Getting ready for the Eugene Marathon - which is this weekend

Just a quick note.

My hotel for this weekend sent me a confirmation that I have my rooms for two nights.

I also have received an email from the folks at Eugene Marathon with my bid number, which is 149. Wonder how I got such a low number? They say there will be over 6,000 people running the marathon this year, how cool!

According to the race organizer, you will be able to log on to www.eugenemarathon.com and be able to keep track of my progress through the race.

What has been going on with my fitness

A week from tonight I will be in Eugene hoping to get a good nights rest for the Eugene Marathon. I am very nervous about this, but I am also confident that I will finish it.

I am still losing weight steadily, but I am definitely trying to curb any weight loss, or at least keep it to a minimum. But, I am also struggling not to gain weight. See, I am used to eating 2,500 to 4,000 calories a day, depending on my workouts. However, before a marathon you taper your workouts, which is basically under training so your body is well rested for Marathon day. But, this means my calorie requirements are closer to 2,000 to 2,700 calories a day. So, I am having to be careful to watch my calories.

I am down to 221 pounds, but I have been trying not to lose much or any weight lately. I am asking a lot of my body by asking it to do a marathon and I am not wanting to ask it to lose weight aggressively, and run 26.2 miles. It is not a good idea at all.

Overall, I am feeling good, my body is feeling right, my legs are feeling fresh. However, I am already looking past the marathon, and I have a definite plan for this summer. It is too late to do anything big on the bike, like a double century, and I am not sure I want to do Seattle to Portland again anyway. I am going to work on being faster on the bike and on the run. I have a pretty good pace on the bike. Over the long haul I can average pretty good speeds, but I can't sprint on the bike to save my life. I just don't have that "top end". The same goes for my running, but I am a slow runner all the way around.

For the summer, I am planning on running two to three times a week, and riding three or more times per week. I am planning to run a half marathon at least two to three times a month, training runs, not showing up at races. The other days I am going to work on intervals and and overall increase of my pace and running economy. Two of my co-workers, David and Tim, are going to be doing track workouts every Wednesday at Dunniway Track and I am going to join them.

For the bike, I am going to be doing hill repeats and intervals at least one day a week, and the weekends will be doing 50 to 75 mile training rides.

The end goal is I will get faster, but I will also be within reach of doing any standard distance race, bike or run, and be able to perform at a respectable (to me) level.

My goal around these would be to do a half marathon race at 1:50 or less and for a bike race, I would like to actually contend for a top ten finish. I can do bike races and I can do well wen it doesn't matter, but I have no finishing power, and that is what I am truly looking for.

Oh, and on top of that, I want to drop to below 200 pounds by end of the summer. Ultimately, I want to get down to 195 pounds. That will be 100 pounds lost, which I think would be a cool thing to say. Once I get there, I am going to try and love weights, or at least tolerate them. I want to get my upper body built up a bit so I don't have a wire thin upper body and massive legs. I am not looking to get huge, just to have a well rounded body.

Why it is hard to be me - Sort of

Okay, first lets get one thing off the plate. Mom went back in for more cancer checks today and she now has an official-official clean bill of health!

So, I am starting to track my calories to make sure I am not eating too much or too little. Too much and I am going to gain weight, too little and I am not going to lose weight because I will put my body in to starvation mode. Another thing with too little or too much is your body does not perform at it's peak.

I have the weirdest problem, when I am working out, I have a really hard time getting in enough calories because I tend not to get too hungry most days. So, today I ate what felt like a ton! Here is what I ate.

Breakfast: 240 calories

• 2 protein breakfast bars

Mid-Morning snack: 461 calories

• 1 apples worth of dried apples, all natural (thank you Trader Joe's)
• 1/4 cup of high Omega Fat trail mix
• 2 ounces of turkey breast meat
• 9 cherry tomatoes
• 1 banana

Lunch: 432 calories

• 2.5 ounces of turkey breast meat
• 8 cherry tomatos
• 3 pieces of fiber rye wafer (no yeast, very low carb, high fiber)
• 1 bowl of healthy choice clam chowder.
  

Afternoon snack: 402 calories

• 1 ounce of honey spread over 3 pieces of fiber rye wafer
• 1 fuji apple
• 1 banana
• 1 strawberry fruit bar, all natural

Dinner: 965 calories, I was way behind on calories, had to force myself to eat big

• Foot long sub from subway (Turkey and Ham, no condiments)
• 16 ounces of Orange Juice (Usually would not have OJ, normally I would have something else, but I chose this as it was calories and no caffeine)

Okay, I know some of my friends and family would say everything on this list was disgusting! However, that is not the hard part. Not one thing crossed my lips today that did not taste good. Well, actually, the OJ was way too sweet for me.

For me, the hard part, I felt like I was constantly eating all day! It was too much damn food, but I was trying to actually hit my calorie goal.

I ate 2,540 calories, and I was still 225 calories short of my goal, which was 500 calories below my calories burned number. I burned 3,265 calories for the day after you include my daily calorie burn and the amount of calories I burned on my run today.

So, I am just bitching that I feel like I am almost force feeding myself and I have to eat a ton of food every day. Yes, I could easily get these calories in by adding a ton of carbs or fried foods in my diet, but I am not doing that.

So, it really isn't hard to be me, and I am happy I have my health, and I have the ability to be in this situation. However, today was really difficult to eat enough calories, and I am realizing I am drastically undereating again, so I gotta keep up on the calories. The other problem is now that I am tapering, it means I will not be working out nearly as much, so I have to be careful not to get used to consuming 2500 to 2800 calories a day and then drop my mileage, i.e. calorie burn, and end up gaining too much weight.

The call I didn't want to recieve - again

For a little background, I took mom to an oncology appt late last week to see if she had any signs of cancer. a week before this appointment she had a mamogram done so the Oncologist could review that as well.

The appointment went really well, great doctor, etc. The blood work does not show any signs of cancer, which is great. However, for some reason the damn mammogram has not come back and it has been six days. Mom and I thought, well, if they aren't rushing it back to the doctor, it must not be anything urgent. However, before we left the doctors assistant asked us if we had time to wait around for them to actually get the results back. She called over to the mammogram folks to get the tests faxed over ASAP. After we waited for a while, the assistant told us she has called multiple times but still no dice, but she would call Mom's cell as soon as they had the results.

Well, that ended up being this morning, 10 days later! At 8:30 this morning, they finally called mom with the results. It turns out there were some abnormalities in her breasts and they need to do further tests. DAMNIT!!!

They are getting her in tomorrow to have more tests done, but only a doctor can give her the official results and the technicians can not. We are not sure when she will get official word yet.

Getting this call again, sucked. However, can you imagine what Mom is going through?

Weighing in - end of week 2

Okay, so today is a little past two weeks, I guess it would be two weeks and two days? So, the results are interesting now, and I am not sure how to put this down to paper. You can read the wanderings of a rambling mind I suppose.

Two weeks in, no story of holy cow I lost twenty pounds! Of course, I would have ate 5,000 calories a day to make sure that didn't happen. I am trying to run a marathon and that fast of weight loss would scare the crap out of me. Also, I think that kind of weight loss is seen by very obese people who have a lot of water weight, etc. So, with that said, how am I doing?

Well, I am feeling great! So, we will start with that. My body really seems to be changing shape and I wish I would have taped myself because I think there is a visible change.

So, I started at 230, right? Monday of this week I was at 223.2, but it was the day after my 19 mile run, so you kinda expect to drop some weight after a long run like that, and I think I was mildly dehydrated after Sundays run, and under-fueled. I tried to rehydrate myself Sunday night and all day Monday, I drank a lot of water! After actually get hydrated again, I was at 224.8 pounds, which was also the two week anniversary. That is 5.2 pounds in two weeks, and I changed nothing in my diet, and I didn't even train as much as I wanted to, and I am out of that damn rut of 230! Also, I am at my lowest adult weight ever, even after both Seattle to Portlands.

One big thing I learned, it really does help you burn the calories when you work out! Sunday I didn't start my run until 1 PM, so I had breakfast and a very light early lunch with the supplement for both. On the run, I nailed my fueling plan pretty well, but I found myself bonking at 16 miles. After doing some analysis of my HR and everything, the only logical, yet unscientific, thing I could conclude was maybe the supplements are actually causing me to burn more calories? Enough so to effect my fueling plan. What this means is I will not be taking it on the day of my long runs any more, at least not before my runs. Although, on the bike I would do it and drive myself in to the ground, but that is for the summer. :)

The interesting thing though, my pace for the run was very good for me, especially considering I had a 13.8 mph head or side wind for the first 14 miles before it was finally at my back. My HR was nice and steady, and low, my pace was kicking ass. I was running sub 10's with a head wind that was so heavy I had a hawk flapping his wings damn hard to go barely faster than I across the road from me. That was with a good low HR. So, I also think it has helped me aerobically, possibly, but there are many other factors there too. But, it's claims are weight loss, not supercharging your body. Although they do use all natural ingredients which are wholesome and are good for your body, so anything is possible.

On to weight loss. Like I said if this supplement could get me off this plateau I am having, and I change nothing, I would consider it successful. So, I am down 5 pounds in two weeks and below that 227.2 that I couldn't break for ages. I am very happy with that, and I really do feel we may be on to something good, maybe even something great!!! I sure hope so!