Sports Psychology Blog Posts

Often a training run doesn't go to plan, and this can be out of your control.  It could be unexpected weather conditions, a gear malfunction, or even getting lost.  The trick is making the most of the situation. Felt like running in this...

Writing up a one off ultramarathon challenge that's not a race has made me realise how much excitement and atmosphere an organised race generates.  The achievement is no less significant, in some ways it’s greater as you don’t have support c...

Family commitments are such that being available for a race on a Sunday is a rarity, so the opportunity to run in the Glasshouse 100 was out for me, but it was suggested that I run in the 50k with a sensible 6:30am Saturday start.  It was an odd...

Prior to the Kokoda challenge my motivation to train was lacking, and it hasn’t been great for over a year now. While this isn’t a good thing for my running (and life) in general it has led to the discovery of the benefits of different training v...

Last weekend I took part in the Kokoda Challenge 96km team trail race which had a number of firsts for me.  Not only is it the first time I’ve participated, but it’s the first time I’ve run in a team event.  It is a similar format to...

Yesterday I was invited along to participate in an ultra running study at University of the Sunshine Coast. It was a world first study related to brain activity during endurance exercise. As is typical of much sports science research the focus is on...

Bloomsbury Publishing have sent me a copy of "Eat & Run" by Scott Jurek with Steve Friedman to review, and the good news for you  is that I also have another copy to give away. Simply enter a comment below to be in the draw for a copy on it'...

I have been away from the blog for a good while, busy attempting to complete my 33 Marathons challenge. I am in the process of writing up the report, but before that I wanted to share a couple of experiences from training runs I've complete...

I haven’t blogged for a while, and the reason will be clear to anyone who has been following my preparations for my 33 marathons run. Multiday Ultramarathon training is a big commitment, and this is something I have learnt from picking the brains o...

At the end of any ultramarathon race you look back and think how much better you could have done and what you’ll do differently for next time. Now the obvious way to improve your times is through running more and better training, but th...

I’ve written previously about the benefits and techniques of training runs at night, but this is slightly different. Time pressures have been such on me of late that I have done 7 of my last 9 runs under cover of darkness! It seems that training fo...

For this year’s event was a little different to before having been there and done it a couple of times, and given my bigger picture training for my 33 Marathons event in August I had it in my mind to complete rather than compete. But who was I kidd...

I was chatting with a neighbour discussing the troubles we’ve both had with Telstra, our phone company, and that I had managed to last 14 hours on the phone to them before I lost my calm (the issue has now almost been resolved after 20 hours). &nbs...

I have been particularly busy of late sorting out the logistics and training for my 1400km run across the Nullarbor Plain in August (only 4.5 months away scarily), hence my posts have be far from frequent and have not gone into the dark depths of ult...

A couple of weeks ago the guys at SKINS sent me a pair of their A400 range shorts to try out. Now I’ve always been a bit sceptical of compression gear as I’ve not had any conclusive proof as to their benefit. So I took this as an opportunity to b...

A couple of weeks ago the guys at SKINS sent me a pair of their A400 range shorts to try out. Now I’ve always been a bit sceptical of compression gear as I’ve not had any conclusive proof as to their benefit. So I took this as an opportunity to b...

I've had a pretty good week training wise, confirming that the week off has been no detriment to my training. This was pretty reassuring, and has helped keep me on track towards my longer term running goals.   To have felt that I had slip...

I've had an interesting week, in that I didn’t manage a single run. Not injured, just that my wife has been away, and parenting duties prevented any running whilst the kids were home, and I couldn’t get out for a run while they were at schoo...

This evening I planned to go out for a hill session. Since the house move this is a bigger effort than normal as it’s about 7kms to get to the bottom of the new track I have found for my hill sessions.  Fortunately this is also about 1km long...