This Running Life

Sorry folks. I went on Vacation with every intention to blog, but did nothing. Big update coming soon. New shoes!

To get out of our weight loss rut, my wife and I have decided to see a nutritionist and dietitian. Actually, she is “seeing” her, I am piggy backing on my wife’s program. We both have lost about 5 pounds in the first 10 days. The key? With each meal, or thing you eat, you need to have 5g of protein and 5g of fiber. Even salads. We top our salads with fiber one cereal. Sounds odd, but it tastes great. We made chocolate haystacks for snacks out of fiber one cereal and low fat peanut butter, we eat only the whole-est of wheat bread and drink 70 to 100 oz of water a day. We avoid salt and sugar like the plague and feel great and oddly not very hungry thanks to all the fiber.

This will only help my running, of course. Less weight means more speed, less fatigue and less strain on my back and joints. Eating better food will give me more energy on my runs (I think it already has, the last three runs have been fast and great).

Now I can wear that man-thong at the beach. Just kidding.

Went to the local bike shop today to purchase some body glide for my, err, uhm, chafing problem on long runs. To protect his privacy I’ll call him Nathaniel Kormodi. He took a class of mine a few years ago. Good kid, smart, and fun to mess with. He is a biker–a pedal biker, that is. He also told me he ran a half-marathon a few weeks ago while in Wisconsin. We were sharing war stories and eating tips while on long runs/bikes and he opined that unless one goes for more than 2 hours, just eat some fig newtons during the exercise. Of course, bikers, with their fancy shirts, have all the room in the world to store newtons. My shorts have no pockets, so I really don’t want to think about eating newtons stuffed in my socks!

I also bought some gels for the next long run. I’ll give the body glide a try tomorrow and give you a report.

I realize that I have been starting my runs too cold and too fast. Halfway into the run, I would be depleted of energy and suffer. I slowed down, watched my heart

Today’s (Thursday) run was great. I decided to follow heart rate only. First 2 miles I did not let my HR get above 80%. The last mile I picked it up and in the last ½ mile was at a fast pace and then afterwards was hardly spent at all. The funny thing is my HR on the fast last ½ mile barely got above 90%. I realized I have been starting out TOO TOO fast and losing all energy by mile 2 or 3. Of course, my time was high (38 min) for 3.1 miles, but my energy was great. I’ll follow this strategy for the 6-miler on Sunday

I am also finding out that the generic HR max formula (220-age) is not applicable to all people. I did some tempo stuff on Thursday and it got to 103% of my max, but I felt no effects of that—i.e. I didn’t feel I was about to explode.

So I am assuming my max HR is more than 180.

It has been a while since my last post, when I was on the high of running with some really nice guys. Two weeks have past and I have had some nice runs with them, but I need to back off a bit from the group runs. While running with them has pushed me to a faster pace, I also feel that it is pushing me too far to a faster pace than I should follow at this time. They are good runners, who have been at it for a long time. I, on the other hand, am I a novice still getting his “sea legs” in running, if you will. Sunday was tough. We met at 7 and ran into a couple of triathletes who wanted to run with us and take us through some trails near our health club. Although the triathletes said they wanted to run slow, they set a quick pace and I found it hard to keep up. I was overstriding and running faster than I should have and I turned around and left them after about 2 miles. I ran the two mikes back to the car at a much slower pace. I was also suffering from a very tight right shin, the product of overstriding and a strength imbalance between my calves and my shins. This hurt me all week, which was supposed to be an easy week on my marathon training plan, of nothing more than 3 miles. My shins did not hurt, mind you, but the muscle around the right shin felt very very tight and it was hard to stride properly. I felt like I had dead legs all week. Three miles felt like 6, and I struggled all week to complete them. My pace has been the same, but my body has fought just to keep up.

That said, I am laying off running for the rest of the week (I am writing this on Wed.) and will start back on my miles on Sunday with a 5 miler. In the meantime, I’ll do some non-running cardio, such as spin or elliptical, and work the weights, which I haven’t been on in about two weeks.

I am now five weeks into my marathon training and can run 4 miles easily. 5 with a little effort, and feel encouraged by my progress and need to stop comparing myself to others. I run MY race, MY pace, MY time. That’s the new motto–or one of them at least. I run a six-miler in another week. We’ll see how that goes.