Crosstraining with YOGA

'GIMLI: Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for? ...'

I spoke to a veteran Ultramarathon runner the othe day, he's convinced me that i should do a 50mile(80km)  'training run' in the Welsh hills in December, so at least i have some 'mini' goal to train for now. I also asked him about crosstraining - its where you should really do other sports too to balance you out a bit and to give your legs a rest sometimes, normally with running you should be doing swimming or bike ie triathlon sports, as they are still good endurance sports but using different muscle groups.

However ive decided to take a chance that..well.....it may work, it may ruin my life. Call me stupid, call me a vegan metrosexual, call me a pervert, but I've decided to cross train with YOGA. Ok, i understand, its not the obvious choice for Ultramarathon training, but hear me out.

Ive already started this Chi Running, even to the extent of buying the book for £8.99. And it seems that its all about 'Chi' - basically on the odd occassion i finally find my sweet spot and am running in the zone, and not using any energy - well its almost like meditation anyway. Yoga, if i understand it correctly, strenghtens my 'Chi' (whatever that is) and helps with breathing, strengthening my core muscles, and increases my focus.

The point of Chi Running is that you are running using your core muscles, and you are focussed, so you dont need big and inefficent leg muscles to run. So actually, if im strengthening my core muscles and improve my focus, i couldnt possibly get a better cross train.

Ok i will try a 30km run this weekend after a week of Yoga and lets see how it pans out. Probably if i beleive it works then it will, until that Glasgow deep fried mars bar diet heart attack kicks in of course.

I actually went to Yoga for the first time in my life last night. I noticed 1. There were some fat people who seemed they were experts. 2. I was the only straight guy (which is a good reason not to use the showers) and 3. I found myself sweating like a rapist after 20minutes standing around on a small mat.  so all this is new and confusing but out of the maelstrom im sure ill know for sure if it works or not on this 80km run