On Sunday 28th September 2014,  I am about to hopefully complete my 1st ultra-marathon with my son,  Ben.  He has promised to run with me.  I was inspired to tackle this by going to watch him run the 100 km North Face run, in the Blue Mountains last year and deciding I would like to run a long run with him, before I get too old.  I am 60,  but at the moment, there is no reason to think I am approaching the point of being too old.

I am a vegan of approximately 12 years duration and I have never felt healthier and more energetic.  We(my wife and I) are constantly tinkering with what we eat and I get great health and great enjoyment out of food.  Recent changes we have made are eating berries every day and cutting back our use of  oil to almost zero.  For example, Julie makes great cakes without egss, milk or oil.

A big change for me has been eating a lot of fruit-I was never much of a fruit eater.  Now,  I have an apple a day, maybe banana on my porridge in the morning(always strawberries and possibly dried cranberries).

I started training seriously at Christmas 2013 for this run, Yurebilla on Sunday 28th.  I bought myself a Garmin 220 watch so I can communicate with my son about my runs, via Strava website.  It’s been very helpful, as the watch doesn’t lie about how far and how fast you are going.   The watch and Strava tell me, I have clocked up over 2015.2 kms and I have been running for a total of 169 hours this year (actually a small amount of time over three quarters of a year!)  My longest run in training was 36 kms and for few months, I was running between 80 -100 kms/week.  I was living in Broome  most of this time and there are no hills there, so this run on the weekend through the Adelaide Hills, is going to be a challenge-sore thighs here we come!

I feel like I haven’t run much lately, as I had a couple of weeks recovery after Broome marathon and now resting up a couple of weeks, before this run.  I am looking forward to the run, but also looking forward to it being over, so I can just get back to my routine of running six days/week and knocking out some kms.

I have the feeling I am going to like the idea of running slow and long, so this weekend could be the start of something.  Oh, yes and I am raising money for Animals Australia to help fight live exports, so if you feel inclined to donate, you can go to my everyday hero donations page or just direct to Animals Australia and send me a comment letting me know, would be great.

I’ll do an update next week sometime after I recover from the run!

All of the best in health

Gary