The Perfect Moment

Perfect moments happen all the time. If I slow down, stand still and take a look, I can witness them.

Perfect moment, perfect little run – done!

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Fantastic beach run

The sun is shining. Temperature is perfect. Waves are crushing. The ripples reflect sparkles of light. I run slowly and effortless. I’m back at my playground, my beach.

Happiness is so easy …

 

Running along the Dublin Coast – North to South

Only one more week!

The Blerch

Irish Summer

Is it over? Has it begun yet? Did I miss it?

So many questions … I tried to find the answer at the beach today. My first conclusion is: no – summer is not over and it is happening right now! I saw people surfing the mighty waves and brave souls swimming. Therefore I can’t have missed it.

The last few days have been real Irish – grey and rainy. Perfect to stay inside, switch up all routine and do a house cleaning marathon. It’s kinda fun, to see how much energy I have if I don’t go run. I couldn’t continue like this though and went out today. I had to check up on my beach. Good that I did! The storms have changed all the rocks around again. Someone has played around with the saturation level of the ocean and taken all the color out. Kelp is everywhere.

A slight drizzle accompanied me, when I headed up the hill. If I ignore all the fallen leaves I can keep telling myself it still is summer …

Vacation Lesson

I’m slowly getting the hang of vacation, thanks to you guys! Over the weekend I tried to implement what I learned from The Unironed Man. Or at least the gist I took from it! Do things differently during vacation and that includes running!

I didn’t run on Saturday which usually is my designated long run day, but chilled. Instead I hiked on Sunday for a couple of hours. It was marvelous and I saw so many sheep that I now fear I will never see any again on my runs to tag them properly.

Today I went out and played on the beach first thing, saw my favorite dog for a quick cuddle and as I checked my daily photo, I realized I spotted a bird (can you see it? It’s a bird isn’t it?)!

 

Death-spiral of holiday lazies

This is how yesterday went:

• 5am “I can’t go out that early, it’s vacation. I can procrastinate! Procrastination is great!” *drink coffee*
• 7am “I can’t go out that early, it’s vacation. I can procrastinate!” *drink more coffee, read running book*
• 8am “I’m usually back by now … I need to relax I’m on vacation” *check the tide times*
• 9am “I’ll run when the tide is down, that will be awesome” *read running blogs, drink more coffee”
• 10am “Why am I getting hungry? How do I deal with this? I can’t eat before I go for a run. No wait I can I just need to make something like energy bars. I wanted to perfect the recipe anyhow.” *mix mix chop chop click click* (If you wonder where the “click” comes from, that’s the photos I took for Paula! Spoiler: they turned out great, now I “just” need to upload it all)
• 11am “I’m hungrier than before, but the energy bars are sweet and I don’t want sweet now.” *switch on the oven”
• 12am “Broccoli is the best veg in the world! I should write a post about broccoli and sweet potatoes and how the caramelize …”
• 1pm “Tide is perfect now, I’m not hungry, but I can’t move”. *read more running books and blogs”

…. I think I fell asleep at this point, so let’s quickly distract ourselves with a panorama from today’s run, where I defeated gravity and played with the waves.

As you can see the tide was not yet quite done with cleaning up the mess (footprints) all the tourists left:

Quite fortunately for some of the structures:

All in all here is what I learned: Get out of the house in the morning! If I don’t run in the morning I go down the death spiral of vacation lazies … bouncing from a state of hunger to sleep to book worm or gamer chick – which it is, depends on the amount of energy I have left … and if I don’t go run in the morning, there doesn’t seem to be much energy.

The third gear, birds and plants

Since I could still feel the downhill running from yesterday in my quads, not too bad just noticeable, so it was an all recovery day today. I think I found a new slow pace! My watch shows an average 135 heart rate at 9:35 min/km. This means I now have 3 gears! First gear is my recovery gear, where I don’t even know I am running. It’s great to practice cadence as well. Second gear is my MAF pace, which I am trying to make easier and then there is the “higher” gears. Some of them I didn’t yet dare to touch, so I’ll group ’em all just as third gear for now 🙂

As you can see in my latest posts and today’s featured image, I’m fascinated by the birds. Take a look at the picture in your browser or zoom in. You can see the typical rock where the gang hangs out everyday. They spread their majestic wings and seem to enjoy the slight breeze – or dry their feathers, not sure. Sometimes they all take off on a whim, after not having moved for very long. They hunt and glide over the ocean, effortlessly. This is how I want to run.

Today is Wednesday! I know it’s a shock, wish somebody had told me. Wednesday is one of my favorite days because I get my weekly organic veg delivered. I love to find out what’s in the boxes this week and get all excited! As I am in vacation-mode I ran later than usual and so I was hungry when I came back, seeing all the fresh veg in front of my door. After I had roasted some broccoli and devoured it, I noticed something. (Stick with me it will take a bit to explain).

Usually I only run “long” on Saturday. Every Friday I make a giant portion of Baba Ganoush and have some baguette (yeah the easy carb white flour gluten stuff). I eat the left-overs on Saturday on my long runs. During the week, I eat whenever I am hungry and usually some veg. After yesterday’s run I didn’t have any Baba Ganoush *shock*, but I wanted to eat something. (I found out the sooner after a run I eat whatever my body wants, the better I recover). As it was Tuesday, I had no more veg left, so I did my typical “fast food”. Brown rice in rice cooker, heat up some baked beans, mush it all together in the rice cooker once the rice is done and put some relish I fancy in there (the relish contains loads of veg, but it’s not fresh so no choppin’). So … long talk … the point being that after yesterday’s 3 hours I fancied loads of carbs, today after my easy recovery run I didn’t want much more than yummy broccoli with olive oil, salt and pepper. I guess that’s probably quite obvious to the more experiences runners and I don’t know if it has any significance, but I want to write down my observations here to possibly learn from it, so that is what I am doing. While thinking about nutrition, I also might add, that I ate and drank something on the run yesterday for the first time. One of the barriers to going longer seems to be gone and I did like the drink I made as well as the dates/vegan cocoa bricks. I look forward to test and play with different sugar types for energy soon. I think I’m pretty spot on with the dates. They are like natures energy gel and don’t have a plastic packaging. Unfortunately they come at the price of sweetness. That’s what I made the cocoa bricks for. I think after yesterday I at least have a picture of my ideal fuel source. I know the exact consistency I want to get and the taste. I also have a rough idea how to do it. Maybe I get some done before the weekend.

SRGs 10 Steps to Happiness