Being injured gives you a lot of time to think.  Too much, in fact!  So much so that I've stopped myself thinking about running because I was starting to over-think it!

Over Christmas I've read 4 or 5 books about running, some of them stories, like Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall, some factual like Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald.  I've take some motivation from them.  Interestingly, they almost all refer to the benefits of paying attention to running form.  I'll write a blog page about the books I've read at some point soon, if you're interested?

So here's how I'm approaching my running in 2016.  This is where I'd like to make real life changes.  I'm not going to dilute this blog too much with stuff that's not related to the top left "Running Form", but I'll mention them in passing.

Running form is the obvious one, and goes hand in hand with foot strength.  But I've separated them, because I think that even for people who have 'perfect' form (Alex Wall-Clarke, Jacob Wiebel, Mike Twomey, Rod Finch are those that I've known personally!!!) there is still an opportunity to work on foot strength.  I base that on the Older Yet Faster approach and now my own experience.

In terms of being less sedentary, I'm not talking about burning more calories.  I'm talking the effects of my 2.5 hours sat in a car seat 4 days a week, and the 8 hours I sit at a desk.  Not much I can do about the car (at least I'm rolling my feet ... when it's safe!).  My Garmin fenix 3 has a pedometer, and it will beep at me "Move!" after an inactive hour, and I plan to pay more attention to that.  Swimming is going well too, I'm just looking for a regular spot in the week that I can stick to, and when the pool isn't too rammed.

On the fuelling, this is a bit of an experiment at the moment. We all know that we eat too many refined carbohydrates (well, most of us do!), and I was pretty guilty.  So this year I've cut out all carbs to start with.  I consume about 100g a day at the moment, so not the 25g of the Atkins diet, but certainly less than I was eating before.  I don't think 100g is sustainable, but I want to make sure that I cut out all refined sugar for ever, and with Mrs Blackman's help, all white bread rice and pasta.

Next blog entry will be about how the running is going with the recovered metatarsal, but what else would you like to hear about?