Surreal running photos

I ran my first ever half marathon 21.1kms yesterday, with 9000 other people, I managed to run continuously without walking and came in with a time of 2:44:36.
The fastest person ran it in 45 mins and the slowest was just under 4 hours. These photos are taken by machines/people and require you to purchase them, it's all very surreal.

Run for Refugees

This Sunday on 10/10/10 I am running a half marathon in support of Run for Refugees, raising money for the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre in Melbourne. 
The ASRC provide human beings seeking Asylum with advocacy, legal aid, shelter, warmth, food, community and wellness support. It would be super super rad if you would consider donating ANY amount to the ASRC via my fundraising page!

Thankyou! And goodluck to the other 25,000 people running on Sunday!

In preparation for this run I have been researching and playing with barefoot / minimalist shoe running and vegan raw foods, in particular the Thrive Diet. Both things are incredibly inspiring and endlessly interesting and I feel like I am travelling new ground yet finding things that are inherent to who I truly am. 

Direct fuel bites

'Direct fuel bites' are a Brendan Brazier concept of a pre-exercise snack, particulary useful for high intensity exercise lasting one hour or less, as the energy is readily available and they are very easy to digest.
The ratio of carbohydrate, fat and protein in the pre-exercise snack is determined by the intensity and duration of the activity. Brazier grades exercise into three levels and explains the nutrition the body requires during exercise, the science behind it and some handy whole food recipes.

The recipe on page 125 of Thrive is
5 dates
2tbs coconut oil
2 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp lemon juice
sea salt to taste
Combine ingredients in a food processor, make into bite size pieces / tiny balls, store in fridge or freezer.
They provide a direct source of simple carbohydrate. The body gets the fuel from the glucose and MCT's (Medium-chain triglycerides) even before the dates and coconut butter are digested.
There is lots of interesting information and exercise specific tips in his book, I reccomend reading it if you are interested.
I make something like the recipe above and eat one or two before I go for s run.

Cliff Young

Albert Ernest Clifford "Cliff" Young was a potato farmer who at age 61 won the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon. He was vegetarian, drank a lot of milk and would round up the stock on his farm on foot. The "Young shuffle" has been adopted by some ultra-marathon runners because it expends less energy.
This video is great, what an inspiration

Running

Perhaps the genius of ultra running is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being -- a call that asks who they are.
-- David Blaikie, Ultramarathon Canada from here