252 pounds this morning – Ok – apparently I’m not writing regularly but I will have to see if I can fix that. Heather’s mom has now been moved and most of the house work for her is done so I might start to have a bit more spare time. Comments: Heather’s Mom moved during this month and there was a bunch of work involved with that and I still didn’t have a rythm yet for balancing the runs with course work and everything else.
For running – I have done 2 weekends so far where I have done 3 laps (6.6 miles) in the park on Saturday and then a longer run on the Sunday (comment: when I do my outdoor runs I do loops in the park that are 2.2 miles long – it gives me the feeling of traveling while keeping close to my vehicle so I can get extra water, etc) – once for 5 laps (11 miles) and once for 6 laps (13.2 miles – on October 7th). For the 13.2 I finished a half marathon distance in 2 hours 28 minutes and change – not extremely fast by any means but still is 10 minutes faster than I did the half during the goofy in January 2012. So I seem to be off to a pretty decent start and things are feeling pretty good so far. I wasn’t completely messed up after the longer runs (the 11 mile was tough but that was due to running on only water with no breakfast before I went out to run – the 13.2 I had a banana and a croissant before I ran and after laps 3, 4 and 5 had a short snack to put some energy back in – still only water to drink though. Not trying to rely on Gatorade now and it seems to be really helping). After the 13.2 I ended up having to put up some shelving at Heather’s mom’s new place and was able to do that without feeling exhausted or destroyed.
Getting in the mid-week runs seems to be a bit hard right now – the treadmill is acting up and occasionally tripping the breaker on shorter runs. On longer runs it has been tripping near the 1 hour mark and then frequently after that which means my longer runs will all have to be outside – which really isn’t a bad thing unless the weather gets absolutely horrible. I seem to have some hesitation about getting on the treadmill in case it trips and breaks my rhythm but I did get on it tonight and went 3.79 miles in 35 minutes with some walking breaks and some leaning on the treadmill while running. That does definitely seem like an improvement and I did feel I could go further at the higher speeds so if I can keep that up for shorter runs during the week and then keep adding the distance on the weekends that should be good.
My intention is to try to bump the Saturday run to 4 laps (8.8 miles) this weekend and then bump the Sunday to 7 laps (15.4 miles). This is with the goal of doing 6 laps on Saturday at the end of November and 10 laps (22 miles) on the Sunday (November 24th and 25th – goal times would be near 2 hours 15 minutes for Saturday and well under 4 hours on Sunday).
Things look positive right now and I seem to have a good attitude so hopefully I can maintain that.
For weight loss obviously I was over optimistic at the top but it should be possible and healthy to lose 1-2 pounds a week until the marathon. There are just over 90 days until the goofy so I am hoping I can get 20-30 pounds down spread over that period. This should be more than possible and will definitely help my attitude and my speed and endurance. I was 252 this morning (thurs) after being 253 Monday morning so things do seem to be working so far – I will just have to keep watching what I eat (especially avoiding going out for lunch at work) and drink. 252 is pretty important since I don’t think I have been at that level since I was around 250 for the goofy in 2010 and I suspect even at 252 now I am in better shape than I was at 250 that year.
Comments: I still hadn’t hit upon what to do to get the weight to come off besides running regularly and cutting down on treats and fast food. It was effective but would only get me so far and I still needed a plan to get further.
I also still hadn’t decided exactly what my running training plan should be so I was just trying to do some mid length runs during the week and back to back runs on the weekend. This was also working but I needed to figure out a training plan and stick to it or things were going to fall apart like they had in the past few marathons training periods.
One thing I had hit upon was that in my past couple training periods I had been using energy drinks as a crutch – now I have avoiding using anything except water until I hit at least the 11 mile mark if not longer. This is to make sure I am training my body to store the fuel I will need.
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