51. Consistency
The backpack was the problem. I had been managing the miles fine, holding 120km weeks without much drama, but I was carrying four kilos of clothes and laptop and whatever else every time I ran. It turned every commute into a strength session I did not need. So I finally did the obvious thing and left a full set of clothes at the office. Now I run in, take the train home, and the whole thing feels completely different. The legs are worked but not wrecked, and I actually look forward to the morning miles instead of calculating what the pack is doing to my shoulders.
The data more or less agrees. HRV and resting heart rate are sitting where they should, and while I still get mornings where the body protests or the motivation dips, those feel like passing moods rather than actual warning signs. The volume is doing its job. Sleep is the one thing that still needs attention. Since we moved back I am waking up early and trying to bank seven hours, but some nights the math just does not work and I end up with six and change. Not catastrophic, but I feel it on some days more than others.
July is sorted. I signed up for Race to the Stones, a hundred kilometres along the Ridgeway. The plan is to hold the 120km baseline and layer in either a longer single run or a double once a week. No heroics, just accumulation. I am looking for something shorter between now and then, but it needs to be reachable without burning family time or adding travel stress. That is the constraint that matters more than the distance.
What I am learning, if I am learning anything, is that the consistency is the whole point. Not the one perfect session or the gadget data or even the race at the end. Just the dull accumulation of mornings where you show up anyway, backpack or not, good sleep or not, and get the work in.
Carve Out
I listened to Jensen Huang on the Dwarkesh Podcast this week. Dwarkesh made the analogy that selling AI chips to China is like exporting uranium, a claim about strategic national risk that sounded absolute. Huang did not flinch or get defensive. He simply dismantled the premise, pointing out that NVIDIA’s position comes from ecosystem lock-in and the speed of their innovation cycle, not from export controls or geopolitical maneuvering. The calm refusal to accept the framing was more striking than any counterargument would have been. It reminded me that in training and in business, the strongest position is built on being genuinely indispensable, not on trying to control what other people do with what you built.
A new blog post on WeRunUltras.com about protein intake, a short summary below. Plenty of training plans, only for £5.
The average ultramarathon field is already a masters field — the 45–49 age group is the largest cohort at most major ultra events — yet the protein recommendations most of these athletes follow were derived from studies on younger adults. The latest endurance-specific research sets the daily benchmark at 1.8 g/kg/day, while habitual intake across endurance populations sits around 1.5 g/kg/day; masters triathletes show measurably blunted muscle remodelling even when protein intake is matched to younger athletes. This article works through what the evidence actually says about ageing, anabolic resistance, and where the real nutrition levers are — including a counterintuitive finding about recovery days that most athletes have backwards.
Full article here.