Different race, same result

Right so, where to begin? I ran the Rotterdam Marathon last Sunday in a decent 4 hour time (decent for me)...

and I should be happy... well, I am... sort of... The thing is... I was hoping to do better! You see, for the last 2 years the 4 hour barrier had been my target, but reaching that target was like climbing Mount Everest on a treadmill. The peak is there in the distance but no matter what you do, you still don't get close.

Finally, last November I did it! At the Amsterdam Marathon I finished in 3:59:09. 51 seconds are still 51 seconds on the right side if the barrier. So this time I fine tuned my training programme, worked more on strength, looked better at my nutrition, the works... But it wasn't to be... I'll think of the learnings and post once I figure them out.

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The hidden benefits of sport for teenagers

Following up from my last post , I have been giving some thought to the topic of teenagers and sport. Having a teenager in the house has taught me a thing or two about the way in which us parents, create a work ethic that will help them later in life, and the struggles we go through in order to turn actions into habits. Be the example We're all familiar with the old saying "Do as I say, not as I do" and it makes sense in a convoluted way, but not to a teenager. Imagine we tell them to get off the phone/tablet/Playstation and go to bed early, but they see us staying up till midnight browsing Facebook in bed. It sounds hypocritical, right? To a teenager, this feeling is amplified tenfold. If, on the other hand, we get proper rest, if we are commited to training, to fueling properly and we can show the results consistently, there's a better chance of the message sticking in their minds. Responsibility is personal When my son was younger, we would always mak...

How will races look like post COVID-19?

I think racing the way we're used to is gone forever. There! I've said it. No more long queues at the portaloos before the start. No more corrals with 1,000 runners touching, shaking hands, and wishing each other luck. No more post-race hugs and tears, not unless you're part of the same household. So let's reverse engineer a race and see if we can come up with a picture Social distancing So, there are 10,000 of us converging into one spot in the city. How can you make sure we all observe social distancing? That's a bit of an issue unless we're running in the desert or high in the mountains where there are acres to spare. The queueing system We start by creating an orderly queue. In fact, we create many orderly queues around the access area to prevent overcrowding. First of all, the zone must be cordoned off for the queue system to work. Otherwise, everybody does what everybody does when there's no system in place: we invade the zone. So, all ru...

What does running do for you?

Last week, during a professional development session I was asked to draw a picture of a future where I could do whatever I wanted, so I said I would love to write. The coach said "Could you do that now?" "So why don't you?" I had a bagful of the usual excuses: I don't have time; I don't have anything to write about; I don't know how to, etc. but I said "I'll try". Since I had that conversation, I've spent a lot of time, mostly during my runs, thinking of a suitable topic I could exploit, and finally something came up. So here I am, a week later, dusting off the cobwebs of this blog and trying to get the creative juices running to write about the only thing (or one of the very few things) that fills my brains in between doses of work, sleep and living in general. Social life Over the last 8 or 9 years, my whole life has been so dominated by running that I wouldn't know what to do without it. Thanks to it, my social...

26.2 Ways to Run

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