Carbs...ugghhh

For the past month, I've been trying to stick to a low carb, high protein diet. This was in response to two things. After hitting my goal weight last fall, I've pretty much been in maintenance mode. I tried a little bit during the winter and early spring months to lose a little more weight but didn't really get anywhere since I was also eating for my Blue Ridge Marathon training. With the marathon out of the way, I felt I could be a little more aggressive with dieting. I also noticed, especially during April, that even though I was staying within an acceptable range of my goal weight (basically goal +5 lbs), my weight was always at or above that goal and I'd rather be bouncing both above and below the goal. The other goal though is to get my body fat percentage down a little bit lower than where it is. Which means trying to get my body to burn more fat.

Everything seems so compressed

As I have alluded to in a couple previous posts, I have resumed my marathon training post-Blue Ridge Marathon. This round is a bit different from previous training plans though. The reason is because the next marathon I plan to run is the Bethel Hill Moonlight Boogie Marathon on June 10th. That is only seven weeks after the Blue Ridge Marathon, meaning I have a short turnaround time. I decided to give this a try because running marathons in such close time will be a new challenge for me and this was about the closest I could find to something I could fit into my schedule.

In the past, for all of my running events, I have used full 16-week training plans. That includes last year's half marathon, the Rocket City Marathon, and the Blue Ridge Marathon. In addition to the full training plans, I also had some time after each race before the next training plan started during which I was just trying to maintain. With only 7 weeks between events, I am having to modify the training plan to fit in the time available and I had to pretty much jump right back into training right away.

Mental focus and the big picture

Yesterday when I weighed myself I discovered I had gained 3.5 lbs. This was on the day following a new low weight for me and despite eating essentially the same thing I eat every day for the past 2 weeks and total calories for the day being well below maintenance levels. I pretty much have to figure this is all water weight (or the low from the previous day was due to some dehydration) and my body trying to compensate for possibly being dehydrated and slightly undernourished the day before.

It is in these situations where dieting gets to be a real challenge. Despite what appears to be a setback, I have to mentally tell myself to stick to the plan and let it work. One way to do that is to look to the ongoing trend and where it is heading. In my case it is still downward overall. Even with this apparent setback, I'm still down from just a couple weeks ago when I started my latest weight loss efforts.

Highs and lows in a single week

The draft of this post has been sitting in the queue for a few days and before I get too far behind, figured I better just push it on out whether ready or not.

Last week was technically a recovery week for me after completing the Blue Ridge Marathon on April 22nd. In the past, I always took a good week for recovery including 4-5 days of no running. However, I have plans to run another marathon in June with only seven weeks separating it from the BRM. Which means I have an unusually short training window. This will be my first time running an event with less than the full time available for a regular training regimen. So even though it was a recovery week, I could not back off too much as I need to start building back up fairly quickly. Look for an outline/discussion on the training plan I put together (maybe sometime this weekend).

A Tale of Two Times: Post BRM recap

Gathering for the start of the Blue Ridge Marathon

On Saturday, April 22nd I completed my second marathon, the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Marathon in Roanoke, Virginia. The BRM's claim to fame is that it is America's toughest road race due to 7,430 feet of elevation change over the course of the route. Now that I have completed it, I have to say any descriptions they provide about the hills and elevation change pale in comparison to what the actual experience is. As I noted on social media after completing the run, it was "stupid hard". Prior to the event, I was hopeful that my training had put me in a position to improve on the time from my first marathon. How did I do? Read on to find out.

Marathon Training plan #2 complete

Graph of average speed for my runs with an Excel generated trendline.

When I launched this new blog a few days ago, I mentioned on social media that it really did not make sense since I barely have time to get done the things I'm already doing, so adding a new blog may not be the smartest move. In any case, wanted to squeeze in a quick post before the weekend as I will be rather busy running the Foot Leveler's Blue Ridge Marathon. At this point, I have completed my marathon training plan for this marathon and just wanted to provide a quick recap.

The plan started back on January 3rd as I followed a 16-week plan. It was structured on an intermediate plan from Jeff Gaudette and RunnersConnect. I got hooked up with Gaudette via his plans in the Runkeeper app. Unfortunately, Runkeeper made some changes to their app so I could not use his plans any longer. I had used them previously for a 10K in March 2016 and then my first half marathon in August 2016. That actually turned out for the best as after some research, I found resources he provides on the web and was able to use those to craft a plan for the Rocket City Marathon I did in December 2016.

The Starting Line

Waiting at the starting line of the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL - December 2016.

Not sure why I haven't done this sooner, but I am starting up a blog dedicated to my running "hobby". I say hobby since I am most certainly not a professional runner. Running probably does qualify as a hobby for me though since I continue to do it even though I managed to achieve some major health goals - including losing a bunch of weight - last year. I considered just doing entries on an existing blog I have that covers all kinds of topics, but figured I might try one that is dedicated to a single subject. Even that may be stretched a bit though as I expect to touch on topics like nutrition or technology to go along with the posts about runs and running.

As I write this (which may not coincide with when I finally publish it), I am just over a week away from running my second marathon. I'll probably write a separate post about that in the coming days. For now, I just needed to get a blog entry done to get things moving around here. I hope you may bookmark this site and check it every now and then. I'll commit to trying to keep some fresh content rolling in on a decently regular basis.

In the meantime, this first post is the equivalent of me standing at the starting line ready to go racing.

Thanks for reading!