My New Year's Resolution

One of my New Year's resolutions is to run the Two Oceans in Cape Town.
For those who don't know, the Two Oceans Marathon takes place in South Africa and is "the world's most beautiful marathon".With all the hype this marathon receives it is certainly worth adding to your bucket list along with the Boston Marathon and the Comrades if ultra marathons are up your alley.

Long distance running alone holds very little appeal for me. Being the adrenalin junkie that I am, I have signed up for the trail run. This is certainly going to be more extreme than simply running a marathon. It will also allow me to retain as much of my lean body mass as possible. You can't run up Table Mountain without some muscle on your bones. I loathe the emaciated physique of some elite marathoners. There is no need for us regular folks to ever look like that.

So onto my training for the next three months. My focus will be on plyometric exercises to build up lower body strength - think jumping jacks, star jumps, frog jumps, jump squats, jump lunges... you get the picture. Upper body - you can never do too many push-ups.

Core strength is an often overlooked but essential part of any training program. When it comes to endurance events, your core needs to be strong enough to hold you up. If you can maintain good form you will waste less energy. It is essential to include ab and back strengthening work. Think planks, mountain climbers, SB jackknifes. No sit-ups! (that will be another blog post)

And of course, for conditioning I will need to include some running, 1 long off road run on the weekend, and a couple of shorter runs or hill repeats during the week.

I have no intention of stepping foot in the gym. If you are like me, the gym is a one way ticket to losing focus and not training. It's important when you have your goals to focus on what you want to achieve. Not knocking gyms or anything, I find there are many different people there with different agendas and it is easy to get confused or lose focus altogether.

Gyms do have one MAJOR advantage though - Social Support. You can only go so far training by yourself. There comes that wall that you can only push through if you are training with others (unless you have super willpower - which most of us lack unfortunately).
So if you are like me and you decide not to train in the gym, be sure to have a team of like-minded focused individuals to join you :-)