Why I Want to Lose Weight

I just got these pictures from the Bison Stampede. My gosh look at those thighs! They were all taken after I pulled my calf. You can tell by the straightened right hand which for some inexplicable reason made it easier to force my gimpy right leg along by pumping that arm furiously with my hand chopping at the air.


The next one is me rubbing my right hip/ass because the way I was running made it hurt.


The last one is me hobbling across the finish line and desparately looking for a place to sit down.

By the way, the spandex shorts aren't a fashion statement or anything, merely a concession to the realities of having 30" thighs attached to a 36" waist. From the waist down I'm built more like a linebacker than a runner and if I wear regular shorts on a long run then the insides of my thighs get rubbed to the point of bleeding.

On The Road Again

At the gym on Friday I tried running on the treadmill. I made about 3 tentative strides before I stopped because of the pain in my calf. But on Sunday I managed 3 very comfortable miles on the track with just a hint of sensation in the calf near the end and a little soreness in the afternoon. This morning I did six hilly miles through the neighborhood without any discomfort or pain so I think that the calf is well on its way back to full health after only a week of layoff. It's funny that after only a week off my legs felt really dead yesterday and today even though I was training in the gym.

As a sign of faith that my leg would heal quickly I signed up for the Dallas Marathon on December 10. So now I have one more week of regular training before I start the pre-marathon taper. I signed up for Dallas so I could get two marathons in this season. Depending on how I feel and what the weather is like I'll either use it as a long training run or try for a good time. If everthing isn't perfect then I'll just take it easy and finish. I just want to get some more experience at the distance before the Austin marathon in February.

Injuries To Lose Weight?

I was a little disappointed about my injury during Sunday's race spoiling what I was hoping to be a huge PR (personal record). Given the amount of initial pain I was also worried about how it would affect the rest of my marathon season. Immediately after the race I started applying RICE therapy to the injury (Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation). I augmented that with regular doses of ibuprofen as an anti-inflamatory. I took Monday and Tuesday completely off except for short, hobbling walks with the dogs. On Wednesday and today I went to the gym and worked out on the recumbent stationary bike and elliptical trainer to maintain cardio fitness. I've also kept the calf wrapped in an ACE bandage. I'm happy to report that as of today I can walk without a limp and the calf is just sore, not painful. I can even raise up on my toes as long as I do it slowly (no jumping, running, or stairs yet). I suspect that within a few days I'll be able to resume running. If I can run without pain then I should be able to get back to a normal running schedule.

Going to the gym has reminded me how useful and effective the bike and elliptical trainer are for training when you are suffering from injuries. That helped me to decide to renew my Gold's Gym membership for another year. I think that I'm going to start doing some gym workouts to my weekly schedule, probably on "rest" days, to augment my running without adding any more pounding. Last year knee and hip pain had me doing very little running and yet I was able to actually improve my race performances with little more than regular gym workouts on the elliptical.

I was also surprised to weigh in at 223.4 this morning. At the start of my latest diet (10/11?) I weighed 231 so this represents a substantial loss. So far it is just a trough and my average weight is probably still around 227, but I think I've finally scaled the calories back far enough and consistently enough that the weight is starting to come off. I'm not really even dealing with many hunger pangs or cravings any more. The worst is first thing in the morning and right before bed. Other than that I'm just constantly eating healthy stuff each time I feel hungry during the day. I'm still hoping that I can get down to 210 my the end of the year which is beginning to look like a stretch. Dietpower is currently estimating 222 but that will change if I can continue to follow its advice.

Why Thanks For Asking

You know, I was ready to accept yesterday's calf injury as just one of those things that happen to 42 year old men that write checks that their body can't cash. Then someone asked me what I thought I did wrong. Had I ramped up my mileage too quickly? Was my body overtrained?

At first I was taken aback. What!? Me? Nope. I did everything right. Then I started explaining my program and what great care I've been taking to ramp my mileage slowly and give my body plenty of time to recover after ramping up mileage or after running hard. And as I confidently described my program I kicked myself as I realized that I did NOT follow my program last week. In fact, I made what I realize now was a critical mistake with perfectly predictable consequences.

Here's my program. It revolves around a weekly long run on Sunday that is done at an easy pace. I started out at 10 miles and added one mile a week until I worked up to 16 miles. After that I would only increase the mileage one mile every other week and on the other week would run less than the previous week. This created a cycle of one week with slightly higher mileage than two weeks before followed by a week with lower mileage to allow my body to recover.

I take Monday completely off as a rest day and then run on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday is always done at an easy pace to allow my legs a chance to recover from Sunday's long run. On long weeks it is a short run of 3-5 miles. On short weeks it is 6-8 miles. Wednesday and Thursday are quality runs run at a harder pace. The quality runs are either tempo runs, long runs with accelerations, or interval workouts at the track. After two hard days I take Friday off to let my legs recover. Then on Saturday I do a short, easy run of 3-5 miles depending on how long the next day's long run is going to be.

So, what did I do last week? I ran 14 miles on Sunday which is short for me since my long run is now 20+ miles. But I missed my Tuesday run because I had to get up at 5:00 am to go to San Antonion and watch my sons perform in the state marching band contest. Since I didn't get home until late I didn't get up and do my Wednesday run either. I was worried about missing over 10 miles of running and how that would affect my long-term fitness so I decided to do my planned Tuesday and Wednesday runs on Thursday and Friday. I ran 7.5 miles on Thursday at an easy pace. On Friday I did a short interval workout at the track with two easy miles followed by two hard 800 m intervals at 6:40 pace and an easy cool down mile. It all seemed reasonable. That way I'd only be missing the 7 mile run that had been planned for Thursday that was supposed to include accelerations. So, I figured I'd actually be doing less than I planned and I'd be fine for Sunday's race. In fact, when I went out for an easy 3 mile run on Saturday I felt great. I felt even better on Sunday morning for the race. I felt perfectly rested and prepared.

So, you can see where I screwed up, can't you? I ran three days in a row without a rest day in the leadup to a grueling half marathon. One lesson I learned is that you can't always feel the accumulated damage and micro tears in your muscles that accumulate from training. Despite feeling great, I'd torn down the muscles without giving them sufficient time to repair and rebuild themselves. Instead of coming to the race with strengthened muscles, I'd started with muscles that were on the edge. That's why my training plan calls for planned rest days at regular intervals and regular easy weeks.

Lesson learned? It's better to skip a planned run than a planned rest day. I violated the one rule I've been trying to follow this year: train to rest. In other words, train hard so that your body can rebuild itself stronger when you give it sufficient rest.

The good news is that my calf is feeling much better today and I'm not limping so badly.

Live Bookmarks

Have you discovered live bookmarks yet? I don't know if Microsoft Explorer supports them or not (I just checked and I don't think it does) because I use Firefox because it is superior in all ways to Microsoft's outdated little web browser. In Firefox, when you are browsing a blog with an RSS feed (don't worry if you don't know what that is) you'll see an icon at the right end of your address bar that looks like an orange speaker. Click on that and it will pop up a little box titled, "Add Live Bookmark." Just click okay and let it create it in your "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder." Now it will show up in a tool bar under your address bar and when you click on it, it will show you the titles of the most recent posts on that blog. That allows you to quickly see if the blog has any new entries without having to actually go there. You can put all of your favorite blogs there and quickly scan through them. Try it and I promise you'll like it.

If you're afraid of using Firefox, don't be. It will automatically import all of your Explorer favorites and can peacefully coexist with Explorer. Plus it has some cool new features such as tabbed browsing and live bookmarks that will make your web browsing a much nicer experience.

Stomped By a Calf at the Bison Stampede

Short version. Everything was going spectacularly until just after mile seven when I felt a pop in my right calf and simultaneously a pain in my right hip followed by an excruciating pain in my calf. This was followed by 6 miles of pain and a slow finish. Still I finished. My time was 2:09:53.9 which is an average of a 9:55 pace. Not bad since I ran the same race in 2:09:41.0 last year without an injury.

Mile 1: 8:34.3 avg=158 end=157
Mile 2-3: 17:10.3(8:35.1) avg=162 end=161
Mile 4: 9:05.8 avg=162 end=165
Mile 5: 8:44.6 avg=167 end=175
Mile 6: 9:46.5 avg=169 end=172
Mile 7: 9:51.8 avg=170 end=167
Mile 8: 10:32.6 avg=162 end=159
Mile 9: 10:25.9 avg=154 end=166
Mile 10: 9:02.7 avg=163 end=161
Mile 11: 9:46.1 avg=164 end=142
Mile 12-13: 25:52.0(12:56) avg=142 end=158
Mile 13.1: 1:05.8 avg=160 end=161

Longer story:

I woke up at 5:15 am and checked the weather. The temperature was a crisp 42 degrees which rose to a perfect 49 degrees by the race start. The race started at 7:30 and I quickly settled into a comfortable pace and was pleased to see the first mile go by in 8:34. Mile 5 included a long steep downhill followed by the beginning of the first steep hill and I was surprised that the two averaged out to an 8:44 mile. The next couple of miles were just survival but as I crested the big hills in the middle of the course my legs recovered almost instantly and I was able to pick the pace back up. The big hills were followed by a few small rollers and while I was going up a small hill my calf suddenly gave up the ghost. It was really strange because there was no warning, no tightness, and no soreness. I was just running along trying to keep up a good pace and as I my right foot landed, bang!

It hurt so bad that I considered dropping out of the race but if I didn't finish then I'd be out of the distance challenge. So I walked along to see if it would loosen up. The pain in my hip made me wonder if it was actually the calf muscle or it was referred pain from my sciatic nerve. I tested it out by starting a slow jog. I was limping but I was gradually able to pick up the pace and smooth things out. By mile 10 I was back down to a 9:04 pace and I was at about an 8:40 pace when I hit a gentle rise right before the 11 mile marker. Even though it wasn't even a hill the extra stress was too much and the calf suddenly exploded in pain again. While I was stretching out on the sidewalk a policeman came running up to make sure I was ok. I must have looked like I collapsed.

With two miles remaining I couldn't run any more. It felt like I had a steak knife stuck in my calf. It was really frustrating because otherwise I felt terrific and I was so close to the end and if I could only get jogging again I could still beat my time from last year. But when I tried running again the pain was too much. I simply couldn't raise up onto the ball of my foot. But I figured out that I could lock my ankle with the toe up, rotate my leg outward, and jog along without using my calf. It still hurt but it was manageable. I hobbled over the last couple of miles at a ridiculous pace but I finished.

So now I'm barely able to walk and wondering how long it will be before I can run again. I don't think I did my calf any favors by running 6 miles on it after it pulled. I'm pleased at my conditioning and my pace for the first half of the race and am quite confident that I could have kept it up for the whole race, but I'm bummed about the injury.

Watch Out for the Bison Stampede!

Tomorrow I'm racing in a half marathon, the Motive Bison Stampede (linked in the title). My last race went really, really well and for some reason that has made me really worried about the race tomorrow. I averaged 8:35 mile pace in that 10 mile race and based on that a pace calculator predicts that I should be able to run the half marathon (13.1 miles) at an 8:38 pace.

By comparison, last year I ran this race at a 9:54 pace. Have I really gotten that much faster? I'm having trouble believing it, but today I ran a couple of laps at 8:40 pace and it was very comfortable. So I'll find out tomorrow.

One notable feature of this race is a HUGE hill at around mile 5 that is very steep and about a mile long. A half mile later there is another good sized steep hill. Half of the race is still left after those hills and the danger is that you kill your legs on the hill and suffer for the rest of the race. At the bottom of the linked map is an elevation profile that shows the hills. The key to this race is the hills between mile 4 and mile 7. The rest of the race is pretty smooth.

I get a lot of experience running hills in my neighborhood. A lot of people make the mistake of leaning back when going down hills to control their speed. This has the unfortunate effect of pounding your legs and killing your leg muscles. The right way to run down hills is to lean forward and try remain relaxed and smooth while controlling your pace. This allows you to pick up your pace without much additional effort. Going up hill isn't big mystery. You lean forward slightly and shorten your steps to try to keep you leg turnover up and try not to have a heart attack.

My my plan is to run 8:45 pace for the first 4 miles, pick up my pace down the big hill at mile 4 to keep my heart rate up, keep my heart rate below 175 going up the next two hills, and then try to run an even 8:40 until mile 10 after which I'll try to finish at around an 8:35 pace.

It's been hot this week but a cold front came through last night and cold air has continued to blow into the area. The predicted low tonight is 35 degrees so I think that conditions for the race will be close to perfect for me. I've read that 55 degrees is the ideal temperature, but I've had my best performances in the low 40s. I think it's because I'm fat and have more insulation. Anyway I'll probably be running in shorts and a long sleeved technical shirt with running gloves and a hat.

Useless statistic of the day: I ran 696 miles in 2005 and have run 810 miles so far this year. At least that is what my Nike running log says.

The Boys Went to State

You can click on the title of this post for the official results.

11/15/06: I updated the link to take you directly to the 5A preliminary results. The boys belong to the Cedar Park High School band which finished 20th in the preliminaries.

Kicking This Off

I kind of like the blog format so I'm starting a blog so family and friends can drop in if they wonder what I've been up to. This will probably be pretty boring, but if you're wondering what I'm up to check here.