Uncover your inner athlete!

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten.. Each morning in Africa a lion awakes - it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve.


No matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up you had better be running!



Saturday, January 14, 2012

Dangers of forgetting to eat

This morning a good mate of mine and I headed out for an early run out to Manly and back – standard sort of 32KM run that normally would have posed no problems for either of us. He has an entry in to the Six Foot Track Marathon and so needs to be running not only some pretty steep hills, but also off the beaten track and on trails.

A significant part of the run today was on trails and so really good training for him. As for me, I had not run on trails in a long while and was tagging along for the fun. In between the rain and muddy trail and up and down sets of stairs at times, we ended up with a solid 3 hour chat and catchup about life.

For the first time ever, I did something very stupid and quite simply forgot to eat something before I ran this morning. This was an error that got me unstuck around the 25KM mark, when my stomach was saying something like – ‘You are asking me to continue, but quite simply there is nothing left in me to give.’

The last couple of KMs were a real struggle and was eternally grateful to my mate for keeping me going at the end. I could feel that if I did not eat something quickly, I would come unstuck – this was not a Gu type hunger or something that a Gatorade could ward off. This required solid food and my stomach was telling me as much.

In the supermarket at the end, I was feeling numb and started shaking, but managed to acquire some food and wolf it all down to restore some semblance of normality before heading home.

I feel a little silly that I did not follow my own advice that I give to people I assist by saying always make sure you eat before a long run. I have learned my lesson though and don’t want to be repeating that feeling again in a hurry.

Running together (while humbly learning lessons) stride for stride on a life changing ride! – Sean Muller

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