Light English Breakfast

If you’re trying to lose weight, you don’t have to go without the yummy things completely. Try this traditional English breakfast for a great Sunday lunch which won’t break the calorie bank!

Just 10 minutes to prepare yourself a yummy 313 calories.

Nutritional Information

Calories: 313

Fat: 11.0

Protein: 23.8

Carbohydrates: 27.6

Fibre 7.2

Ingredients

60g	baked beans in tomato sauce
2	flat mushrooms,large (approx 2Sg each)
40g	back bacon,extra lean,thinly sliced
1	eggs,large (approx SOg each)
1 1slice	tomatoes,small (approx 100g each) bread,wholemeal(approx 40g each)
3 spray	cooking oilspray

Method

Arrange ttle mushrooms on a non-Stick frying pan ttlat has been sprayed witt! cooking oil spray and cook over a medium-high heat untilthe undersides are golden.
Tum over and cook ttle ottler side ttlen remove ttle mushrooms from ttle frying pan onto a warm serving plate.
Spray ttle frying pan again and add ttle bacon and tomato halves and cook until ttle bacon is golden and tomato softened.
R.emove to ttle serving plate.
Put ttle bread In the toaster and put the beans In a microwaveable dish to heat ttlrough;1.5 minutes on High (you will need to Increase this dme by approximately 30-45 seconds per additionalserving).
Meanwhile,spray the frying pan again and break ttle egg Into ttle frying pan.
Leave undlttle underside Is golden and ttlen carefully,using a wide spatula,flip the egg over and cook the other side for approximately 30 seconds.
Put ttle tDast on ttle serving plate,put ttle cooked egg on tDp and spoon the baked beans ontD the plate. Chefs suggestions:

– If you don’t have a warmed plate,heat the bacon/mushrooms/tomato on the plate in the microwave for 30 seconds on Medium before adding the toast, eggs and beans to the plate to serve.

English breakfast

Run Faster: Make sure you have enough calcium

We all know we need calcium for strong teeth and bones, but did you know that calcium is also needed for the life preserving functions of muscle contraction, (including the heart) blood clotting, nerve function and the release of certain hormones and enzymes?

Because calcium is necessary for the maintenance of life, it is leached from the bones if the amount in the blood in insufficient for these life preserving functions. You can still live without brittle bones, but you can’t live without a heart beat, so the body very cleverly prioritises the function that calcium is directed to. If there’s insufficient calcium circulating in the blood, the body takes it from it’s storage cells, the bones and teeth.

Calcium and Cola Drinks

As an aside, a highly acidic diet can cause calcium to be leached from the bones. Your body will act to maintain a blood pH of 7.4. If you have a highly acid diet, your body will draw down on stored mineral salts, including calcium, which act as a buffer to the acid and work to restore blood to a pH of 7.4. Lots of things can cause a drop in blood pH (ie a rise in acidity) including cola drinks. Therefore chronic use of cola (and to a lesser extent other soft drinks) can lead to brittle bones. And that includes the diet varieties as well! You can flush the acid away with water, but for every can of cola you drink, you’d need to take in 15-25 times that amount in water. (Then spend an awful lot of time in the loo).

Calcium and Muscle Function

Here’s the interesting bit for we exercise types. You should be sure to have enough calcium in your diet, and good gut health, to be able to contract your muscles.Below is a very abridged and simplified version of how calcium acts in skeletal muscle contraction.

The brain sends an electrical impulse to the muscle. A lot of biomechanical reactions need to take place for the message to get to the muscle safely, but, amazingly, in most cases it does.
After receiving the message, the muscle shortens. This action is explained by what is know as the sliding filament theory.
Within a muscle fibre, there are two different types of filaments, actin and myosin. These filaments are layered one on top of the other, as in the picture below.
When the right biochemical reactions take place, cross bridges form between the actin and myosin filamines, and the actin gets pulled by the myosin, so the two filaments are pulled closer together and the muscle shortens.

For all of this to happen, calcium is needed to “unlock” the active sites on the actin filament which the myosin attaches to. The myosin heads continue to reattach further and further along the actin, causing a more forceful contraction of the muscle.

The muscle stops contracting when the release of calcium ions stop. You need adequate magnesium for this, but that’s a biochemistry lesson for another day.

Suffice is to say, if you want to run fast, make sure you have enough calcium in your diet.

How Much Calcium?

Check out some calcium rich foods here

Reference: https://www.osteoporosis.org.au/about-osteoporosis

What Pace Should My Kids Be Running

Rating of Perceived Exertion for Kids Running

Use this scale to help your kids figure out their running pace.

We use this modified Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) at our Kids Running groups, to help kids run at a pace suited to their fitness level and the distance they’re covering.

If your kids are not used to running, they should start off at an “I can run like this all day” pace, and work up from there.

More experienced runners can use the scale to assess how they feel when they run, and how long they can last at each level. Then on race day, they’ll be able to keep to a realistic pace amongst all the excitement.

Kids Running Rating Of Perceived Exertion

Download this printable graphic to help your kids run a great cross country race.

Running Training: Breathe Hard

Train to breathe as hard as you can

Running training which gets you breathing as hard as you can is what the scientists call VO2 max training. If you run fast, you breathe hard. If you run fast enough for long enough, you will be breathing as hard as you can.

Training at or above your VO2 max speed is hard work, but hugely beneficial if you want to get faster. In fact, I’d go so far as to say if you’re not including this type of training in your program at least once a fortnight (though better once a week), you’re not reaching your full potential (with the caveat that injury or current fitness level could prevent you from performing this type of training at various times throughout your running career).

VO2 max is the maximum rate at which your body can consume oxygen. It can be measured accurately in a gruelling laboratory test, and it can also be approximated by using submaximal tests.

VO2 max accounts for about 70% of the difference in performance between individual runners. The major contributing factors to a high VO2 max are:

1) the body’s ability to get oxygen pumping around the body- you need to be good at getting oxygen to where it needs to go, so having a strong heart, a high blood volume, lots of haemoglobin, and lots of capillaries and mitochondria in the muscles will help.

2) Speed – the ability to contract lots of muscle fibres at the same time – the more fibres contracting at the same time, the more oxygen is demanded

Both of these factors are determined largely by genetic makeup, but are also trainable. To be effective in increasing VO2 max, and therefore increasing your ability to run faster for longer, you need to breathe hard in training. Very hard.

When it comes to VO2 max training, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. That’s because oxygen consumption will climb at pretty much any intensity, the longer that consumption is sustained. Think about an interval training session where you run a series of 800’s and an intensity level of 6/10. Unless you are allowing yourself full recovery between each interval, your last few intervals will feel a hell of a lot harder than your first few.

So, there is a range of intensities you can train at to boost your VO2 max. The main thing to remember is the aim is to be breathing as hard as you can.

Because there is a range of intensities at which you can train your VO2 max, you don’t need to be super fit to train like this. Exercise physiologist Veronique Billat suggests 30/30 and 60/60 workouts for runners of low-medium fitness levels.

The Session

Warm up
At least 10 minutes of easy jogging.

3-6 stride outs over about 100 meters, increasing your intensity up to about 6/10 for the last 20 metres

Body of Session
Run 30 seconds hard. This should be the pace you could hold for about six minutes or racing. Then slow down to an easy jog for 30 seconds.

Continue to alternate the fast and slow 30 second intervals until you’ve done at least 12 of each (so a total of 12 minutes of running).

Build up your sessions so that you can sustain this for 20 minutes, ie 10 * 30 seconds hard, 10* 30 seconds easy.

You should be able to cover a similar distance on your last interval as you do on your first, if you’ve judged your pace well.

Once you can complete 10 of these 30/30 intervals, you can switch to 60/60.

Start with 6 * 60/60, and build up to 10 – so again, it will be 20 minutes of running in total.

Cool Down
Finish up with at least a 10 minute slow jog, and stretching