Little bit down about this..
After such a strong Forest of dean Half marathon, I was expecting to compliment that with a fantastic Hereford Half Marathon. However, life is full of suprises and all you can do is minamise these suprises. So, same story as always; Alarm goes off 6.30, porridge is eaten and Coffee is consumed. I have been following this simple, but sucsessful recipe for the last 18 months (since then, all my times have been up). I have tried mixing up this Recipe with Water instead of Coffee, Green Tea instead of Coffee, not eating breakfast to avoid cramps and the best was a muffin and esspresso whilst sat in the car 30 minutes before the race! However, I think today as been the biggest changed factor in this controlled experiment, to drink Beetroot Juice.
The other evening the idea of drinking Beetroot Juice was brought up by Owen. He explained that in this study he had looked at, over a 10 mile TT beetroot juice could improve your performance by up to 20%.
6 am the next morning I was sat online flicking through pages and pages on google and checking out forums to see if this was true. Indeed there had been success stories where it had work. However, there had been stories where the athlete had been sat on the side of the road with pink vomit running down there race vest. Ofcause, that would never happen to me! So, Saturday afternoon, straight in to Hereford town centre in the search for Beetroot Juice.
10am came around and the Half marathon began. 6 miles in, good pace, good position, fantastic predicted time. All was well! Then as I passed the 8 mile mark, my stomach cramped and a terrible feeling of heartburn overtook. I blew up, However hard I tried, I just couldn't keep my race pace.
I finished! 1st U20 and a time of 1.27.57, which to be fair is a good 4 minutes faster than last year! I was Just expecting that bit more.
Looking forward to the Dymock HM in 2 weeks time.
= D
The other evening the idea of drinking Beetroot Juice was brought up by Owen. He explained that in this study he had looked at, over a 10 mile TT beetroot juice could improve your performance by up to 20%.
6 am the next morning I was sat online flicking through pages and pages on google and checking out forums to see if this was true. Indeed there had been success stories where it had work. However, there had been stories where the athlete had been sat on the side of the road with pink vomit running down there race vest. Ofcause, that would never happen to me! So, Saturday afternoon, straight in to Hereford town centre in the search for Beetroot Juice.
Race morning
As normal; alarm went off, porridge was consumed, coffee was drank. However, this time I threw 250ml of Beetroot juice into the equation. It tasted very earthy and yes, it did turn my urine pink! However, thats a small price to pay for a good race time.10am came around and the Half marathon began. 6 miles in, good pace, good position, fantastic predicted time. All was well! Then as I passed the 8 mile mark, my stomach cramped and a terrible feeling of heartburn overtook. I blew up, However hard I tried, I just couldn't keep my race pace.
I finished! 1st U20 and a time of 1.27.57, which to be fair is a good 4 minutes faster than last year! I was Just expecting that bit more.
Looking forward to the Dymock HM in 2 weeks time.
= D
Comments
Post a Comment