I love Cookie Dough too much...

Urgh. My wife asked me if she needed to do an intervention due to my cookie dough consumption. Seriously, I have really been pouring in the sweets the last month. So much so that I got on the scale for the first time in a month (I usually weigh everyday) and I have ballooned to 251.7 lbs!! I was down at 235-237 in late September. As I said, Urgh. That means I have gained about 15lbs of weight in a month. That can not be healthy. I went from burning a ton of calories and tracking what I ate to sitting at my computer all day everyday, not exercising and eating as much food as I could get my hands on.

This shall now stop.

By the inspiration of Carolina John over at Smoke Training I too am getting into the Racing Weight mentality. Thanks for the inspiration John! I purchased racing weight a few months ago, and followed it for a couple of weeks and saw tremendous results. So I am now doing that again.

However, there is a bigger issue here. My lack of balance has gone on unchecked and that is the real culprit. If I swing from cookie and sweets eating couch potato to uber veggie marathon man, I think I will loose weight, but not solve my long term issue.

Maintaining balance between recovery, family, work, training, rest and fun has been impossible for me the last few weeks. As I return my activity level and calorie consumption to it's normal amounts, I will seek methods to find and maintain the balance I so desire. If any of you have any suggestions, please share.

Thanks

My first 50 mile ride

Urgh. That pretty much sums up how I feel right now. I just got back from my first 50 mile bike ride. I whipped up a smoothie, settled into my favorite chair, and uploaded my workout data from my Garmin 305. Now I can share my pain with all of you, my faithful blog followers, and yes I know who both of you are.

I rode over 40 miles once, a couple of weeks ago. It was nice, but I rode on the Swamp Rabbit trail and the trail is flat, well as flat as you can find in upstate South Carolina. Even then, I could tell my bike endurance significantly weakened after about 35 miles. Well today's ride was more challenging. I have a 20-25 mile loop that I have been riding for the last year. When I used to do the Saturday morning group rides from the Carolina Triathlon Shop on Woodruff road, this was basically the loop we took. I like it as it is scenic and mostly on rural, low-traffic roads.

So my brilliant idea was to simply do two of those loops or some derivation thereof to get in my mileage goal for today. I knew that it would be tougher than the Swamp Rabbit trail ride because this loop is all rolling hills with some short steep climbs. Nothing that a seasoned rider would have any trouble with, but still tough for this 240lb newbie.

So I knew it was going to be challenging going into it, but I made it more challenging than it needed to be. First I did not eat anything this morning before going for the ride. I usually don't eat before my morning workouts, unless they are over an hour and a half, and since this was a 3 hour ride, I should have eaten something before starting. Also, I have been pushing my legs harder this week than normal, so they legs were already tired.

Well I must have looked pretty rough around mile 46 because a bicyclist going the opposite direction asked me if I was going to be OK, with a serious look of concern on his face. I said yeah, and that I was just tired. I think he wasn't used to seeing someone on a road bike riding up a hill at 5 mph, but at that point in the ride that was what I was doing. I tried to not push too hard on the first loop, because I wanted to ensure that I would finish the ride, and not decide to cut it short. I was determined to get in 50 miles today. I have planned on getting that mile stone for some weeks now, but I kept cutting the previous rides short. I did not really care how slow I was today, as long as I got in all of the miles, not stopping at 33, or 47, but to do a full 50. Now I can work on making that 50 faster.

Well, my wife is heading to the mall to get more maternity clothes, and my daughter just laid down for her daily nap. I think it is the perfect time for me to take a nice recovery nap as well.

I am in for the Spinx Runfest

Well, I decided to race the 2010 Spinx Runfest Half Marathon. My early season plan was to run the Spinx Runfest Full Marathon with my wife, Karina. It was going the first full marathon for each of us. Alas, we were also trying to get pregnant, and the full marathon was a backup plan in case we had not gotten pregnant by then. Well, she is due to have our second baby in early February, so us racing the full will have to wait. I plan on doing a full marathon, but I think it is best if I wait until I can run one with Karina.

After last week's break through race I have been reevaluating my race schedule for the fall. I still have the Beach2Battleship HIM race as my 'A' race, but I also want to see how well I can do in the half marathon. The Half Ironman is on November 13th, and the Half Marathon is on October 30th. So I don't think the events are too close together or that the Runfest race will hurt my performance in the HIM.

I found a nice training plan in Runner's World, and it fits perfectly with the time I have left before Runfest. The plan was a 10 week plan and the first workout was the day I decided to use that plan. So basically I replaced all of the run workouts in my half Ironman training plan with the run workouts from the Runner's world plan.

The runner's world plan is to help a runner finish the half in less than 2 hours, but my goal for the race is to finish in less than 2 hours and 10 minutes. I am trying to do the workouts, and so far (three workouts) I have been able to do the work. The Runners World plan has 2-3 days of rest or cross training each week. I don't think the plan writer envisioned the plan to be used as the run portion of a triathlon training plan, but who cares. I think it will work. I enjoy the running most of all three sports anyway.

The work outs I have done so far have been an "easy" 4 miles at 10:30 pace on Monday, a 5 mile tempo run on Wednesday, and another "easy" 4 miles at 10:30 pace today. Monday and Wednesday workouts were done on the treadmill, where as today's run was done outside. Fortunately I already have a 4 mile out and back route from work, so that was easy. I struggle to maintain a consistent pace on the road, especially with hills. I guess as I loose weight the hills will become less of an issue. I think I will use the treadmill for the speed work though because it is easier to set targeted pace on the treadmill.


I am enjoying the running for time now. Though my legs were significantly tired after my tempo run, this perspective will help me to get faster and make me run harder, and the running harder will help me to lose weight. I will keep everyone informed as the training plan progresses as to how well the 240lb triathlete can keep up with the sub-2-hour-half-marathon training plan.

Paris Mountain 7K Trail Run

Saturday morning was the Xterra Trail Run Series - Paris Mountain 7k Trail Run. It started at 8am, and the temperature was not that bad. The humidity was 100% though because it was raining all night. The trail was a little muddy and had some standing water in places, but hey this is a trail run. There was only 357 feet of elevation gain according to my Garmin, but this was a tough run. My weight for this race was 238lbs. I did not "train" for this race though; instead, I have been working on my Half IM training instead. I have added in a Friday Night Trail Run on this trail though, so that counts as race specific training I guess. I wanted to try to hit 50" on this race, and I barely missed it, finishing with 50 minutes and 30 seconds. This gave me a average pace of 12 minutes per mile.

Later that day, my 1/2 IM training plan called for a 2 hour ride. My legs were pretty shot after the race, so I only did 1 hour 37 minutes of easy riding for a total of about 25 miles.

Here are a few photos of me from the race:



and one of me finishing: