Feb 26, 2014

2014 week 8

Random thoughts about my runs and anything else that comes to mind.

 Here's photos of everything I eat: http://instagram.com/stevetursi

Weight loss contest update. I am in two weight-loss contests right now.

Work Weight-loss contest is in its fourth week and posts results every two weeks: In four weeks I have lost 9.5% of bodyweight. I've officially gone from a sandbagged 316lbs on Jan 24 to 299 on Feb 6 and 286 on Feb 20th. Company-wide positions after the fourth week haven't been published yet, but for members of the office gym I'm in first place and won $25 for it. Woo!

The second one, held at my non-office gym, is in its third week and posts results every week. I'm down another 6 lbs (to 286) but the bodyfat is down only 0.1%. So I'm still not in the top 100 in the country, and I've dropped to 2nd in the location. But Alex is doing great in the weight loss contest: first in the location is 23rd in the country! Had I entered the weight loss contest instead of the bodyfat percent contest, I'd be 5th in the country! (I wonder if I can switch..)


on to my week...
Wednesday Feb 19
So as of yesterday I have managed to run 61.8 miles so far in February. In order to get 100 miles this month (my minimum), I need to run 38.2 miles over the next ten days. With warm weather forcast starting through about Monday, I should finally get to run outdoors again. I don't mind the cold, snow, or ice - but the problem is that all the snow is plowed into the place I normally would run, forcing me onto the middle of the street where cars drive. It's really sketchy. So even though today is the first day of the warmup (it's going to reach 40º!), I still ran inside because not enough snow has melted yet.

I meant to run an hour, but for some reason my energy levels were lower than yesterday. I lasted a half hour, where I ran 3.51 miles.

Thursday Feb 20
Shorts and T-Shirt weather! Sunny and 45º. Perfect! Ami and I ran just under 5 miles at lunch. Energy levels were low. I think I need to rethink the morning smoothie when I run before evening. I seem to have more energy at noon runs when breakfast doesn't spike insulin. There was a day last week where I had a salad for breakfast and I felt like I was on fire at the noon run. Something to experiment with and think about.

Friday Feb 21
Lunchtime Kingsbridge hill climb. 3.6 miles in 37 minutes. Skipped the fruit in my morning smoothie and ran nice and easy (thereabouts 10 minutes per mile on the flat portion of this run) and felt super-comfortable at the end of it. Similar pace in yesterday's run was a real slog, where I did have fruit in the morning smoothie. It's anecdotal and more experimentation is required (particularly to see if I can repeat the slog by having fruit in the morning) but right now the evidence suggests that when I'm on a low-calorie diet where I'm intentionally keeping glycogen levels low, any sort of run on stimulated insulin is going to be hard. One thing I did notice about today's run is that it would be difficult to increase my effort with this diet. I felt like I could have run all day at ten minutes per mile but at 9:30 I wouldn't have lasted 5K. And that's OK, because I don't plan on keeping this diet when racing.

Saturday Feb 22
I volunteered at the Febapple 50m/50k/20m/10m at South Mountain Reservation today. Together with Zsuzsanna we ran the aid station at the start/finish. The winning time in the 50m - 10 hours with a 12-hour cutoff - and the low finishing rate - 7 out of a couple dozen starters - spoke to the conditions which amounted to a foot or two of slush on hilly trails. Actually, in the first lap, it was a foot or two of slush with an ice crust, that people had to break through, and anyone who wore shorts ended up with bloody shins! I swept the course along with my friend Dan, starting at 4:15, and by then it was just tight-deep slush. Lots of fun but very difficult. Took 2:38 to cover the ten miles, finishing about an hour after dark. Fun!

Sunday Feb 23
Slept extremely well overnight, and woke up late because I had 9AM California start for an easy (12 minutes/mile) five laps (15 miles) at Rockland Lake with Ami. I was really beat up.

So this 25-mile weekend was great, because it buttoned up my 100-mile month in February (so much for my earlier concern about being behind the eight ball).

Had a better week in bowling. 169-164-169 for a 502 series. No huge games but above my average in all three. And I broke 500 for the first time in what feels like months.

Monday Feb 24
2.14 miles in 20 minutes on the treadmill. Rest day. This officially put me over 100 miles in February. Also I had a fruit smoothie in the morning and was once again feeling a little tired on this run, though this may just me being beat up after 25 miles this weekend. More Experiments!!

(Actually that was a mistake - this would have been 32nd consecutive..)

Tuesday Feb 25
3.3 miles in just under 30 minutes on the treadmill with the Lifetime Run club. Kind of a "blah" run for me. And since I had reached 100 miles in February by now, I wasn't motivated to go any farther, particularly with another 15-miler planned for Saturday.

No comments:

Post a Comment