Yes, my son, Ben does look very relaxed, but he has got 22 years on me.   I felt pretty good actually, so obviously slacked off during the run and could have gone harder!  Ben looked after me, he gave me salt tablets, as I got cramp for the last 20-30 kms.  I think this was because I hadn’t been training in hills and the leg muscles weren’t used to it.   Anyway, up for it next year,I will be training in the hills  here at Wilmington and going for a PB, of course.

I am totally gobsmacked by health professionals who continue to peddle prejudice as information, in relation to eating only plants.  My mother in law, has lung cancer at present and since the diagnosis, she has gone vegan.  She has been told repeatedly, by staff in the hospital, that she needs protein and she must eat meat.  This is despite the fact that protein:

• is everywhere in everything we eat
• the idea of complete protein is irrelevant, as proteins are broken down into individual amino acids and then made up into the proteins that we need, when we digest them
• if we eat enough food, it is impossible to be protein deficient(do you know anyone who is sick because they aren’t getting enough protein??)
• animal protein is implicated in cancer.   See Colin T Campbell’s book, “The China Study”.   He is a professor of Nutrititonal Biochemistry at Cornell University and the author of over 300 research papers in professional journals.  He came in to the field as a young man, believing animal protein was king and came to the opposite conclusion: that animal protein was the problem.
• Pathways for cancer that are made worse by meat are  inflammation and the higher rate of sulphur containing amino acids in meat protein as compared to plant protein.   Inflammation is necessary for the cancer to get a hold, as it is how a dormant cancer cell gets a  blood supply to start to grow.  Cancer cells, like normal cells, need nutrients/food and they need a blood supply.   Chronic, low level inflammation provides that blood supply.   This is one of the many reasons keeping inflammation down in your body is a very good thing.  Eating plants is the way to do this.

Just before my ultra, a friend of the family was over for a few drinks.  She is a nurse and she started talking to me about carbohydrate loading for the race.  I replied, I didn’t need to carbohydrate load as I carbohydrate load everyday.  That’s what I eat-complex carbohydrates or sometimes known as starches: oats, rice, beans, grains of various kinds, potatoes, sweet potatoes and peas of various kinds.  Of  course, fruit and vegetables, but the bulk of my food and my energy comes from carbohydrates.

Then she went on to say, that I needed protein to build  and repair muscle!  Somehow as a health professional, she is unaware that all of the foods above( in fact, every unprocessed, natural food) has protein and plenty of it.  Most people who eat meat are eating far too much protein, the average for meat eaters, being 15% of calories in protein.    We only need 5-6% of our calories as protein.  5% is what is in mother’s milk!

There has been lots of work done on the effects of exercise and health and it is no surprise that exercise is good for you.  The good news is that it doesn’t have to be very much in fact,   anything helps.  But, is it the case of, the more the merrier?   There has been discussion about reduced immune system function and muscle damage from extreme exercise-like running 56 kms through the Adelaide Hills!  The good news is, that your immune system takes a hit for about a week and then it bounces back stronger than ever.  And if you start from a high base because you have been exercising and eating a diet high in anti-oxidants (plants) then having the drop for a week is not a problem.  It is like everything in the body: use it or lose it and the more you use it,  the stronger it gets.

I was humbled by running the Yurebilla ultra, as the people in group A,  came past me, having started half an hour behind.   But I have been surprised how quickly my body  has bounced back to no muscle soreness and high energy.  This took five days!

Yours in health

Gary