Muddy Calves

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.

In what I plan on being a 1-week experiment, I’ve decided to track my food intake for a week. For many years, I have been stuck around 160 pounds. I’m not fat but I do have some extra weight around my waist that I would like to get rid of. I should be doing more core work but I think the biggest problem is that I like to pig out.  Too often I eat more than I should because I like to eat.

Out of curiosity, I want to see how much (especially with calories) I actually eat so I’m going to track & post it here. I’ll preface this with two comments. First, I’m pretty boring with what I eat–the same things most mornings & lunch.  Second, and I already know this has happened, the fact that I’m tracking what I eat will affect what and how much I actually eat.

A pretty good day, methinks. I did not run but did spend nearly an hour mowing the lawn so that burned some extra calories. The item that surprised me was the 230 calories for a plain blueberry bagel.