Goal accomplished...

Which one? I'm sure you'll figure it out quickly.

This morning, my wife and I decided to go for a run. We moved our long runs to Friday because we both generally have more daylight hours available to do a run on Friday's as opposed to Sunday. We set out with the intention of running double digits. My longest run until this morning was 10 miles.

We walked out the door a little late. I left not feeling very good. My stomach was in knots. I tried to eat this morning because I knew I'd need fuel for the run. Bad idea, apparently. We brought a little bit of food (Shot Blocks and Gu Gels) with us. I was hesitant to put anything else into my body other than water for fear of making the stomach ache worse, but if I needed energy, I needed energy.

As we approached the starting line, I decided that today was the day. The first Elicker Superfluous Half-Marathon. Why that name? Because I didn't map out a 13.1 mile route. We just ran, zig zagged up and down streets, and ran in cul-de-sacs. Thank God for Garmin watches.

We set off, and I didn't have my normal pep in my step, so to speak. I imagine it was the stomach ache, but who knows. My legs felt ok, but I didn't feel like an athlete. I would say that I leave on about 30% of my runs feeling AWESOME. Today wasn't one of those days even though I was hoping real hard that it was. Oh well.

I decided that a 12 minute mile pace would be comfortable. I mean, lets be honest... I only started training for this run 8 weeks ago. That's not a lot of time to go from struggling to finish a 4 mile run to a half-marathon runner.

We're fortunate to live at the top a "hill." The beginning of our runs are typically down hill for at least a quarter mile. It gives us time to warm up and what not. Today, I would say that the first mile and a half were mostly down hill with the exception of one larger hill that we ran up. If it wasn't down, it was certainly flat. Great warm up.

Mile two comes and I hit a wall. Not hard, maybe we'll call it a fence. It's not a high fence. In fact, I feel like I'm just about over it, but as I'm coming down the other side, my shorts get caught and now I'm hanging off the side by my underwear.

As it goes, my wife and I never have a good run on the same day. If she's struggling, I'm feeling fantastic. If I'm struggling, she's killing it. Today was one of her days.

By the time I finally got off the fence, we were about three and a half miles in, and running down hill again. I know this isn't going to be a great day for me. I'm barely a quarter of the way through this thing and I've already hit one wall. In order to add some distance, we went to a small park with a running loop that we've done before. I hate this park. On the plus side, there are water fountains and I need to fill my bottle up.

At about mile 6, I realize that my shorts are falling off my butt. These shorts are wrestling shorts that I got in high school. Junior year. That means they're about 8 years old. They have no elastic left, so I just use the string to tie them tight and keep them up. But the knot is impossible to get out! I had to stop running for about a minute to get the knot out, otherwise I'd be running with a water bottle in one hand, and my shorts in the other.

When we started up again, my legs felt like they'd gained 100 pounds a piece. I've heard people say that their legs felt heavy. I'd never had this experience before. Today I got that experience. It's horrible. Luckily it only took a quarter mile to get the lead out.

The rest of the run was relatively uneventful. We added chunks of road here and there. I ran out of water and one point, luckily we were only about a mile from that park, so we went back there, I filled up my bottle again, and we got back to it.

At this point, we're guessing about distances. I'm trying to look at the watch and figure out where we need to go to get our 13.1. We ran the park loop again, then a loop around the local high school. As we turned on our last mile home, we realize, we're just about exactly a mile from home. We've taken this risk before and ended up short of our goal distance. I'm not about to let that happen to me today. Once I'm home, I'm home. I'm not turning around to get an extra half mile, and there's no way I'm gonna go back out in the next few weeks. I'm feeling pretty horrible at this point. There's another really small park on the way home with a gravel running path, so we did that.

On that path, I ran out of water. My hamstrings started to burn worse than anything I've ever felt before. My calves were also on fire. I punched my water bottle out of frustration knowing that I was only about a half mile from finishing. I sped up to just get it over with, but I didn't have it, so I slowed down to a crawl again. At this point, I'm extremely frustrated thinking that I may not finish this thing. And I'm so close I can almost see the finish.

We have two turns left to get onto our street. I'm a quarter mile away from being done, and I'm cramping up big time. I wait for the first turn, then I put my foot on the gas. I'm not in a sprint by any means, but my pace is back up. I turn the second corner and spot a speed limit sign. I run to it, look at my watch. 13.01 miles. Not yet. I look for another land mark. Another sign. I run to it, look at my watch. 13.06. Damnit! Ok, one more. A tree this time. I figured something organic might help. 13.10.

I did it.

Tears start rolling down my face. I can't control my emotions (If you were at my wedding, you know this runs in the family). My wife is telling me how proud of me she is. I have to bend over to breath I'm so choked up at this point. But I did it. In 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 33 seconds. 11:11 per mile. I blew away my 12 minute mile goal. I did it.

Start of Week 8

It's time to reanalyze what I've been doing to myself these past 7 weeks. I only have about 6 weeks left to the end of my second 90 days... and I haven't lost hardly any weight. 252 this morning. I am happy that my yo-yo has stopped, but I'm sabotaging myself. This is my M.O.

The first thing I noticed is that I'm drinking more alcohol than I need to. That stopped over the weekend. I even considered packing up all of my liquor for the move (in 4 weeks), but I decided that I wanted to test myself.

For those of you who don't know, I'm a Behavior Specialist. Granted, I work mostly with autistic and ADHD kids, but I should be able to analyze myself, right? Half right. I needed some help from my better half. She told me that she doesn't think it's a problem drinking issue as much as an impulse control issue. Perfect. I have my finger on it now.

I had to take a look at myself in different aspects of life. Impulsive? Me? Heck yeah. I'm totally impulsive, especially when it comes to consumables. One of the biggest issues for me with consumables, is that if I see something I can put in my mouth, I want to eat it. Or drink it. If you've ever been to my apartment, you know that our pantry (a book shelf, really) is wide open. If I walk from the living room to the kitchen for a glass of water, I have tons of food staring at me. It's easy to grab a handful of anything... dry cereal, pretzels, chips, a bag of popcorn to pop, candy, nuts....

Now, that's not all horrible for me to eat. But it is when I do it 3-4 times a day when I shouldn't be. I'm not adding up the calories because it scares the hell outta me to see how much I eat and don't really think of as a snack. Especially because I usually plan a snack or two during the day and eat that in addition to all of the extra food I've eaten.

I've got to control myself better. How will I do that? Here's the plan...

I'm going to start using FitDay again. This is a website that you can use to track calories in food. It's got loads of stuff in it already, but you can also add your own custom foods. I've used this in the past to track calories so I could lose weight and it worked. The best part is that it shows you a nutritional breakdown between carbs, protein, and fat. It also shows you a vitamin breakdown.

I used a website to calculate how many calories I should eat in a day. Freedieting.com has a calculator that shows you based on height, weight, gender, and amount of workouts you do per week how many calories you should consume in order to maintain, lose fat, or "extreme fat loss".

There are a few different formulas for this calorie calculation. I've used the Harris-Benedict formula in the past. This calculation shows me that I can eat 3500 calories to maintain my weight. 2800 is fat loss and 2100 is extreme fat loss. A new formula that I haven't seen before is called the Mifflin-St Jeor. This formula shows me 3187 for maintenance, 2550 for fat loss, and 2016 for extreme fat loss.

In the past, I have gone below the extreme fat loss numbers in order to lose weight quickly. It works, but only for so long. Crash diets suck hard core and cause relapse. I'm trying to change habits here, so we're not going for the super extreme fat loss tricks... I need it to stay off. I'm going to aim for somewhere between 2000 and 2500 calories per day. This can be a struggle sometimes, but I'm determined to get some more weight off before the move. I'd love 10 pounds, but I'm going to hold my breath. I'd be ok with sitting comfortably in the 240's.

Also, I have only lost 7 pounds so far in this 90 day challenge, but I'm going to post side by sides to see if there's a difference... I don't see much, but a little bit in the back and maybe in the stomach.