The four well-being pillars are out of balance - time to get them under control

Mental, Physical, Sleep, and Nutrition.


There are those who believe that to operate at your best (whatever you are doing) there are four "pillars" that need to be broadly in harmony.

1) Sleep - Seen as the big one, as a decent amount of sleep will provide the right basis for wanting to do well in the other three areas during the day i.e. poor and/or little sleep might reduce your willpower to not eat sugary junk food, or to not do some exercise, or to read/study.

Seven to eight hours sleep per day is seen as optimum but it also need to be quality deep sleep, and mindfulness, which seems to be the in-thing, would be an area to look at to help you de-clutter and slow your mind down prior to going to bed.   Going technology-free about an hour before bed apparently also helps.

For me, I probably have had the right amount of sleep but of a poor quality.
In fact having just looked at my garmin data, when I was training for the 100k run, my average sleep was about 7hrs, and since then it has been 8hrs, so I am sleeping more but feel worse for it.
Fundamentally, the sleep is not deep enough making me more prone to wake, and then need the loo (post-cancer treatment made my bladder weaker than it already was), and more recently our new cat wanting to be fed at 6am and hasn't moved on from British Summer Time.......

2) Mental - The brain needs to be fed as much as the body, but with words not food.
Setting time aside to journal, plan ahead, read, listening to relaxing music prior to going to bed etc.

I was very good at this but I have struggled to get back into the swing of things - I take a lot of books out of the library but I rarely read more than two of them.
I also felt like my mindset at work has been quite negative but somehow still getting the work done.

3) Physical - Whilst I was training, I was doing an average of 400k steps a month, now it is just 200k.
Or to put it another way, my average per day now is 6.6k compared to 13k previously.

The amount of running at the moment has dropped to less than one run per week - not necessarily a problem if you are being physically active without running but mine has been little running (not due to injury) and no alternative activities.

4) Nutrition - Eat well and you feel well, you then have the energy to do what needs to be done.
This one out of the four has been terrible for me recently - eating for the sake of it, to excess, lots of crisps, sweets, less fruit and veg and so on.


Ok, a lot of doom and gloom negativity but this is about me being honest with myself and accepting that I need to draw a line on this, and day by day get those pillars back into balance.

Interestingly despite my lack of blogging recently, I have been thinking about creating a second blog, yet to be named, that would focus on healthy eating and home-cooking.

Race minus 13 days - 16 miles done today, overdoing it this weekend, and just six runs left until the big day.

I did my last Wherryman's Way run this morning but did the reverse route, going from Halvergate to Reedham.
The weather was mainly light rain, interspersed with short patches where it was dry, and finished with heavier (but still not bad) rain - given my first Wherryman's Way run two months ago was also wet (but a lot colder especially when lost...), it was a little poetic.
On Facebook, I follow Great Superhero Run (https://www.facebook.com/greatsuperherorun?fref=ts), who raise money running marathons dressed as Spiderman, Iron Man, and Batman for the RNLI.
They live in Norfolk, and two of them were on the Wherryman's Way, near Reedham, on their way to Great Yarmouth - unfortunately I did not realised until about a minute later as they were not in costume but it did give me a boost as they became the first people I have ever seen on the route when I have been running.
I ended up doing 16 miles as by the time I reached the last bit, there was a risk I was be running towards the Humpty Dumpty 10k runners - all 400 of them! - so I took a diversion which added a mile to the route but I did discover another permissive pathway as a result.

Having washed, and got changed I found I was so tired from this morning's run I went to bed for an hour, which is highly unusual as I do not do mid-day sleeps.
I suspect the combination of 8 miles yesterday, along with doing a lot of housework and gardening, and also being up late, and then doing 16 miles today was too much with too little sleep.
Early night for me tonight.

With this weekend's running done, there are just six runs left - 2x6miles mid-week, 2x10 miles next weekend, and 2x3 miles next week - feels very much like home straight territory.

Shattered! The price of too many unhealthy food choices?

There have been too many days of recent where fresh cream cakes, homemade millionaires shortbread, homemade chocolate truffles et al have been eaten, with total disregard to managing my calories.

Today was meant to be that turning point back to the correct ways but my long-run yesterday seems to have taken a bigger toll on my energy levels today than other long-run Sundays have on a Monday.
Temptation was all to easy in the end, and a salted caramel muffin from Sainsburys resulted in an unnecessary 450 calories being consumed - a lot of better food could have been eaten instead for that many calories but lets hope it ends today, and tomorrow does not become day six of poor food choices.

I should have also got more sleep last night but choose instead to catch up on some TV, and do some ironing - tonight I will be a bed by 10pm, so I get 7 hours good sleep before I am up for day 1 of 3 consecutive mid-week six milers, with rucksack.....
So far rucksack has only been used on long-runs but from now on, I will use it each run, so my upper body learns to be more used to it, and maybe it is a light form of strength training?

Given my training schedule is about to ramp up in the toughest two weeks before taper, having a five-day food binge was not sensible, but maybe I needed it to let some steam off ahead of the final push.

Broke the schedule, Half-Term impact, and Back to basics

This morning I was meant to be doing an easy effort six miler, final one in this week's three day consecutive mid-week six mile runs, but a combination of not being able to get to bed early this week and the effort applied in yesterday's run, has left me wiped out today.
It sounds quite negative but this week's schedule has no Saturday run, so I am bumping today's run to tomorrow where as I am back at work for the final day of the week, I plan to get up at 5am-ish as normal, and drive to work car park for when it opens at 6am, and then (already in my running gear) I will do an easy run down to Whitlingham Broad and back - I will still have Saturday to recover and ready myself for the marathon distance on Sunday.

Half-term has meant the usual bedtime routine for my daughter goes out of the window, and I am then not getting enough sleep - I happily slept through to 8.30am today, and I will deliberately do the same on Saturday.

I also think another reason for the lethargy is the recent allowing myself to snack on very unhealthy foods - I do need to eat enough calories but I also need to make sure they are good calories.
Given the distances being run on Sundays, I will break this rule as we should all have a reward but again there should be a focus on good or good-ish calories.