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 just posted a little bit of an update on how my running is going but with January just completed, I want to take a fuller look.

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I ended up running 124 miles even in January, not sure actually how that compares to my plan but I know I only missed one workout and that was because something came up at work. I was going to make it up during the first week of February but on my last run of January, I twisted my knee a bit on some snow-covered trails and have taken the last two days off. I don’t think it is anything major but want to give it some extra time to heal.

I have also gotten my long run up to 13.5 miles. For comparison’s sake, I didn’t do a 10-miler last year until late February and the first time I did 13+ was April 2nd at the Ron Daws 25K so I’m feeling good about where I am. Still have a lot of work to do but think I’m on track for Grandma’s.

I wasn’t as diligent about attacking my gut but have taken some action the last week or so. I have been more aware of the amount that I eat and I’ve mostly avoided bingeing when I get home from work. I am also trying to take advantage of two plus hours I spend driving and do some abdominal clenching, might not be the best exercise but feels I’m doing something, only wish I could breathe as I do them.

In totally non-running news, my family got 3 pounds of furry fun. Since I’m the one that generally walks the dog, I’ve been reluctant to get a second one. But we stopped at the pet store to get fish food for my wife’s classroom and ended up with a Cairn Terrier (the same breed that Toto from The Wizard of Oz was) .

Toby Zoe is a puppy so she is a little nippy. And she leaves puddles (especially when I pet her). She whines a little when she is in her kennel. She was small enough to walk under our miniature schnauzer. And she is hilarious when shes runs with her tiny legs.  Once she is parasite-free, she is going to spend days in my wife’s classroom.

I haven’t found a good way to imbed my Grandma’s Training Schedule in a blog post yet but I’ve worked out a preliminary schedule. It is essentially out of Marathoning, Start to Finish by Patti and Warren Finke who taught the RRCA Coaching Class I attended last summer.

After following Jack Daniels’ (the coach, not the whiskey) plans for several years for my 13.1 races, this plan seems relatively tame as far as speedwork–I’m planning on doing 4 weeks of hilly fartleks and 5 tempo runs at race paces, maxing out at 4 miles. But it is heavy on endurance–I just ran 13.5 and my long run will be 16 miles by the end of February. Overall, I plan on doing 15 runs of 16-20 miles before the marathon. Currently, 20 (5 times) is the longest but maybe I’ll bump that up to 22.

On paper (or on LCD) it seems to make sense but we’ll see how it looks on the road. I’ve started to experience early-season doubts, you know the ones, “I can’t run 5 miles at 8:30 pace, how the hell am I going to run 26.2 at 8:00 pace”?!

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I know with training it will come but it is still amazing to me how the same doubts pop up at the beginning of every training cycle. I am worried that my body won’t hold up to the training–I’ve nursed the miscellaneous aches & pains & chafing (on some very sensitive bits) so far but the miles are just starting to rack up.

The gut battle is on-going. I started compulsively weighing myself on Tuesday, with my weight ranging from a post-long run, dehydrated 158.4 to a high of 163.8. Median daily low of 162.4, median daily high of 163.8.

I tracked my diet for a few days & the biggest thing I learned from that is serving size. Often one of my servings are two or more legitimate servings. That awareness will help me just eat less I hope. And I’ve implemented the “Banana Diet”, my own invention. Before I snack, I need to eat a fruit (most often a banana). This helps fill my stomach with a healthy food and slows me down–helps me think about what I’m eating. I think I did OK this week, my youngest daughter had a birthday party on Saturday and I was measured in what I ate.

I missed one workout this week because of a combination of a work situation and a couple birthdays I needed to celebrate but overall a good week, methinks.

My second goal for 2012, is to get rid of my Middle-Aged Man gut–I’ve basically become this character from Saturday Night Live, just without the fancy hair:

I have to admit, I’ve been “battling” the gut for a decade–I first realized it had appeared when we picked-up the pictures from my oldest daughter’s 1st birthday swimming party.  (Note: this was back when people put a thing called “film” into a camera. After putting the pictures onto this “film”, the “film” had to be brought to a store that would take several days to copy the pictures from the “film” to the “pictures”. Normally, half of the “pictures” were of things you most definitely did not want “pictures” of–the back of someone’s head, your shoes, your thumb, or your aunt Midge.)  Anyhow, when we got back this bunch of pictures, one of the pictures I did not want included me, my daughter and my gut. Since then, I’ve known about this unwanted passenger  and made numerous half-hearted, short-lived attempts at getting rid of it.

I haven’t been successful:

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Now, I don’t have any secret methods that I am going to use, just try to use more calories that I consume and do some core work to try to tone what muscle I do have underneath. My main problem is I tend to pig out too often–I eat fairly healthy, just too much at times. I’m going to try to not binge and try to eat a fruit (banana/apple/orange) before digging into a “snack”. I’ve got a special weakness for Nacho-Cheese Doritos.

I’m hoping that just by knowing that I’m running 26.2 in 5 months, I’ll have the extra incentive to cut my gut (currently measuring 34 inches sucked in, 37.5 fully extended). I figure if I could probably lose 10-15 pounds of dead weight, possibly speeding me up 6-9%. Not sure if it works that way but that could be roughly 15 minutes of marathon time.

Ok, my family thinks I’m a geek. Their latest evidence is this excellent documentary by Paul Sanft of Ideatap Studios about Team USA Minnesota, a training center for elite distance runners.

Olympic Marathon Trials from Paul Sanft.

After seeing a link for it a couple of days ago, I had to show it to my family. It went something like this:

“Come here, watch this!”

“See that train, I know where that is!” (0:02)

“Oh, look they’re running on MY route!” (0:04)

“I run across that bridge!” (0:19)

“They’re doing my hill–that’s my hill, that’s where I do my hill workouts!” (0:25)

“Oh my god! Who is that? That’s Josh Moen? He fit me for a pair of shoes & I didn’t even know who he was! Oh, my god!” (0:51)

“See that garbage can! I know where that is, I ran by that garbage can today!” (1:13).

…and so on. I’m not sure when they snuck away but they did at some point.

It is really cool to watch these great runners running on my courses. I especially liked the slow-motion sequences where you can really see their form–I’m looking for a way to slow it down even more so I can see their form frame-by-frame.

For the record, I’m not disagreeing that I’m a geek.

But I’ve got a growing conflict–I’m starting to root for locals and that is making me feel uneasy because, well, they’re Minnesotans.

To back up a step, I grew up and lived in Wisconsin for the first 40+ years of my life and developed a healthy disregard for Minnesota–mostly due to a game played with an mis-shaped leather ball. A sport where my believed home-state team has been World Champions 13 times & counting; Minnesota’s team, not so many (0 in case you need to know the exact count). We’re the big brother and the Minnesota team is the jealous little brother always trying to prove they’re just as good despite the fact that they’re just not.

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Football rivalry & related issues aside, I’m not completely uncomfortable with the concept of Minnesota–I shop at Target & Best Buy and love Famous Dave’s (although I’ve got to point out the first and best Dave’s is in Hayward, Wisconsin). And one of my all-time favorite runner/writers, Ron Daws, came from Minnesota, so the state has some redeeming qualities.

I’m actually learning to deal with the football thing and blend in with the non horn-wearing portion of the population. Heck, I even joined the Minnesota Distance Runners Association (MDRA).

UW Badgers 2011 XC National Champions

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And while I celebrated the Badger’s Cross Country National Title, I’m also starting to root for local runners like Kara Goucher who grew up in Duluth and just qualified for the Olympic Marathon, Andrew Carlson, Matt Gabrielson, Jason Lehmkuhle, Katie (Koski) MacGregor, and Josh Moen. I’m even starting to appreciate Carrie Tollefson, Minnesota’s First Lady of Running, for the rock star she is.

I just got done listening to my buddy Norm finish his first ever 17-miler. He does a podcast called The Ruminative Runner. Go and listen to it, I’ll be here when you get back.

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Christoph Niemann, a cartoonist for the New York Times, just ran the New York City Marathon and illustrated & tweeted his run while running.

The 5 minutes you spend reading his report will be well worth it.  Go now.

Registration opens today for the 2012 Cellcom Green Bay Marathon & Half Marathon, which I am not running for a  record 11th straight year.

Not that I have anything against this race, in fact I would have signed up for the half today if it weren’t for the fact that the route will not go through Lambeau Field this year.  Last year, I considered running the half primarily for that reason but by the time I wanted to (Mid February), the race was closed.  And while Green Bay is one marathon that allows numbers to be transferred, I wanted to set my schedule in stone and not hope I could find a second-hand number.

But this raises an increasingly common issue–races that fill up to capacity.

I understand races need to limit the field of races because of logistical, planning, and safety reasons–overbooking a race is worse than limiting the field.  But, for the runner, it’s a pain in the gluteus maximus.

It seems that to get into some of the more popular races, you first have to win the registration race just to get into it–and as a race becomes known for filling up, the registration race gets more competitive.  Which really sucks for a marathon or even half-marathon because they can fill up months before the actual race and if life gets in the way of your training, you end up donating your registration fee to the race unless they let you transfer or roll-over your registration although that isn’t the standard.

Some races–Garry Bjorklund 13.1, my Goal Race for the first half of 2011–require you enter a lottery for registration.  And while I got in, going through the lottery process isn’t fun either as it makes planning difficult.  In most cases, I think you find out fairly quickly but there still is usually a period where you end up training without knowing whether or not you’re actually going to get into the race.

Generally, it is a good thing that more runners are out there doing more races but it has added a dynamic to some races that takes away a bit of the fun.  As I’m thinking about my 2012 racing plans, the ability to actually get into the race is another factor to take into consideration.

Running smaller, less likely to fill up races is an option with a different set of pro’s and con’s and I enjoy doing that for training races but would be a little bummed if that decision gets forced onto me because of race capacity restrictions.

I do have an idea of what I want to do next spring & there haven’t been registration problems the last couple years so, if my training goes well this winter, I might not have to worry about getting in but if things fall through, my backup plan could definitely be effected by registration caps.

Has anyone been burnt by training for a race they couldn’t get into?

Have you “discovered” a great  race that you ended up running because you couldn’t get into a different race?

Obviously, I’ve neglected the blog for a while.

I’ve had reasons.

They’ll become apparent soon. Unless you already know about them & if you’re one of the few reading this, you probably already know the main reason. I’ve been busy. But that will have to wait for another day.

Today, I’m launching a new challenge for myself. To blog every day for the month of November.

I’ve had an urge to be a writer that I haven’t really gotten started on ever. My blogs have been my mild attempt at actually making sentences. For the most part, I’ve successfully avoided writing.

So now that my unnamed reason has mostly ended, I’m taking up the challenge to actually blog. November happens to be National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The basic goal of NaNoWriMo is for the author to get the words on the paper, to generate the mud. The NaNoWriMo novel is not a finished novel, it is in need of editing. One the hurdles I face in starting to write is that I always feel the need to get everything right before moving on. I get bogged down before I get going.

So my goal for November is to type for 10-20 minutes, let it sit for awhile, do a quick edit and post. Generate some mud.

Incidentally, you may notice I renamed the blog from “fartleks” to “Muddy Calf Running”. Why? For one of my projects, I’ve been thinking about names & Muddy Calf was something I liked but didn’t think suited my other needs. Besides, fartleks was a bit too generic.

Well, my time is up for tonight but first some questions:

Have you ever thought about being a writer?

Have you ever cam up with a plot for a novel?

Does the name of a blog matter?

Kickerstarter has popped up a couple of times in the last couple months in different podcasts I listen to.  Mighty Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing Fame used it to raise money to get her Afterlive Series printed and Carl the Mailman from The 3 Non-Joggers Podcast used it to raise funds for his documentary film, One Fall.

Both mentioned it enough to piqué my interest in what else is going on there.  I did some standard searches–Lego, Mego, Running,  and Runner and saw some interesting stuff.  But one project stuck out to me, the Simple Hydration Water Bottle.

Odd shape?

The clever thing is it is designed to slip into your waistband so you don’t have to carry it but don’t need any special belts or straps or anything.

Cool.

Kickstarter is designed for crowd-funding of projects.  Individuals chip in $ so a project can be funded and completed.  The thing is, the project is only funded if it raises 100% of the money requested.   The water bottle has raised $10,610 of $20,000so far with 24 days left. I was informed that 95% of projects that get over the half-way point endd up getting fully funded.

One of the important things about kickstarter projects is designing a sensible reward system for contributors.  While every contribution helps, contributing $20 gets one of the bottles.  Additional pledges get you other swag like hats and shirts.

I intended to pledge and recommend you look the information over and consider it too.