks and so hopefully over the summer and beyond can start reaping the rewards. None of the things above take more than a couple of minutes of extra thought a day.

What little changes could you make to make yourself feel and train better?