AHM / SBR 2007

At my first half marathon eight years ago, we trained twice a week and I clocked a respectable timing under two hours. This year, I trained twice, and despite cramps along the way (never warm up), still managed to clock a decent 2:15.

All in all it was a good run, much better than the suffering I underwent last year. I attribute this to getting enough sleep, not having diarrhea, and good energy management. Last year, I was clawing my way down the last 5 km stretch, this year I was relatively fresh as a daisy. 2 bananas, a red bull, and imbibing isotonic along the way kept my energy level sufficiently high to finish the race without too much fatigue. And of course there was the Japanese buffet feast at Hanabi two night prior. Because 21km is a distance you can literally burn all the energy in your body out, until you collapse. So its very important to refuel along the way.

Usually during a run I try to take my mind of the running, aided by my trusty mp3 player, and also turn my thoughts to other topics. Which leads me to the topic I was contemplating during the run. If our brain consumes 20% of the body's energy at rest, it should still be burning up a sizable chunk of it as we run. If the brain consumes even 5% of my energy while running, that is worth 1km to me! Instead of trying to think about other things, shouldn't I be trying to shut my mind off? Put it into power-saving zombie mode.

There's plenty of stuff online to support the premise of this idea, but I couldn't dig up anything to further my enquiry. I guess I have another year to contemplate, maybe while running.