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.

I don’t get too worried about bouncing around a few pounds–probably should only post this once a month. While I’m fairly confident in my scale’s consistency for weight, I’m not sure about the % body fat or % water. When i get a chance, I want to use health Central’s Home Body Fat Test that actually requires you to measure body parts as part of the calculation.

162.4 lbs, 20.1% BF (32.6 lb), and 54.7%.

UPDATE

I used a tape measure and used the website above. The downside to their site is that or some of the data entry, it only accepts integers. As such, I went through it twice, once rounding down, once rounding up, just to see the effect.

Weight: 162
Waist: 34.5
Hips: 37.5
Forearm: 11.25
Wrist: 7

Body Fat, Rounding down: 15.1%
Rounding up: 16.6%

I have tried to lose weight for too long. Mostly, I hover around 160–I would like to get down to 155ish. Actually, I’m more interested in losing bulk around my midsection than weight but weight serves as a good proxy even though a mirror can quickly tell me what I need to know.

So I plan on starting to regularly post my weight/percent body fat/body fat weight/percent body hydration. Yesterday, I weighed in (on my $20 Taylor scale from Menards) at:

161.8 lbs, 20.1% BF (32.5 lb), and 54.6%.

My weight-management strategy is four-fold:

1) Drink a good amount (32oz) of water in the morning as I commute to work hoping to fill my belly with 0 calories and prevent any pseudo-weight loss in the form of dehydration.
2) I let myself be hungry at times.
3) Portion control–instead of eating until I’m stuffed, eat just until I’m not hungry.
4) Eat a lot of healthy filler–basically fruit and vegetables. The good stuff that I do not need to be concerned about eating.

I’m hoping for a sensible, 1 pound per month reduction. That would mean next spring I would have a little less to haul around when I run.