Second to last taper run

I did 4 miles at race pace yesterday. It felt really good. Not too much leg pain, just a little pins and needles here and there. Energy felt good. I have 1 more run on Thursday, and then the race is Sunday.

Cathy is a miracle worker

Man... wifey worked on my calves yesterday and I feel soooo loose today. She's got some freaky knot radar or something and zooms right in on each knot in my muscle. Then she makes me cry a bit. Then the muscle feels awesome!

I told her if she can keep my legs in top working condition until Sunday, I'll let her share in the victory of finishing the race :)

Confidence....waining...

I went out for my last long run before the race, and only made it 4 miles. After 4 miles I had noticable pain in the right calf. I've been massaging and stretching, and it feels better, but still. I'm wondering how I should finish out this taper. Take it easy, run a bunch, I don't know. What's more important, keeping up a running base, or getting a good rest? I'm going to seek advice on the forums and we'll see.

Nothing like a shot to the confidence with less than a week until race day.

Sucks.

In the taper, so far so good

I'm tapering this week and next. Here's the current plan:

Saturday: 8 miles
Monday: 4 Miles
Wednesday: 3 Miles
Thursday: 2 Miles
Sunday: RACE

Ok screw calorie counting

Whether I eat healthy or not, I can never get a handle on calories unless I eat only boxed food and weigh and measure everything.

Yesterday I know I had 200ish calories for breakfast and 600ish for lunch. Then I think I had 1100ish for dinner. So 1900ish on the day. That's a fine number, but was it 1840? or 1950? or 1925? It doesn't really matter, but if I'm not exact then what's the point? I good just as easily decide under 2000 is a "good" day and over is a "bad" day, and just put good or bad on the log. It'd be just as accurate, and a WHOLE lot easier.

Grr...

On a plus note, I'm down a couple pounds this week. We'll see if it holds. I really think after the race I will be able to run daily, which will help greatly. At this point, being 2 weeks out from the race, that is the sole concern. I'll start worrying about weight loss and whatnot on May 5th. For now, I need energy, and I need to not be injured.

Counting Calories is tough

A lot of places don't post calorie counts. There are quite a few ???? days in my log; some of those are really high calories, some aren't. I may eat very healthy one day, but can't button it down to a calorie count.

I guess it doesn't matter because I'm still not losing weight. Hopefully I'm getting close to the land of daily runs. I really need the daily calorie burn. After the race I'm thinking I'll start 4 mile dailies and see how it goes.

On a plus note, I made it through a 10-miler on Saturday. That puts me fairly confident for the race in 2 weeks.

8 Miler Done!

Woot! I made it 8 miles on Saturday. It was VERY tough. Diet be damned, I need to eat carbs on Friday night or these long Saturday runs won't work. It's not like I didn't burn 1400 calories on the run anyway.

2 Saturdays left until the race. I'm 50/50 on the confidence. 8 was DAMNED tough. 5 more on top of that would probably not have been doable. We'll see. For those reading this that are scheduled to be my cheering section, at this point I'm still planning to run it. I'm shooting for 10 miles this saturday. If I get that done, I'd say the race is on. If not, then I'll assess during the following week.

Sorry to be so wishy washy, but I'm VERY unsure of my abilities at this point. I have a good run, and the race is ON! I have a bad run, and I start to think maybe not...

Ok, we're doing 10-day average weights

I will now report a 10-day average weight. If I'm losing weight, this will always show a little high, but at least it will absorb some of the daily fluctuations.

My first 10-day average is 194.15. Not what I wanted to see, but oh well. I wanted to "kick it in gear" this year, and so far I've managed to gain 4 pounds. That's the wrong direction yo!

I'll keep you posted.

Calorie Tracking

It's way too cumbersome to update this blog all the time with my calories per meal. I'm going to keep that data on my own (in a little notebook) and just add my daily totals to the workout/calorie tracker at the bottom of the blog.

Much easier *thumbs up*

My weight is officially TBD until April 15

I'm running a 15 day floating average program for my weight now. The day to day fluxuations are killing me, so I'm going to run this program to neutralize them. After I get my first 15 day average, I'll will start updating my weight based on that.

Ignore my running guy progress bar for now too.

Stay tuned.

Ok, time to count calories to figure out the problem. Perhaps I'm missing a lot of calories or something

I'll put a weekly diet counter thingy on here and fill it out every day.

Ya know... I don't think I can take advise from anyone on weight loss,

because everyone has a different opinion.

For everyone I find that says "Eat more, you're in starvation mode" I can find another that says "You're just on a Plataea, increase your exercise or cut more calories".

Drives me batty, man!

I just started lifting. I running longer distances now. I'm going to see where this takes me in the month of April.

Weight Loss Woes

So I'm told that the reason I haven't lost any weight in the last 8 months is that I'm not eating enough, however damned counter-intuitive that seems.

Everyday I do
Breakfast - 360 Calories
Lunch - Around 500 Calories
Dinner - Around 800 Calories

For a total of 1660.

I guess I'm supposed to be getting more like 2200. I'm going to try
Breakfast - Around 600 Calories
Lunch - Around 1000 Calories
Dinner - Around 600 Calories

We'll see if that's the secret. I REALLY want the scale to be in the 180's. It pisses me off so bad that I got down to 190 on the button, and can't get 189 to show up.

I'm also increasing my exercise now that I'm lifting and running longer distances.

I still have 20 pounds left to meet my goal of 170, and only have 4.5 months left to do it. Whatever I'm doing now obviously isn't working, so I'll "suspend judgement" for 1 month to see if it breaks this losing streak.

The Quest Continues

The quest to be blister free continues. I have reblistered the left arch over the old one.. fantastic.

Here's something I noticed though. When I land on my right foot, it's a solid landing. When I land on my left foot, my foot rolls over the arch until the toes touch down. It almost feels like the arch is too high in the left foot and is preventing my heel and toes from touching at the same time. I kind of "teeter totter" across the arch. Basically...I'm trying to figure out why my left foot is plauged with arch blisters, but my right foot has never had a problem. Something is different between them. I'm going to remold my left insole tonight and see if that helps.

This is freaking annoying, that's for sure.