Adventure awaits

Disclaimer - The blogs to come over the next 100days will be completely honest, sometimes embarrassingly so!  I am not looking for sympathy or pity, I just want to be up front in the hope that this will help you in your journey, and in turn, keep me accountable and on track on my own path.  These blogs will contain daily updates on training, diet (food journal), weight, my meditation/reading, photos, thoughts (the good and the bad) and anything else I feel like throwing in!For those who are new to this blog, I am a vegan ultra marathon runner.  This blog is going to track the next 12 weeks of heavy training for Buffalo Stampede - where I have now decided to do the Grand Buffalo Slam!  This entails the Sky 26er - a 26k race on the Friday, The Buffalo Sky Ultra - 75k on the Saturday and the Buffalo Marathon (42) on the Sunday!  This will all take place on the 10th, 11th and 12th of April in Bright, Victoria.  It also includes just over 9000m of elevation gain over the three races!  Holy SMOKES!!!  GOAT!!!This blog will hopefully show some insight into what it takes to be competitive in a tough ultra.  On a bigger scale though, this blog is going to continue on for the 100days (a time frame it is believed to break bad habits and set a new lifestyle in place) the food/drink a plant based athlete consumes to fuel his training, busy existence and lifelong health.  I will also journal the balance of being a husband, father of two young girls, part time barista and full time student in secondary health and physical education, commencing March.Now that is all out of the way....YAR!  Whats cracking all?!  Well, I write this blog with much excitement and a fair crack of nervousness.  As usual I am putting myself out there on a limb, giving some new and old things a go and seeing what pans out!  First some immediate background....This year has started out not too bad dietary wise, and pretty darn good racing/training wise.  For those of you who know me though, you will know that I have battled with my diet for pretty much my whole life and whilst it has surely improved since going vegan, I still over eat, have a serious sweet tooth and have been known to devour a pantry full of pretty much anything I can find.  I long for better...My training and fitness is in a really good place and over then next 12 weeks, going to be stepped up to the next level of madness.As most of you will know, I live in Bundaberg, one of the flattest cities I have ever been to!  So, during this program, you will also see how I get creative and make the most of what I have got to train for a mountain ultra marathon with A LOT of climbing.  You will also see the day to day grind and love of running it takes to compete in these types of events.  Whilst this is no where near my longest ultra I have done, I plan on coming to it in the best shape I ever have for a race.  Bring it!So, the specifics.....diet wise, I know I have attempted this before on a  number of occasions, but nothing has changed.  I still believe a whole foods, plant based diet (whole grains, fruit, veg, nuts, seeds and legumes.....avoiding oils and processed foods) is medically and lifestyle wise the BEST way of eating (there a HEAPS of books and medical journals out there to support this claim if you are interested!).  The only variations to this plan that I will be taking is that I am still going to drink coffee (the diet usually includes no stimulants) and race fuel (running specific food/drink).  Whilst in time I would like to get these things out of my diet, I don't want to put too much stress and pressure on myself and still want to enjoy these things for the time being.So, I am giving this lifestyle change another go!  In the past, I know I have under ate.  I know it is going to be super important to get in a large amount of clean calories during this program (primarily fruit) and will include them all in my daily blog for you to check out.  I know I am putting myself out there again, but I don't care!  If we don't make ourselves uncomfortable, try things, fail, try again, grow, learn, persist etc we will remain stagnate and generally just STINK!  Hay, I got dreads and run stupid amounts of k's, I don't need any extra stink in my life!A lot to the time, I feel like a fake and a failure when talking about diet.  I seem to always have people come to me for advise and tips and whilst I know intellectually the answers and that my way of eating is probably healthier than 80% of the people out there, I want more.  I want to feel emotionally, consciously and physically that the advise I am giving out, I am following 100%.  I am here to up my game.  I am also, as a benefit to this program, aiming to get my weight under 70kg.  For all you non-runners out there, you probably don't understand this and think it is super lean for me, but trust me, when you have to carry extra kilos over 10,15, 20hours of a race, it makes a MASSIVE difference.Most of all though, the things I hope and pray to get out of this.... changes to my diet and lifestyle that will set me on a life of long term health, my ideal weight and clean fuel eating!  I want to get SUPER fit for Buffalo, encourage others, challenge myself, be brutally honest and answer any questions any of you might have.  I would also LOVE some of you to explore a vegan diet as a result of this.  I believe it is the BEST way to eat for your health, environment, fitness and the animals.  Non-violence.  If you have ANY questions, please contact me at grills_1@hotmail.com and I would love to help!  If you haven't already, please also subscribe to my site (and encourage others to too!) on the left hand side of the front page.  Thanks!So, Monday 19th of January, 2015 marks the start of this journey.  I will be preparing myself mentally to get into it and can't wait to share this madness with y'all!  Thanks for following along and please share with anyone you think might benefit from reading this blog.  Much love.....