Muddy Calves

Well, this bonus edition of February is almost up.  The running is going fairly well, I had a little problem with consistency.  Things (i.e. work, family, and a minor, annoying pain) led to missing a few runs–I was able to adjust my schedule in most cases so that it was only my recovery runs that got completely skipped with the one exception that I did miss a long run. It was the first weekend that I did not do a long run since September. I did take a snow day today (Happy Leap Day!) and did a 10 miler so I partially made up for it.

It wasn’t until the end of Jan (1/23) that I started to get serious about tracking how the weight loss was going. Seems to be going good so far–seems like I was losing about a pound a week, right around what the conventional wisdom says is a maintainable weight.

Thursday of last week, I lost control a little & ate too much on both Thursday & Friday. I’m weighing myself twice a day–once right away in the morning and once at night and then calculating four values on a weekly basis, they are:

• Extreme High (aqua line on graph), this is my heaviest weight of the week.
• Median High (yellow), this is the median of my daily high weights.
• Median Low (purple), this is the median of my daily low weights.
• Extreme Low (royal blue), this is my lowest read of the week.

Looking at the chart, the lines all are trending downward, the last set of data points is for this, uncompleted, week. Not sure why I struggled late last week but I also ended up being pretty crabby on Saturday & Sunday.

I’m right around 160 now, I had originally thought I might get down to 150-155 but I’m not sure that I really notice any difference yet so I’ve started to think I might be able to get down a little bit lower. Hopefully, I’ll be at 155 by the end of March and 150 by the end of April.

I’ve really made one simple change–I’m eating less. I just stop eating a little earlier. I tend to really get into eating and eat until I’m “full”.  With full being “stuffed”. Now, I stop a little earlier, seems like it is working, not sure if/when I’ll plateau–I’m sure I will but I’ve definitely still got some more weight I can lose.

I came across DAYTUM, an online tool that allows you to track things and display graphs/charts showing your progress.  While not especially designed for running or exercising, it does work for a very basic tracking system for those.  You could embed the graphs into a webpage or, I believe, on your iProduct desktop, if you wanted to–to embed into a wordpress blog, you need a plug-in that WordPress.com does not offer as a an option on their free site.

I was especially interested in this because one of the last projects at my last job was to project manage the development of an application that did basically this, albeit at a higher level of sophistication.

DAYTUM is free, wasn’t too bad to set up–might fill someone’s need sometime.

Peace.

I survived December without completely collapsing–I ended up taking 10 days off from the 21st through the 30th.   I totaled 51.75 (51.84) miles. The sad part is I had a week off during that time but sometimes free time is the hardest time to get around to a run.

Due to weather, my pace has deteriorated horribly–an average of 8:45.  Snowbanks, ice, blizzards, hail all conspired to make running fast an infrequent event–only 2 miles faster than 7:30 and five miles between 7:30 and 7:59.  y long run was 8 miles in 1:10:04 at 8:46 pace.  I struggled through one run of 6.5 miles largely on a snow-covered bike trail at 10:22 pace.

Winter in Wisconsin, and now Minnesota, is mostly about doing your time and building strength.  I’m looking forward to a thaw.

Peace.

As expected, my mileage dipped in November.  Weather, childrens’ activities and holidays start interfering.  Plus my own lack of gumption as the long, dark tea-time of the soles approach.  During the workweek, my only option for running is from work.  It is dark when I get there and dark when I get home.

I did run 60.9 miles at an average pace of 8:08.  That average pace benefited from decent weather/footing for most of the month, although I did have my first snow run albeit with good traction.  No races that included slow warm-up miles helped.  The only super slow mileage would be 0.25 I did at 12:42 pace with my 5-year-old.

Peace.

October has been a month of transition for me–I finished the Salomon Autumn Trail Series mid-month and have not scheduled any other races although I may try to sneak something in.

My final race in that series was a stinker–I had been sick the two days before it and would not have run it if I did not have a streak of running all previous 7 editions of it.  I found out later that dental problems cause my illness–a good chunk of one tooth had broken off.  Not sure how I did not notice.  Once I got a filling, I felt better.

The fear with no races planned is that I will find it too easy to let up.  So I’m pretty satisfied with my monthly mileage of 84.6 miles at an average pace of 8:23.  That falls to 77.3 miles at 8:09 pace if I throw out warm-ups and a walk-jog I did with a fellow runner I bumped into during a Sunday long run.

Had my second decent month in a row. Eighty seven (87.7) miles for the month at an average pace of 8:15. Ran the Salomon Autumn Series race 3 times. Still have a little pain in right hip, both Achilles tendons are sore–left one has a painful hot-spot. Not really cross-training or stretching like I probably should. Year-to-date mileage is a paltry 382 miles at average pace of 8:18.

Reporting average pace is kinda silly–there is so much that goes into it. Race days are usually slower than average–I do a mile plus of warm up at a slooooow pace 10:54 this past week, for example. If I throw out my warm-ups, my average pace for the year falls to 8:10 and 8:00 for September. But I guess if I’m gonna count the mileage, gotta count it both ways.

A good, solid month for me, I want to string some of these together before thinking about increasing my mileage–also need to clean up my left Achilles problem.

I’m not too worried, anyhow, about average pace, I just find in more informative in retrospect than something I strive for during the course of a month.

I wrapped up May with 55.5 miles at an average pace of 8:20 per mile. I had run only 79ish miles in the first 4 months so I was able to pick it up a little. My goal pace was 8:15.

Long run was 8 miles on 5/30 at 8:19. Other notables were a 4-miler at 7:48 on 5/22 and a 3-miler with Key on 5/12. We got her a bigger bike and now she can keep up with me so I’m hoping to make her my regular training partner.