Race officially over; with thanks

It's a good thing I started my streak when I did. It's thanksgiving time now, and based on the way I've been eating, I don't think I would have the gumption to start now.

But I have started, and have kept it going. Today will be day 13 and I'm glad I started and continued. One mile a day isn't too much, and I'm enjoying all of my runs a lot more this cycle. I finally had my massage after the cape cod marathon and a half, so I finally "closed out" that race, and can start to enjoy training for something new.

I don't know what that will be yet... Maybe a race each month in 2013? But first, I'd like to get my wife through her first ultra in January. She backed me wonderfully through cape cod, now it's time to back her.

A day off? Didn't seem like it

A good day today. But really really busy for a day off. Got in my run, then an event at my son's school, running around for Cub Scouts, dealing with report card issues, then the actual scout meeting and now I'm at a charity dodgeball tournament. I get more rest at work!

The worst part was when I read an article about people who have to take on 2 roles at their companies when someone else resigns. There was an example of a Chief of operations who had to assume the CFO duties In addition to his own. He complained about having to be at work at 7 and working until 7 or 8 at night, including
some weekends. For me, that's almost every day already, and I'm not on a C-level job. Makes me wonder what hours they work when they have just one job.

Day 4 (but only Blog 2)

Today started well - I woke at 5:00 and was rewarded with a beautiful view of the night sky as I ran my daily mile.  It's an 'off' day for me, but I'm trying to keep a streak, so each day needs to start with a run.  I really do find that any exercise in the morning gives a real boost to the rest of the day, and I find that my stress levels are much lower all day.

The downside of the day happened a few minutes later. as I did my P90X workout, or rather, my half workout.  I haven't done "real" weight exercises in a while, and this workout of chest and back left me in the dust.  Even the pushup sections, which I normally really like, didn't work out so well today.  I'm not getting discouraged, though - I'm on a recovery track after a few months of limited workouts and higher-than-normal stress, and while the path may be painful, I have been where I am going, and I know it's a better place. 

I'm getting ready for yet another busy weekend - with Cub Scout activities on Friday and Saturday, but possibly some time to rest on Sunday, and catch up with my reading (I am WAY behind).  I have to say, I'm looking forward to March, when my Cub Scouts move to Boy Scouts, and I move from leader to just Dad.  I love what I do with Scouts, but after six years of being a leader, I wouldn't mind a break for a few months.

Streaking

So I've started a new project - streaking.  No, not the bit where you run across a football field with (hopfully) just your underwear on.  Streaking as in trying to do something every day, preferably something that 's good for you.  For me, that's running.  I'm going to try to run at least one mile every day for the next 60 days, or at least until New Year's day, which would be 50 days. 

I started yesterday, when I woke up with quite a bit of energy (which was odd given my weekend events), and decided to go for a short run in a dark and foggy morning.  I also have some motivation - in the past few months, I've put on more than a couple of pounds, while training for a marathon and a half that I ran in October.  It's time for that weight to come back off, so I'm also using these 60 days to shed 5-8 pounds.  

At the same time, I've loaded my blog to my mobile, so I'm going to try to do a bit more there as well.  My commitment to my blog has been less than stellar in the past, but we'll see what type of magic I can make happen.

Two days down; 58 to go.

Weighty matters

I went to the track this morning to do some intervals (3 fast laps around followed by one recovery lap), as I try to do about every two weeks.   There were a few other people there walking, including a few who appeared to be exercising to lose weight, a goal I am very familiar with.  Seeing them walking made me think about my own transformation, and my obsession

I .....   was never a small man.  There are a few dates and weights that stick out in my mind very clearly.  Junior year in highschool, when I found out that I weighed more than 200 pounds.  October 1994, when I lost a bunch of weight to get to 225 pounds for my wedding.  January 3, 1996, I weighed in at 264 pounds, at the start of a 'biggest loser' contest long before they were popular.  April 1996, when I lost nearly 30 pounds in that contest (but still lost).  September 1998, I was back to 249 pounds, and started Weight watchers.  A year later, I was back down to 225 for the first time since that wedding 5 years earlier - this was the start of my running career.

Skip forward to 2006, and I remember weighing in at 200 pounds after years of struggling in the 200-210 range.  In 2009, I dropped to my lowest weight ever, at 182 pounds.  At my height, I would hit my non-overweight BMI of 25 at 177 pounds; I never made it there.  But I was in size 33 jeans (after wearing 42-44 in high school and college, and never thinking I would be out of the 40s) and still felt great, even after putting on a few pounds. 

Then I returned to the US from my 5 years overseas.  And that's when the weight came back on.  It wasn't long after I returned that I was back in the 190's, and then the high 190's.  I actually have records going back to about 2003 with all of my weekly weigh-ins, but only in the last two years have I kept a detailed spreadsheet (with graphs!).  200 pounds was my Rubicon - I abjectly refused to get above that weight, and came close more than once over the past two years. 

Why did this happen?  My guess is that suddenly, I was able to get to my comfort foods, many of which were processed, sugary, claimed to be low-fat or low-sugar or high-fiber, all of which I wanted, but I forgot that to minimize fat or sugar, you have to add more of the other to make food palatable, and my calorie intake still increased.  Overseas, we had less access to that, so we ate more 'real' food, and kept caloric intake down as well.  It also helped that we walked and biked a lot more when in Shanghai than we do here - it's just not feasible where we live.

So why all of this data?  It's my obsession (admit it, you have one too, right?  I'm not crazy or weird?)  My weight maintenance is a big deal to me, and it's just as much about feeling good and being healthy as it is about looking better.  I'm really much happier when I'm active, and on a good diet, and have the energy and flexibility and strength to do active things with my family.  It's why I run, lift weights, walk, and try to get some degree of exercise every day.  It's why I started Project 31, because that daily reminder of exercise helps me to keep my eating in check - it's too much work to lose weight, and I'm reminded of the required work all of the time.

And yet, project 31 isn't kicking in the way I wanted.  It's probably just because this week was the wrong week to start - my schedule is chaotic, the demands on my time are high, and my days start very early, so morning actions are a bit harder. 

After nearly touching 200 pounds again as recently as April (at the END of a biggest loser contest, believe it or not - I GAINED weight), I decided to get really serious.  I've been strict on my diet for a month (which has certainly helped me) and my running has kicked in hard, so I'm down eight pounds and header further down.  Yes, I weigh in every day, and maybe that's not healthy, but I also use that to track my water loss on my runs, so there's another reason. 

It's my problem, it's my obsession, but ultimately, it's my own life I'm helping.

One week down (and out)

So today was supposed to be day 8 of Project 31.  So much for that.  The only thing I've learned so far is that it's really hard to start a new habit, even one that you've been slowly creeping into for months.  Requiring yourself to do something that's new every day takes more getting used to than I appreciated.

Granted, this may not have been the best time for me to start, but I had to start somewhere.  Day 4 (Wednesday) was a holiday, and I fell out of my normal routine, so I 'accidentally' skipped for the day.  That's okay - happens to everyone, right?  Well, Day 6 wasn't better - I only did half the pushups I needed to, and didn't do any ab work at all.  Day 7?  I don't remember day 7 well at all, but I'm quite sure nothing was done.  Now I'm here on day 8, with no pushups to my day, no abs, no pullups, and this is my blog post for the day. 

So what else have I learned?  1) get your mandatories done in the morning - by the time noon hits, my schedule is too chaotic.  2) recruit some team members - my son will now join me in pullups, so maybe they'll get done.  3) Blogging at the end of the day dilutes my creativity - that should also happen before lunch.  4) I need more sleep.  :-)

So today is Day 1 again.  Project 31 starts over, and I bet that if I start now, I can get some abs done before I go to bed.  Just as soon as I finish this one other job....oh, and that one....and I need to get milk....and, oh dear.

Just (barely) getting it done.

Took off for the 4th of July, but did all my stuff today.  Even did the 10 pullups straight (which I never do).  Now on to 15 minutes of reading before bed.

Day 3- Not quite there yet

So today is day 3, and I woke up thinking I would go for a run and do my daily exercises in the morning before things got too hectic.  Got up, went on what became a really slow run, and got back to the house just in time for a shower before my first conference call.  That ran 1/2 hour long, so I headed right out to the office to put in a full day.  Wrapped up as early as I could and went home to spend a few hours with my family.  As soon as I walk in the door, I remember that I didn't do ANY of my new habits today.  *sigh*

So now it's almost 9:00 - I've got 70 pushups and 10 pullups done, and I need to do the rest on a tired body.  I also doubt that I'll get that daily phone call in, given that it's late, and I will need to stay awake long enough to read.  New habits just aren't that easy.

But I'm going to stick to it, and try to make my habits morning habits.  In theory, I'm more awake then, and also more likely to do the things I want to do.  I'm a late-day fader, so if exercise isn't done by 6:00 in the evening, chances are it won't be done at all. 

As an aside (or really a big thing), I'm signing up for the Cape Code Chowdah challenge in October.  It's a half marathon on Saturday (which my wife will also do) and a full on Sunday.  It's crazy, but I ran back-to-back 11 milers last week, and that went fine (the second was better than the first).  After this past weekend, I realized that I MUST EXERCISE EVERY DAY in order to keep my legs in shape.  After two days of not running and not walking any distance, my legs today felt like dead weight.  If you learn something every day, that's my thing for today.

Day 2

.....Not much of a post tonight either, as it's been a long day at work, so let me tell you this.  Project 31 is going to be my attempt to develop a few new habits:

- 100 pushups a day
- 100 situps a day
- 10 pullups a day
- Read for 15 minutes per day (pleasure, not work)
- write one blog post per day
- (already broken) talk to a member of my (extended) family every day.

That's right - it's day 2, and I've already broken one of my new 'habits'.  *sigh*.  it's worth doing, so I'll see if I can start that day 1 tomorrow.  After all, it takes at least a month to develop a new habit fully.  I wouldn't be surprised to see this become project 91 after a short while. 

Project 31 begins

Today, I start a new project. A daily habit project in which I commit to doing a series of things every day for a month this is based on project 365 which I heard about on the run run live podcast. I am including a daily blog in my list, even of I have to do it on my iPhone like now. Situps, pushups, Pullups, blogging and personal phone calls are on my list for his month. More tomorrow when I have a real keyboard

Triathlon: Season 2

I'm at one of those times when I think I have too much going on in my life, but I forget how blessed I am to have the time and resources to do the things that I can do.

This weekend was the Pawling triathlon, which I ran last year for the first time, and I ran this time with virtually no training.  I literally rode my bike once in the past three months, and got in the pool to swim a 1/2 mile once last week.  I went in with low expectations, and wasn't disappointed.  The night before the race, thunderstorms rolled through town, and the rain came and went in the hours before the race.  We started with dry skies, but the rain started as soon as I was done with the swim leg.  During the entire bike leg, it rained, and it rained HARD.  By the time I was done with the bike, any time target was out of my mind, and I was just there to enjoy the race.  The run went well (it's on my twice-weekly course) but I finished one minute longer than last year, at 1:30:41.

I don't much care about that, and I can blame it on my transitions, which cost me an extra two minutes this year.  I decided to change my socks and shoes during the 2nd transition (bike to run) given how wet my shoes were, and that extended my T2 time.  I really had a good time, and enjoyed seeing lots of spectators that I knew - there's not much like a hometown race.

I went right from there to a Cub Scout trip to the USS Massachusetts, where half my pack stayed overnight on board a battleship museum.  The boys all seemed to have a good time, but I think the adults all wished for a bit more sleep.    This is the first of four campouts in five weeks with Tim, , and it made for a decent start; let's hope the rest of these go as well when we are out of doors

On other fronts, my weight loss program isn't going great.  With Kristen away for two weeks, and some busy work scheduled, I haven't gotten into my P90X as much as I wanted to.  That said, those are excuses; I need to get my butt in gear and get myself down to my target weight (or at least start making some decent progress). 

It's time for me to start setting my rules, and my pace.

Post-marathon Blues

#7 is in the can - my 7th marathon was completed on Sunday, May 6th, and it turned out to be better than I thought.  I went into this race a bit undertrained (no mid-week long runs at all!) and expected to finish in about 4:35 - 4:40, but finished up in 4:25:27, and actually felt really good when I was done.  I walked far less than I had expected, and had a steady (and controlled) pace for the first 20 miles.  In short, a decent race on it's own, but I was even happier given my expectations.

Since then, however, I've had the blues.  That's not unusual for me after a race, so I'm not taking it all that seriously, but it's still a bummer.  I think it's the lack of exercise for the past few days, combined with my stagnant (increasing?) weight.  I can only blame myself for that latter bit - the week after the marathon often includes a celebration, but I bought myself a few extra weeks of high intensity workouts before I hit my weight goals. 

They say one way to beat the blues is to set new goals - that part's easy; I set those goals BEFORE the race.  I'll run a triathlon in four weeks in my town, and I've started the P90X program to build up some strength (especially upper body) and hopefully do some body reshaping.  I'll need to get back on the bike and in the pool; all told, I'll essentially need to double up my workouts for the next 60 days.  If I can keep my diet under control, it could be a great couple of months.  One pound a week of weight loss would be an awesome accomplishment, and would have me where I want to be by Independence day.  The key is daily discipline, and I need to focus on that.  It's not the 6 month plan, the 3 month plan, or the 1 month plan.  It's today, it's this week, it's making the time and doing it when I don't.   The phrase of the week was "A month from now, you'll wish you had started today".  Rather than wishing, I'm hoping to be thankful that I started today.

Training Update: Down, but am I out?

It finally happened this week.  After 13 years of running, I feel like I may have had my first serious injury.  It happened on my Friday run, just a twinge of pain in my left knee toward the end of a 9-miler.  I didn't think much of it for a few hours until it started to ache a bit more.  At that point, I poked and prodded a bit, and found that the pain was in one very small place on my knee.  Thinking it was something minimal, I did what every runner does - I ignored it.

It didn't get better.  Friday night, I felt pain every time my knee was pressed flat against the mattress, and on Saturday, that really small spot had grown into a line across the left side of my knee.  I began to worry more, about my long run on Sunday, and also about the marathon I am to run in two weeks.  I made the mistake of telling my wife, who then alternated between "Don't stress too much; it could be nothing" and "Boy, this marathon could be a complete blowout for you".  Ah, the love of a good woman *sigh*.

Sunday, I was filled with trepidation - My long run was to be 13 miles, and I woke to a sore knee again.  Would I be able to finish the run?  Would I do more damage to it, and actually worsen the situation?  Would I wind up walking 6 miles back to my car if I followed my planned run on a flat out-and-back course?  At least the last one I could control, and I changed my route to allow me no more than a 2-mile distance between me and my car in case there was real trouble.

I can say that I didn't feel any pain as I started to run....at least no pain for the first 300 yards.  After that, the (clearly injured) muscle in my knee announced it's presence, and stuck with me for the entire run.  It was a pleasant running partner, keeping me aware of it without yelling at me; just a friendly challenge to my normal Sunday stupor.  I normally listen to a few podcasts during my runs; today, they only got half my attention.

I found that running on level ground was OK, running uphills was good, and running steeper downhills was ... unpleasant.  They're normally my best friends, but I guess even best friends have a falling out once in a while.  After a few miles, where the pain got no worse, I decided to stick it out, and use this as a chance to develop my mental toughness. 

So much for that.  By mile 8.5, I knew 13 was out of the question.  My mantra had gone from "Believe and Succeed" to "Rest, Ice, Compression Elevation", to which I added "medication".  Just past mile 9, I was within sight of my car, but turned left instead to finish a 10 miler.  By know, the pain was more pronounced, and I had the start of what would become a limp later in the day.  The good news: once I stopped running, the pain receded.  The bad news: it came back not long after, more than a little miffed at me for having roused it from slumber.  I wished it back to sleep, but as yet, it's still crying like a baby (and so am I).

It's early yet, so I'm going to try to stay optimistic.  I will rest and take my runs more easily this week (I am tapering after all), and do the RICE techniques that I need to (but don't want to).  I have two weeks to get healed, and no expectations or targets about this race - if it takes me 5 hours, that's fine by me.  If I have to bail at the 1/2 marathon turnoff, then this just wasn't my race.  I'm not going to drive myself into the ground for one race that I KNOW will not be a PR.  I'm in this for the long haul, and if DNFing saves my legs for the rest of this running year, that's what I will have to do.  Let's hope it never comes to that.

For those of you following Tim's training - he's joined a running club, and is now running a few times per week.  He's also got big brother Ian running, who's already seen some pretty significant improvement.  I'm not pushing either boy into running, but Tim seems to like it with or without me.

Training Update - April 15th

Today was a tough day, but really, it caps off a tough couple of weeks, both physically and mentally.  Today, though, was my last long run before the NJ marathon which kicks off in three weeks.  22 miles on really flat ground to train for the terrain.  After my performance, I know that I'll finish the marathon in a decent time, but more likely 4:35 than 4:20.  Hey, that's okay - I am undertrained for this race, and have been so since taking a new job at my company.

On the other side of fitness, I've started doing P90X, the overall fitness and buff-building program.  I've only done a few sessions, and those only at half-seriousness, as I would prefer to wait until marathon training is done before engaging in something that promises to make me sore every day.  I did do a session of Plyometrics, and was still sore four days later. 

One neat thing is that one of my sons, Tim, is actually doing the P90X workouts with me.  Yes, he's doing very light or no weights, and he sits out the exercises he doesn't want to do.  And yes, he's going to get bored and stop very quickly, but for the moment, I have his attention, and we've found another thing we like to do together.  He is also a runner, like Mom and me, and has a very curious and inventive mind (hence my expectation of his boredom).  I have more adult conversations with him than with many of the real adults in my life.

So, three weeks to go, wrap up this marathon, do 90 days of a new exercise to help drop that 15 pounds I need to drop (from 198 to 183 if you're keeping track), and then I'll start training for something seriously stupid, like the Chowda Challenge.

A quick shout out to Chris Russell of  the RunRunLive Podcast for using Tim's submission in this weeks episode.  Chris is running the Boston Marathon this Monday, after a long absence due to injury.  He DNF'd at his first race but plans to do an Ironman Triathlon later this year. Me?  I think he's nuts, but he's my kind of nuts.

Well, so much for being more consistent with blogging.  The first three months of 2012 have been really really busy.  Work has been hectic at times, and I've been trying to exercise more, run a Cub Scout Pack and Den, and keep my sanity.  It hasn't been easy, and frankly, sleep has been more elusive than I would prefer.  Conditions are changing, though, and the weather is warming up, so 2nd quarter looks brighter.

Today was the Danbury 1/2 marathon, my second race of the year, and the one that puts my racing plans back on track.  I've decided to cut down to 2 marathons this year, but I may take my crazy to a new level, and run the Cape Cod Chowder Challenge, in which I run a 1/2 marathon on Saturday, and a full marathon on Sunday.  It's not until October, so I have time to make that decision.

Today's race was a good one, and I finished in 1:58:48, about 4 minutes longer than last year, but about 7 minutes faster than my (admittedly light) goal for this race.  My training for my first marathon this year (May 6 - New Jersey Marathon) has been really poor, with very light mid-week runs.  My long runs have been okay, but my pace has been slower than last year, so I don't think there will be a PR at the marathon distance this year.

On other fronts, my weight is down  about 6 pounds of the 10 I'm trying to lose.  I'm about to start the P90X program to see if a change in routine will be enough to spark a faster weight loss and help me develop more strength and endurance.  We'll see how that goes. 

I'll also have more soon on other topics, including Scouting, politics, the state of the race for the presidency, and some thoughts on the macroeconomic conditions of the US and the world.  I'm now setting a goal of blogging at least once per week, so I'll have to talk about more than running.