I ran my first 50km Ultra Marathon this year at the age of 50yrs and I have to say I loved it..
I’ve been on a personal journey of improving my health this year, I guess the idea of now being fifty years old has pushed me to define how I want the second half of my life to go. There are several factors of my health and happiness that could be improved by simply adding or changing a few habits, for example I’ve allowed my ‘dad bod’ to slowly grow over the past few years and this has definitely been exacerbated by the pandemic, despite running the Brighton half marathon in 2019 and 2021 and completing my first triathlon in 2020 last year I really haven’t been keeping on top of my weight and general health. So this year I read the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear and really started to change the way I think about healthy eating and exercise. The book has really reinforced the idea of creating habits that become goals not setting goals the losing the habit, it also describes some profound reasons why so many of us fail in the first few months by something called the ‘The Valley of Disappointment’ where by we don’t see the improvements so we lose motivation and quit. Check out this summary of the book to get a better understanding of the concepts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7lDrwYdZc
I love Youtube despite my general distain for social media as I’m a very visual learner and tend to get a sense of trust with the individual content providers, I’ve been following a few fifty year old Youtubers that have inspired me to approach my health and fitness in a more mature and preventative style.
You see the problem with health and fitness advice and social media is that its like drinking water from a FIRE HOSE, there is just so much to swallow that you just drown in the many different opinions and approaches, if I had to recommend just one guy it would be Paul Revelia, a fifty year old natural body builder who has really cracked the secret to getting in shape at fifty whilst avoiding injury.
Check out this video where he describes how he gets ripped for competitions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-W_8UP7qbI&t=338s.
So this guy got me motivated to get walking everyday and to track my calories on an App (another pet hate until now) in order to just lose the Dad Bod, he also describes how important it is to do some resistance training and eat enough protein to protect and build muscle. So as I already wake up at 5am every morning and either read or play online with my American friends, I decided to turn my DOWN TIME into DO TIME and in April 2022 I religiously started walking 11km from my home in Southwick to the top of the South Downs near Devils Dyke. I set my smart watch and briskly power walk to the top, take in some views and deep breaths and then head back down to the beach where I meet a few friends on a daily basis to dip in the sea and be back in time for coffee with Priscila my wife at around 8am. this has become without a doubt the most wonderful change in my life and if I could recommend just one habit to implement into your life its the early morning Hike. I’ll talk more about the health benefits in my next blog and there are many but I wanted to focus on how this daily habit became a 50km ultra marathon. During the walks I listen to pod casts, audio books, great music or just enjoy the peace around me, I started to get so much energy during the walks that when listening to music I would feel like running back down the hills once I’d reached the top, then I felt like try new routes and trails on the weekends when I had more time, this then became a wonderful and exhilarating experience that grew every week, it has become my HABIT.
I do a lot of thinking on my hike/runs and remembered a couple of clients talking about Ultra Marathons which I thought was a mad way to spend a day, who on earth could run for 50kms let alone up and down hills? they told me that the trick is to take it slow and hike up the hills and run down the hills and flat areas, sounds familiar, that is literally what I had been doing every morning and by now I had doubled my distance to over 22km a day on weekends. So how hard could it be to increase the distance to 50km?
Not too difficult really, the day went well, certainly for the first 35km until I hit the dreaded wall and really just had to take it easy in order to enjoy the experience rather than try to maintain my initial pace. I had met another runner on the trail who decided to run along side me until I grew tired but it helped to have an impromptu running buddy for the most part of the race and we remain friends since the event. I hope this blog inspires anyone to start some new positive habits that could evolve like mine into something I never thought I would be capable of at my age.
