BUY THE BOOK

Just a quick update to all my readers. You will notice on the blog page a picture and a book title ... yes folks I have just published my first book!  LAST TRAIN TO ST TROPEZ.
 It is available worldwide on Amazon.

USA Link to Amazon ...  
   http://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Tropez-Phil-Jeremy/dp/1481062875/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369325208&sr=1-1&keywords=last+train+to+st+tropez

UK link to Amazon ...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Train-Tropez-Phil-Jeremy/dp/1481062875/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369325421&sr=1-1&keywords=last+train+to+st+tropez

Click and put this link into your browser.


 Firstly this is NOT about running but I think if you like my blogs then you will like the book. It's an amusing true story of my adventure through France in 1978.  A quest for freedom with no responsibilities it pulls no punches and is written from a young man's view of the world. Hopefully you will be entertained and perhaps inspired as it is a vivid account of life on the road, meeting dynamic characters, beautiful women and surviving risky situations whilst living on your wits.
 Enjoy.





 

SPECTATOR SPORT

Sunday was the Ultra Trail des Balcons d'Azur ... its already one year since my 54 k 'impossible race', amazing, time flies and all that. This year I decided not to run it. I achieved my goal and now I seek new challenges. I am still working on strengthening my body for potentially more ambitious challenges but more on that later. In the meantime I felt it was time to give something back to this truly demanding sport. As my French is lousy, a position at an 'Aid station' was not an option but I had others.
    On race day the weather was even worse than last year, and that's saying something but I thought if those guys and girls can go out in this storm then so can I. I arrived to wave off the early morning runners, many with that look on their face of,  'What the hell am I doing?' I knew the feeling well, its a sort of abject fear of impending pain. Later on in the day I hiked up into the mountains to give encouragement at the 5 hour mark. I stood on a fork on the trail in the driving wind and rain wearing my trusty bright orange racing jacket with not a soul around. As the runners came through they appeared a bit lost as the trail markers were not very clear so I started directing them the right way. I was going to move to another spot but felt it important to stay and keep directing everyone as getting lost up here is not an option, and I should know ... having done it myself on more than one occasion.
    As time passed a few more people appeared and started asking me questions about the race. It dawned on me very quickly that they obviously thought I was a Race Marshal, they seemed somewhat confused when asking me a question in French as my reply was always a blank stare. I had no idea what they were talking about and they must have thought I was a lousy Race Marshal who was either a mute or an idiot ... and probably, 'How on earth did he get this job?'
   However it kept happening as more and more people appeared. This was compounded further by the runners themselves asking me questions. 'Combien des kilometres?' ... 'Ou est la Revailletissement? These I could answer easily, '5 kilometres', but I did it with such assured aplomb  that it convinced the spectators even more that I was a Marshal ... a crap one admittedly but at least I was sending everyone the right way. I felt a bit like a traffic cop, Sue says it was my jacket ... judge for yourselves.

As time passed I picked up some of the language that others were using to encourage the runners. One girl kept shouting   'S'accrochez!'. I remembered hearing something like 'accrochez' when hanging up a phone so I figured this must mean something like 'hang on in there'. I found out later that this was correct however my pronunciation was pretty lousy and when I said it I got weird looks .. not sure why ... maybe I was saying ' go hang yourself ' or something even more bizarre. The leaders had come through much earlier and they seemed serenely calm as if they were on some early morning jog before breakfast. Weird. I of course had never seen these people before due to the fact that I am always at the back ... still, most disheartening, they looked so cool and in control ... and fast! After about 2 hours the majority of runners had passed and I was one big wet orange blob.
       There were 3 different races that day and this was the 54k with a longer 64k taking place further away. I decided to move on to an even more remote location where the 'back of the pack runners' of the 64k would be. I ended up at possibly the most remote place in France (well it felt like it). The wind and driving rain were horizontal and I had to keep running up and down the track so that I didn't die of exposure. This time nobody else appeared other that the odd bedraggled exhausted runner. I clapped, and shouted 'Bravo', I didn't risk 's'accrocher' in case some poor soul took the more dramatic option and to be fair about five of them looked liked they didn't have long for this world. Maybe that's what I look like after 10 hours, Crikey!, no wonder the Medics always look concerned when I pass them by.
     When they asked the distance to the finish I told them it was 12 kilometres. It wasn't, it was more like 14 but I think that would have pushed a few of them over the edge and I wanted to keep their spirits up. They also had the worst climb of the day ahead of them, I know, because last year it took me an hour to go about 3 kilometres and at the top its practically vertical. Ultra running is a tough, even brutal sport, the sense of achievement in doing it is immense but it's at these times in a race where you feel the mental pressure to quit the most and hence my reason for standing there. Quite a few of the runners thanked me, clapped and shouted 'Bravo' back. It's a respect thing, I guess you had to be there, it's quite emotional.
     I waited until I could see no more runners coming up from the valley floor. It was getting near the cut off time so I presumed that was the last of them ... I hope so as I don't like to think of one last lonely guy struggling on his own ... one day it could be me.
     When I got home I had a sauna to get warm as it felt like I had sort of run the race myself, I was exhausted.  Very strange.
     The winner did the 64k in just over 6 hours ... and the last guy, in just over 12 hours; and he was 66 years old. Amazing stuff, it makes me proud to be part of such a unique group of complete nutcases.

 

FATBUSTER 2 AND THE OVERCONSUMPTION OF ENERGY

Relax, this isn't about global warming, renewable energy, fracking, wind farms or nuclear power.....at least I don't think it is.  I read this phrase, 'Overconsumption of Energy' last week from Professor Ian A. Macdonald head of the UK Centre for Arthritis and Musculosketal Ageing research, University of Nottingham Medical School (some title, I know).
         We all know that obesity is on the increase, the US is no 1 and the UK no 2, closely followed by every nation in the developed world, even France, the last bastion of supposed balanced eating has seen a massive rise in obesity. Why?  There is no question that High Fructrose Corn Syrup and many other nasty ingredients contribute to the problem, including lack of exercise. Often it all sounds very complicated as we tend to talk about exercise, nutrition and general health in terms of numerous diet plans, supplements, medicines and varied exercise protocols. He was making the point that many foods can be good or bad for the human body and in varying degrees but his main argument was that obesity or just general weight gain comes from simple overconsumption of energy. It puts a different spin on eating too many calories or not doing enough exercise and I think simplyfies our understanding.
   When we eat we are absorbing energy, now you might think that having a glass of wine or eating a bag of chips or a tasy salad is a pleasureable action that stimulates the senses and it often is but at a very basic level its just fuel for the body. Once it hits your stomach these various foods are just broken down into units of energy or waste. If you consume too much energy which is in excess of your basic metabolic rate plus any additional exercise then you will get fat. You can count calories and run to Texas and back but if you take in more energy than you use then you will get fat.
    Generally speaking nutrition is 65% of the energy equation whilst the other 35% is exercise. If we think in terms of how much energy did you use today in relation to how much  expended then you get a much clearer picture of where you are at. A good start is to work out your Basic Metabolic Rate or BMR, click on the link to find out yours....

         http://www.muscleandstrength.com/tools/bmr-and-daily-calorie-calculator.html
     
Now this is how much calorific energy you use up even if you stay in bed all day.... so the more you move around and EXERCISE then the more you will need.  Using the Harris Benedict Formula (see link) you can work out how much in total including exercise, you burn a day. (Do it now, it takes about 10 seconds). Mine is approximately 2200 calories a day and that includes 6 days a week of
exercise. An 'average' woman's is about 1500 calories.


BREAKFAST 1 (with Juice Plus/Fish oil/Green drink and Probiotics)

          

BREAKFAST 2 (5 mins after opening my Glut-4's)

                                

EXERCISE (20 mins or 50 mins))

BCAA's/GLUTAMINE/PROTEIN SHAKE

LUNCH

AFTER LUNCH

DINNER

    A Big Mac, chips and a coke is about 1100 calories! Two pieces of toast with butter and honey on is about 350, Two glasses of wine is 300 calories. Just think about that ...... that's 20%  of a woman's energy intake per day. If you drink 2 glasses every night with an evening meal for a week that's the same as 10 Donuts! Would anyone think that eating 10 donuts a week is healthy?
       As you can see from these figures overconsumption of energy is very easy to achieve ... and unfortunately the people who overconsume also tend to eat very bad calories, bad fats, poor proteins and very poor high GI carbohydrates aswell. This leads to not just obesity but type-2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, heart disease and many other illnesses.
     My last blog 'Fatbuster' was my most widely read to date so clearly this is an issue that we are all concerned about ... and rightly so. But then why isn't everybody aware of the healthy, quick and efficient ways to lose weight or even to maintain their existing weight. There are mountains of books, diets, tv programmes, dvd's and of course the internet, surely it shouldn't be that complicated and the truth is, it isn't. If you eat rice, potatoes, pasta, cakes, pies and pastries and consume alchohol regularly what do you think is going to happen? It doesn't matter how many times you go to the gym, play a sport, swim, run, cycle, dance or zumba if you eat crap you will get AND remain fat.

                                         You can't exercise away a bad diet.

Remember I've run up mountains for 10 hours at a time and lost no weight at all, in fact I put it on. I won't even start to talk about Cortisol and Insulin spikes as that's for another day but please note this -   Not all calories are created equal -  If you take your energy (calories) from protein, vegetables and healthy fats as opposed to bad carbohydrates eg pasta, cakes etc then you can consume more because the body will utilise this type of energy more efficiently. Remember starve the fat, feed the muscles. and ask yourself these questions;-
     1)What and how much are you eating ?
     2) What type and how much are you exercising?
     3) What's your Basic Metabolic Rate?

And finally .... stop your overconsumption of energy .... its bad for your health ... and bad for the planet....
            ....... and now I'm off now to save the Whale :)

P.S. You may have noticed I've changed my Blogger name .... I'll explain more in the next post.
       
     

FATBUSTER

You might be wondering (or you might not) what I've been up to the past month ... well.....it's not running. Okay I've run every week but not much, 10-15k, so what have I been doing. I decided to have a serious go and cutting body fat whilst increasing lean muscle mass. There were several reasons;

1) To increase my overall fitness.
2) To improve my body conditioning for future challenges.
3) Vanity - to look good.

I began just before Christmas with 6 HIIT's per week. These included weights as well as high intensity exercises for on average 9 to 18 mins per day. After 2 weeks I then began German Volume Training or GVT for 4 weeks. GVT is 26 sets of 10 heavy reps in 4 different exercises over 3 days in a 5 day rotation. This could take up to an hour per session. Then after this I returned to 2 more weeks of HIIT's

     The results speak for themselves. After 8 weeks of this training my Body Fat % has dropped to 8.9%. This was achieved in two ways. Firstly, the exercise routine just mentioned and secondly nutrition.
     I ate twice as much food in this period as normal and dropped weight and fat whilst increasing my lean muscle mass and yet hardly ran at all. So how was this done?
    Paddy Warwick, my coach, prepared this plan by combining Crossfit regimes, GVT and general targeted weight sessions. I stuck to this rigidly and when I visited California in January I just went to Gold's gym  and kept at it. U.S. gym's stay open 24/7 so there are no excuses.
   But what did I eat? I recently saw a picture that said:-

           'Feed the muscle.........Starve the fat!'  ... and that pretty much sums it up what I did.

Breakfast 1- One teaspoon of Glutamine, one Probiotic, two omega 3 fish oil capsules, 4 JuicePlus, One tablespoon Superfood Green Drink, 7 Almonds,5 Cashew nuts, Two eggs and Bacon with vegetables OR Chicken with vegetables Or Ham etc (Atleast 20 grams of protein) Once a week porridge with honey and cinnamon.

 Breakfast 2 -Glut -4 opening exercise routine (120 seconds), followed by one Chocolate croissant and two strong coffees.

Mid morning snack- 7 Nuts or half a greek yogurt plus half a banana.

Exercise - 2 weeks of (Weights, Hiit's 18 mins per day- 6 days per week)
                  4 weeks  of (GVT- one hour - 3 days per week)
                  2 weeks  of (Weights, Hiit's 18 mins - 6 days per week)
            After a workout a 35 gram Protein shake including Glutamine and BCAA's

Lunch -   Chicken OR Fish with LOTS of salad and a few nuts (No dressing). Some dry crackers with butter.
                  Tea with 5 squares of 70% Dark chocolate and 3 plain biscuits.

Afternoon snack - Slice of ham or chicken

Dinner- Fish eg Tuna or Salmon, OR Chicken OR Minced beef with 3 or 4 different vegetables- with 3 times per week maybe sweet potatoe or small portions of rice or pasta.
                 Tea with a few chocolate biscuits.

 Before bed- 300 miligrams of Magnesium with Vitamin B6

I drink 2.7 litres of water a day not including teas and coffees....and just for the record I don't drink or smoke....but you knew that anyway.

 If you do this for 8 weeks you will cut fat. If you just do HIIT's and no GVT you'll cut even more.

So how does it work? Its not a trick as its all science based. There is an even faster way - If you have a full Protein breakfast and NOTHING WHITE eg Bread,cakes,pasta,rice etc at all, for one month but eat as much as you want of everything else, then you will lose weight.
    My goal was not to lose weight but to cut fat whilst increasing my lean muscle mass, hence the GVT. My weight was slightly down but my body composition it radically different. For guys this means you look, feel and are stronger......and for girls the same, except you drop a dress size or two!
       High intensity exercise burns fat during AND after training for up to 24 hours, whereas long slow running burns limited calories for just the duration of the run. Hiit's also improve your overall fitness, strength and endurance. The shortest HIIT you can do is a Tabata (4 mins) and that is the equivalent of a one hour run.
   So why run at all ?......I like running in the hills, it's good for my Karma, life affirming, energizing etc etc...but as a tool to cut fat it's not the most effective thing you can do.
      I must point out that exercise is only about 35% of the fat cutting equation, the rest is what you eat. Remember if you eat right or 'clean' you can pretty much eat as much as you want. I have never, ever dieted...... It doesn't work because you are starving your body of food so in simple terms it hangs on to your stored energy (fat) and doesn't let it go. If you eat constantly throughout the day the body is not stressed and therefore lets the excess fat go into energy for your exercise......and so voila, you lose fat and weight. I get lots of comments about how people find it hard to eat a protein breakfast,it really isn't. If you had an evening meal at 7pm and then breakfast at 7am you just did a 12 hour 'fast', the body wants and needs nutrients, (Not poor quality Carbs like white toast, Cornflakes or, God forbid, waffles).
     It's really not that hard its just consistancy of effort that eventually becomes a habit.
    


  

THE YEAR AHEAD

It's January. Fitness gym membership goes through the roof, magazines for women are selling the latest diet or detox, new books are out promising the 'lose 10 pounds in 7 days' crap and men's health mag's with the 'great abs in 2 weeks' promise. The list goes on and on. I'm afraid  most plans when hatched at the end/ start of the year nearly always end up discarded by March. Everyone has the best intentions but it's basic human  pyshcology and so within a few weeks of hard effort the goals and dreams start to fade and the old habits return ... and the next year, the cycle is repeated. So what's the answer?

       In my humble opinion and from my own experience you have to start by setting small attainable goals, it could be something as simple as doing a brisk walk (ie quick, fast paced walk) for 30 minutes... or maybe a short run or a walk interspersed with sprints. As your confidence builds and fitness improves then look at a more ambitious plan with a target and a time table to achieve it. This could be food choices, fitness or preferably both but it must be a definitive target. For the more focused who have a proven track record of setting and achieving goals then one can be very ambitious indeed. I find most people who are like this have set their goals independant of year ends etc ... and I believe therein lies the secret. One should already know what your goals are and be already living a healthy and fit life independant of any arbritary calendar dates. Still, if you've made your mind up over Christmas and you're commited, then go for it. I think you have to either enjoy the experience and/or feel good about yourself for doing it. I believe we all have a responsibility to make the best of ourselves ... as well as a responsibility to our loved ones to be fit and healthy.
      At present I am in the middle of some serious body conditioning. I will be running a few smaller  events in the spring just to 'get my legs back' and so at present I am just doing easy 10-15k trail runs for fun. When running ultra's it is important to have 'downtime' where you do not stress your body through running. It is a time to strengthen your body and crosstrain or do different sports just to have mental as well as physical variety. Running and training for ultra's is stressful and the body needs time to rest and recuperate. This does not mean sitting on the sofa eating donuts!.....Sleep and clean nutrition is paramount.
      My goal is to strengthen and stretch, with sprints and HIIT's over the next 8 weeks so that I can start training in earnest for my next big event. I already know what I am going to do and it will put great demands on both my strength and endurance and so at 58 years old I need to be in 'more than' the best shape of my life, mentally and physically. At this stage I'll just give you a clue ... it's in the USA, of course. I am a sucker for American enthusiasm and I love the positive energy that the organisers and competitors bring to the big events ... and as a Brit, I understand what they're saying - which always helps... More on this later.
        In the meantime it's back to training 5/6 days per week and not going too crazy. Unusually for me I've had a few training partners over the last few weeks. My coach Paddy and I did some seriously heavy workouts together before Christmas and over the holidays I've been in the gym with my son, Alexander, who has really developed his physique through training, strict nutrition and no alchohol - not easy for a 21 year old. His friend Will has also been training hard and has done quite a few trail runs and hill sprint routines with me. It's great to see these kids getting it together and learning the importance of fitness and health whilst in their youth. If it becomes a habit now then it will stay with them all their lives -what a gift.
    Happy New Year to all.
 

    
    

       

 

AFTER THE RAIN HAS FALLEN.....

The normally dry trails

My two favourite places in the world to live are Southern California and the South of France, both have up to 300 days of sunshine per year which is one of the main reasons for living there but they also share another similarity in that when it does rain, it rains with a vengence. Southern California's PCH has mudslides and floods whereas the Riviera has torrential rain with just about everything getting flooded, roads, rivers, houses, etc. The reaction in the US is to clean it up fast; I was once told that with 3 continous days of rain, the first day is, its good for the gardens......the second, it won't last much longer....and on the third day, everyone visits a therapist. In France, the first day they shrug and do nothing......and on the second and third day........they continue to shrug and do nothing.

      Today was the first sunny day in 3 days and after a brutal workout week with Paddy I thought it time to hit the trails for an easy 10k jog, just to chill out. It was a lovely day but within minutes I was met with trails that though normally dry, were now rivers! The hills were literally 'full' of water. It was a bit tricky running up and down streams and brooks but highly exhilerating.....and refreshing. These pictures are the actual trails which are normally bone dry! On the hilltops,the trails were much drier and the smell from the wet pine trees was intoxicating. What a great way to celebrate your birthday, yes folks I'm 58 today!
     Its been quite a year. Three big races including 2 ultra's as well as many 40k training runs. It was nice just to jog along like a normal person without caring how far or what time or speed. My body composition has changed dramatically ( now 9.9% body fat), as has my overall nutrition. My muscle mass has also increased to the point that my quads and general strength has enabled me to go further, faster. It still hurts but I can go longer before it starts to hurt and the improvement in my sodium/potassium pump gives a much faster recovery time between events.
    I'm still working on my Paddy/Crossfit regime's by incorporating more strength work with high intensity training and no doubt next year I will look at race distances to establish the most effective distance for me i.e. not neccessarily the most challenging but also the most fun....because if it's just a constant slog for 10-15 hours....what's the point? I love running through the mountains and forests and I don't mind suffering to reach my goal....but not for the whole *^/#"* day !
    On a more personal note I lost one of my best friends this year, Steve was 51 and an alchoholic.....but that's not how I remember him. He loved having fun and he loved to laugh.....and he was even happier if everyone around him was having a good time. I often wonder where all that positive energy went. Today I was running through the hills where I scattered his ashes and sometimes I find myself just laughing at his craziness.......he definitely is somehere, laughing at mine.  
      I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas....thanks for all your support and encouragement......I hope you too can find some stimulating fitness goals for the New Year, it's amazing what you can do if you commit yourself to something. Find a goal, make a plan and do it.....and when it comes to a sports event I'll let you into a little secret of how to succeed, which was shared confidentially to me, many years ago.................are you ready?............'It's all in the training.'....and it is. 'Bonne Sante' :)

The birthday boy

 

A SUPRISE RESULT

 So a few days have gone by and my recovery has been excellent, 2 days after my run I went for a 10k easy jog in the hills and felt great. Crossfit Endurance do say that recovery times are much quicker as a result of their training......its all to do with an efficient sodium potassium pump. I could explain this further but suffice to say that an efficient pump regulates the balance of sodium and potassium in the cells thereby aiding recovery......and it works.
     Helen thinks that my calf injuries were more of an over elongated stretch in training rather than a pull or a tear, (a grade 1) and this would be the reason why they held up okay despite the dull pain. 'Obviously' she said, 'they didn't like running that far and definitely didn't like the beach.....but they just had to put up with it.....and you......just like we all do'. So there you go.
      I reckon on consuming 85 grams of carbs per hour from gels and other food, plus I have my natural glycogen stores (about 450 grams) and then fat stores after that, but on 5 hours + running I probably didn't burn that much fat and two days later, voila my weight was exactly the same as before the race. I have written many times that you don't lose weight by going on lots of runs, it keeps you fit and healthy but that's not how you lose weight, if that's your goal.
     I did get a bit of cramp later on so I popped two S-Caps and was fine in minutes. ( For those of you who have never used S-Caps salt tablets, I recommend them highly). In a normal ultra I'll take one every hour and they work brilliantly.
    My Brooks Cascadia 7's running shoes managed to dispel all the water from the sea, streams and rivers very well, they call it, 'In/Out technology', or something like that. However, I do have one criticism, the laces keep coming undone and I have heard other runners mention this before, it seems bizarre that they can make such a good running shoe but can't supply laces that tie up properly! Go figure.

      So what's the suprise?

      I have to be honest, I found this race quite tough even though it wasn't an ultra. It was a fab day and a stunning place and I was very fortunate to be able to do it but the beach running wore me down over time. The comments from other runners on the sand was 'C'est dur'........'Its hard' and it was. It really slows you down and then the climbs in the hills afterwards are just much more tiring due to fatigue, nevertheless it was a great new experience and one that I wanted to try. At the end of Pampelone beach a small river enters the ocean and at one point I was up to my waist wading through it and thinking, 'this is nuts!' I felt quite forlorn when I looked back down the beach and found that I was alone.......I couldn't see anybody, I thought, I must be last, this is terrible! I'd never been in this position before, even though I'm usually the oldest kid on the block. But, I had one thing going for me, as an ultra runner you have to pace yourself and run your race , not anybody else's, and you have to trust in your ability and knowledge and most importantly you have to keep going; its relentless forward progress.
    What happens is over time you start to real people in and the longer the race goes on the more people slow down, so if you can keep up an even pace, then you eventually, over many hours, catch them up. Exactly 88 runners started the race and at the 12k stage I was, if not at the back, then not far off it......but 5 hours-19 minutes later I managed to finish in 48th place! Its a good metaphor for life, over the course of the race I'd improved my position by about 40 places, just by staying constant.
      Its the highest position, pro-rata, that I have ever come in a race, which is great but why was this? As you no, firstly, I hardly did any long runs, it was mostly high intensity crossfit type training and secondly, I saw my coach Paddy today and I have just hit 9.9% body fat, the leanest I have ever been. This  race was partially an experiment to see if this type of training works, well you can't judge things on one race alone but the evidence, if not convincing, is certainly thought provoking.
      My conclusion is that I am definitely staying with this program. Paddy and I have been discussing a new 6 week schedule to further increase my fitness levels by using more weights, high intensity exercise and sprints. However, there is one thing I will always do 3/4 weeks before a big race, I will do at least one long training run.....I still say its important to attune you to the mental fatigue.....and how to deal with it. You have to keep going, no matter how painful or tired or fed up you feel and until you've experienced it and got through it then you can't possibly know what that feels like.
      Anyway those are my thoughts.....I'd be very interested to know how others feel. You can comment here or email me at phil@modelplan.co.uk