Alan Murchison's blog by Alan_Murchison

Hi realbuzzers. It’s been busy at work, with festive nonsense and doing lots of hard training as well. Now we are into the festive season, I have been working on lots of new ideas for the food in 2012 and given my, some might say 'obsession' with health & exercise, I have been looking into the nutritional balance of the menus we offer. We are now cooking a lot on a 'Big Green Egg' which is a great piece of kit that we grill, barbecue & smoke lots of different foods on. It also makes the most amazing pizzas!! Now pizzas are actually almost a perfect meal if you make them yourself, because you have carbs from the dough, calcium from the cheese & protein from the meat. And if you load it up with passata tomato sauce and roquette salad you have your vegetable intake. Like everything it’s all in the balance with food.

My new favourite ingredient is beetroot & apple juice. We are using this in various ways and serving with hot smoked salmon and also marinated mackerel, a really tasty way of improving athletic performance! Beetroot juice has been proven to increase the absorb ion of oxygen into the blood by 16% and also increase endurance! Allegedly a certain Paula Radcliffe uses it, although I’m not sure if she is using it with hot smoking salmon. Probably as likely as me running a 2.23 marathon this year! The only issue is that drinking lots of beetroot juice does some very strange things to your tummy, so be warned!

I raced again this weekend after a very stressful and busy week at work (I had 2 x17 hour days midweek). I’d also had a couple of very tough training sessions, so I just wanted to use the race as another stepping stone towards getting race fit in the New Year. Popham Cross Country in the Hampshire League was one of the most boring and unremarkable races I have ever run. It was basically three laps of a rutted playing field and quite honestly the course was set up for the ease of officiating rather than for the athletes. There was no mud and no hills so for me, that is not cross country! It’s a track race on grass. Anyway I started fairly steadily and worked my way through the field.

It felt solid but a heavy work week took its toll that’s for sure, although I did manage to finish first in the M40 which means I am in joint first position in the Hampshire League with 2 races left in the series. This is good news as I am getting fitter every week and certainly progressing....albeit slowly. These races are tough going though as I am training hard through them all which means you are never 'race sharp'. In fact at the moment I am trying to fit the following into a week’s training; one track/interval session; one brick session (run/bike/run); one race and a long run of 15/16 miles; then a couple of easy days to recover which means I am gaining fitness although I am tired constantly. Hopefully this base training will see me stronger than ever in 2012, fingers crossed. Next week the Southern Masters Cross Country Championships and running with husky dogs.