Let's Do This. Again.

Now that the Marine Corps Marathon is behind me, it's time to get a grip on things again. You'd think that training for a marathon would really help you lose weight, but... apparently not. Many runners have told me that it's hard to lose weight when training for a marathon because of the hunger. It hits so hard sometimes that it feels like you'll never bee full. However, most of these runners have faster metabolisms than I do... and aren't 30-40lbs overweight.

I realized a little too late that I was taking this training as a license to eat. I didn't think I'd even be able to gain weight while training as much as I was. I was wrong. I gained a solid 8-9lbs over the last month or two. I'm not overly upset about it, but I'm certainly not happy about it. But it's a wake up call. I need to monitor my calorie consumption better.

It is time to start all over. I'm going to start from scratch with a whole new set of goals. I feel like I need to start off slow and go with an 8 week plan this time around. Here are the goals...

Running
My wife and I are tentatively planning to run the Ocean Drive Marathon in March. Our training starts this week, as we are 20 weeks out. Luckily it starts relatively slow so we don't completely burn out by race day. Our current training program calls for 4 days of running and a cross training day. Because of my new job in PA, we'll be resting on Monday and Friday to accommodate for the 2.5 hour drive I'll be doing on those days. I will follow this program at least 6 of the 8 weeks. I will make exceptions for bad weather (for example... blizzards or hurricanes) or injuries.

Water
I've realized that I'm not drinking as much water as I should be. Again. I have been drinking plenty of fluids, just not the calorie free, hydrating, kind of fluids. Too much beer, too much soda, too much Gatorade. I'll be drinking 80oz of water, minimum, every day, for at least 50 of the 56 days.

Calories
I need to get my calories back under control. I'll be eating between 1928 and 2485 calories per day 6 out of 7 days per week. I'm going to also add four days for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and Man Weekend (something I planned with my brother). That gives me 44 days out of the 56 total. I'll be using LoseIt.com to track my calories. On days that I exercise, I will be allowing myself extra calories to accommodate for what I burn. I will take 1/3 of the calories I burn and add them to my budget for the day, if I need them.

Weight
I want to be able to lose an average of 1.5lbs a week, so I will be shooting for a 12lb weight loss. I currently weigh ***.*lbs, so my goal weight for December 30th will be ***.*

Pushups
I found that my upper body was getting more flabby during the last training cycle. To combat this, I plan on working my way back up to a 50 pushup set. I will be using an app on my phone called "Pushups." It's similar to the hundredpushups.com program, however, when I tried this app last time, it felt better than when I was using the other program.

Here is how you'll see me tracking my goals on the side bar...

Running: 0/6
Water: 0/50
Calories: 0/45
Weight: 0/12
Pushups: 0/50

Because of my work/travel schedule, I'm not sure when I'll be updating, but I hope to find a time that works out. I'll post links on facebook when I can get something written up.

Marine Corps Marathon 2012 Race Report

Before I begin, I need to thank all of our service men and women for all that they do for our country and what they do to protect our freedoms. Without them, we would not have the privilege to run the marathon’s that we do, to train like we do, speak as freely as we do, or quite frankly live the way that we do. For that, I sincerely thank all of them for everything that they do to protect us and our way of life.

I also want to make a disclaimer. Details of this weekend and particularly the race itself are fuzzy in spots and I don’t have a great memory of where things occurred. All mile markers/locations may not be accurate…

Back in March, when my wife and I were seriously discussing running a marathon for my first time, I signed up for the Runner's World message boards and started posting in a forum dedicated to the Marine Corps Marathon which was the marathon that we were looking most closely at at the time. The group of people posting on that board have become very good friends of mine, two of them I'd met in person before traveling to DC for this marathon, and many of them I got to meet for the first time the night before/morning before we started running.

On Friday night, my wife and I took our dog, Yahtzee up to PA to spend the night at my dad's house. He had agreed to watch Yahtzee for us for the weekend. We woke up very early and drove down to the DC Armory for check in and packet pickup. We got our bib numbers and then went in to the expo to get our race shirts and look at all the cool stuff that different companies were selling. We didn't feel like we needed to buy anything, but it's nice to see what's out there.

When we were done, it was only about 11:00am, so we called my wife's parents who were down in DC for the weekend to watch the race/sight see to meet up with them for lunch. My father in law had actually volunteered to work the finish line aid station for the marathon. We hopped on the metro and met them down town for some Mexican food (maybe not the best idea before a marathon, but it was well balanced and delicious). When we were done, we got back on the metro to go back to the Armory because we'd left our car there. When we stepped onto the metro, I heard a girl say my name. When I turned around, it was one of the girls who posts on the Runner's World forum. We'd met before for drinks once in Philadelphia. It was shocking to see her there... I knew she was running, but what are the chances that we'd get on the same metro? Anyway, after she got her packet and went through the expo, my wife and I drove her over to a party for the forum members.

We spent some time at the party and I finally got to put some more faces and voices to some of the names that I see every day. At around 5:00pm, we had to leave to get to church and then went back towards our hotel in Alexandria to check in and get dinner. When we were done eating, we laid out all of our race clothes and double checked our bags to check for after the race. When all was set up, we got ready for bed, set our alarms, and passed out.

Sunday morning was pretty much a disaster until we arrived at Runner's Village. My alarm clock didn't go off (thank goodness that my wife had set one that worked!), we were late leaving the hotel, and we got off the metro at the wrong stop so we had to wait for the next train to come by to take us one more stop. I guess there's a difference between Pentagon and Pentagon City stops. Who knew? We know for next time at least.

Once we checked our bags at the UPS trucks, it was time to meet up with more of the Runner's World folks. One of them made a sign that said "FREE NACHO'S" on it so we could find each other. It was no problem to spot. We got to meet a few more of the people who we didn't get to meet the night before at the party. We chatted for a little bit, and then it was time to get in our start corral and get started.

The start of this race was absolutely amazing. They played the National Anthem, of course, but we also had an Osprey flyover and the start gun was a howitzer! When the howitzer fired, it was a little anticlimactic. Not because the shot wasn't awesome and loud, but because we didn't go anywhere. With 30,000 runners registered, it took us about 15 minutes to cross the starting line. Once we started running, it almost ended too quickly when my wife nearly face planted. She wasn't sure if she caught a toe, was tripped, or what, but she nearly hit the ground... hard. When that kind of thing has happened to her in the past, she usually pulls a muscle or strains something, but she didn't have any problems as a result of the trip. We took a deep breath and carried on.

At around mile 3 or so, we spotted two runners from the Runner's World forum. Athena and Post One. Post is an active duty Marine stationed in Germany. He came back specifically for this race and carried the Guideon of his unit for the entire marathon.

We made our way over to Athena (not pictured) and Post One to chat for a few minutes. The first 8 miles of the course are more challenging than the rest. There are hills that my wife and I aren't used to. I had to ask about them because I knew some of the bigger ones were yet to come. They gave us some encouraging words and then we moved past them in an attempt to find our pace for our goal time of 4:30. Fortunately, the hills didn't feel terrible, but I certainly noted a little pain as we topped the two biggest ones on the course.

Everything was going well, nothing eventful to note, really. We saw lots of people cheering, lots of inspirational runners such as the Marine walking in full bomb gear, a man with a prosthetic leg, many soldiers running in full gear and ruck packs, and lots of folks running in honor or in memory of fallen hero's. We also saw a lot of great signs. I'll list some of my favorites real quick:

• Worst Parade Ever!
• Worst Wet Tee Shirt Contest Ever!
• Run like Sandy is Chasing You!
• Bloody Nipples Are Sexy!
• If This Race Was Easy, It'd Be Called Your Mom.

There were plenty of other ones that I don't feel are appropriate for this blog... mostly because my parents read it.

Around mile 16-18, I hit a wall. Serious dehydration had hit me. Hard. My wife looked at me and said, “You look pale.” I felt pale. I had been drinking Gatorade for the entire run thus far because I normally do better with that than water. It was much more potent than I normally drink, it was also lemon lime rather than orange. I’m not sure if that was an issue or not, but I couldn’t take any more Gatorade. I also didn’t think I could stomach another gel. When we got to the next water stop, I filled my hand held with water and took a gel. I felt better, but still not great. My legs were seriously cramped, so we started to run/walk from this point on.

We were following a 1/5 ratio of run walking, initially starting with a 2 minute walk and 10 minute run, then going down to a 1 minute walk and 5 minute run. The ratio got progressively worse as we got farther into the marathon and my legs cramped worse. My IT band on my right knee was killing me. Every time we started to “run” again, my legs took a good 100 yards to loosen up. I had a fleeting ten second moment of “I don’t know if I can manage to finish this thing” but I moved that out of my mind quickly. 

On route, while run/walking, we ran across my mother in law, unexpectedly. It was very nice to see a familiar face in the crowd, and I have to say, it perked me up a little bit. A few miles later, we came across another Runner's World friend who was cheering from the side line (he ran the Chicago Marathon a few weeks ago). My wife had suggested that we put our names on our shirts so people could cheer for us by name. When the cramping got bad, hearing my name really helped motivate me to carry on. I will certainly be wearing my name on my shirt for any other marathon I run in.

Marine Corps Marathon is challenging for a lot of reasons, but one of the most famous parts of the course is called "Beat the Bridge." The bridge is on 14th street and is at about mile 20 of the course. The race allows you a 14 minute mile average from the time the gun goes off. By the time you cross the start line, that really lives about four and a half hours to make it to mile 20. We were never worried about not beating the bridge, but it was a very nice feeling knowing that, although I still had 6.2 miles to run, I was going to be a marathon finisher very soon. On the way to the bridge, there was a grouper of entertainers banging BIG drums. It was almost tribal. You could feel the beat in your entire body... and you could hear it from very far away.

Once we beat the bridge, I was experiencing some of the worst cramps that I’d had on the entire course. My legs were really hurting… my left calf was balling up, my right quad and hamstring were about toast, and my traps were even sore. I saw a guy pull over and vomit off the bridge. I felt better that I was only hurting… not sick. 

When we got on to the second to last road, the wind hit hard. My wife almost lost her hat. Luckily a guy behind us grabbed it and gave it back to her. I had to walk for a little bit here, despite not wanting to walk anymore. While walking, I said to my wife, “I can’t believe Athena and Post didn’t pass us yet." As we got on the off ramp to the final straight away, I saw Post’s Guideon and Athena running next to it. We didn’t even see them pass us! I told myself that I wouldn’t walk anymore unless my wife asked to. All of a sudden, my legs felt great. I got over the wall, I guess. We turned towards the last aid station and a marine standing before the water tables called me out. He said, “Head up Matt!” I looked at him and smiled. I then looked back at the road and he yelled at me again, “HEAD UP!” I put my head up and told myself to man up. This thing is almost over.

As we got up towards the water station, I saw that Athena and Post had started walking through the water station. I asked my wife if we could try to catch them. At about half a mile to go, we did just that, chatted, got some pictures, and then we had to walk for one last time. It was more important to me to run the hill up to the Iwo Jima memorial at the finish than finish with friends at that moment.

When we started running again, Athena and Post were way out in front of us. We made the final left turn towards the hill and a spectator crossed our path with a stroller cutting us off and everyone around us. SO FRUSTRATING!

My wife and I CHARGED up the hill. I was so proud to pass as many people as we did at that moment. When we topped the hill and ran towards the finish, I grabbed my wife’s hand and held on tight. We crossed with our hands in the air, together, just like we had planned from the moment we signed up. I could not ask for a better training partner, support person, or wife. She is the reason I signed up to run MCM and the reason I finished this whole thing. I love her so much and am so thankful to have her in my life.

We finished in 5:16:30

After finishing, we ran into Athena and Post again. I got to watch Post salute a group of Marines with his Guideon, get awarded his medal, and then get saluted back by all of the Marine’s. He had to leave, so we didn’t get to chat with him much, but we stood with Athena in line to get our medals and finisher photo’s. When you get your medal at Marine Corps Marathon, a Marine Lt. puts the medal around your neck and salutes you. I felt strange being saluted by someone who put his life on the line for me, but honored at the same time. There were a few times that I almost cried on course because of the pain, because I knew I was going to finish, because I was about to cross the finish line, etc... but this part choked me up pretty good for sure.

While in line for our medals, my father in law spotted us from the finishers aid station. He walked over, gave us hugs, got a quick picture, then went back to work.

 I need to quickly thank Athena for all of her inspiration and her awesome photography skills while running. She took pictures while running backwards, stood with us in line, took all of those pictures, and even got this one in front of the Iwo Jima Memorial!

And because she was so heavily featured in this post and was a large part of my first marathon experience, we got a picture with her too.

We are still a little bit sore, even 3 days later, but over the last few days, every time I take a step and my legs almost give out or cramp up on me, I’m reminded of an amazing weekend, and accomplishing something I never thought I’d ever attempt let alone finish… I’m a marathon runner.

Oorah.

Marine Corps Marathon 2012 - Pre Race

It's been a while since I've posted. I guess you could say I've been busy? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I lost motivation to post because things seemed monotonous and why would I want to bore you with the same post every week?

Well, today I'm writing because I need to. For my own sanity, really. This Sunday, October 28th, my wife and I will be tackling the Marine Corps Marathon. For those of you who don't know much about running, a marathon is 26.2 miles. Always. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, "How far is your marathon?" It's 26.2 miles. Just like every other marathon in the history of marathons... OK, I got off track...

I don't know when my wife would tell you she started training for this run, but I have been training since October 7th, 2011 when I ran my first half marathon. The one that I did with my wife around our neighborhood just to see if I could do it. That day, I ran 13.1 miles in 2:26:33 (an 11:11 mile). Since then, I've always wondered what it would be like to run a full marathon. This half marathon was when the seed was planted.

After we moved to NJ, it was time to start thinking about our next running adventure. We decided it would be fun to sign up for my first REAL half marathon. Before it was time to run, we had to make the decision... are we signing up for Marine Corps Marathon or not? The date rolled around and it was time to sign up... March 7th, 2012. The race sold out in record time... 2 hours and 41 minutes. We were locked in.

On April 1st, 2012, my wife and I ran side by side for 13.1 miles through Atlantic City and neighboring towns along the coast. I'd looked into running calculators and talked with some more experienced runners about what kind of pace I could maintain for this distance based on training runs and shorter races that we'd done earlier in the year. I was told that I'd be somewhere in the 2:05 range. I wanted to run it under 2 hours. We decided that it was at least worth a shot. That day we took the starting line and off we went. 1:59:21 (9:06 pace) later, we crossed the finish line.

We took a break for a few months until we "officially" started training for the 26.2 mile distance. Our break meant maintaining some level of endurance... so we ran between 8 and 12 miles once a week (as well as other shorter runs during the week) until it was time to start for real.

The average first time marathoner will follow a beginner program. Most of those programs build to 20 and then taper off for the marathon. But I'm not your average person, am I? We ran 20 miles three times. Between each 20 miler, we took a "step back" week and only ran 14 miles. Except for the weekend when we hopped on our bikes and rode 100 miles.

I have to admit, I laughed a little bit typing that paragraph. "Only ran 14 miles." Like that's some small feat. Let me be honest, though... when you've gone 20 miles, 14 doesn't feel so bad. For me, it's one less hour of running.

Now that the marathon is less than a week away and the last 20 mile run is almost three weeks behind me, I'm starting to over think stuff. How's the weather going to be? Will I be dressed appropriately? Am I going to have fun? Will the hills be too hard? Will my legs hold up? Will my feet and knees be ok?

Here's what I know from past experience. The mind is extremely powerful. So I'm going to answer my own questions... Who cares about the weather? You'll be dressed how you're dressed... you'll be fine. Yes you're going to have fun, no the hills won't be too hard, your legs will do what they're supposed to, and if you're in pain, you'll work through it.

I'll be telling myself those things for the rest of the week. Check back next week some time for a race report... I'm sure it'll be a doozy!

Reflection

I've had a lot of time recently to reflect on my journey thus far. When you run 20 miles, you've got a load of time to get lost in your thoughts. On Friday, my wife and I did our first of three 20 mile runs. During that run, I thought about how far I have come.

In high school, I remember doing Weight Watchers with my mom. Back then, they prescribed 20 minutes of physical activity a day. Yeah. 20 minutes. At the time, I thought it was outrageous. No way could I, at 300lbs, maintain 20 minutes of physical activity a day. And then, everyone started saying that you needed 30 minutes of physical activity a day. NO WAY can I do that! If 20 minutes wasn't hard enough, 30 was impossible.

I spent 6 hours doing cardio over the weekend. Four hours of running, two hours of cycling.

Obviously, I've come a long way.

Progress isn't something that comes easy. It takes a lot of hard work. I believe that's true in all aspects of life, but especially with fitness and weight loss (for me, anyway). When I started running a little over a year ago, I hated it. I learned to enjoy it to a point by setting my goals and working to improve my personal distance and time records.

Ultimately, I set a goal to run a half marathon, which I completed. It hurt worse than anything I'd ever experienced through exercise. My muscles were completely exhausted and my mind was struggling to keep my body going. When I finished, I broke down in tears. Partly from the pain, partly because I was so proud of what I'd done. That 13.1 mile run took me 2:26:33. It was a distance PR, but I'd left myself plenty of room for improvement on time. Right then, I didn't care about the time, I was just happy to have run the distance.

When my wife and I moved to the shore, I signed us up for another half marathon. This one, I was going to train better for. We ran through the winter and we set the goal of finishing under 2 hours. Again, we accomplished our goal. In Atlantic City, we ran 13.1 miles in 1:59:21, besting my previous half marathon time by over 26 minutes.

Next up, Marine Corps Marathon. We're most of the way through our training and things are going well. We had our best long run in a long time and covered more distance than I'd ever thought dreamed I could do. Until recently, 26.2 miles was outside the realm of possibility for me. I'm still a heavy guy, but damn if I didn't just run 20 miles on Friday night. I'm confident that once the weather cools off and the humidity dies down my speed will increase and the distances will be easier to cover. At this point, I feel ready to run a marathon and I'm excited about how far I've come.

So for any of you who think to yourself, "There's no way I can ever make any progress on this exercise stuff." Think about me and what I've done so far. I may still be overweight, but on October 28th, I'm going to run a marathon!

Catching up...

I have a lot of training and experience in the field of psychology. I can help people with a lot of different problems, but I would have to say that I work best in the field of behavior therapy. I started this blog with the idea that human behavior was modifiable through habit change. I still believe this to be true.

That said, I'm really struggling lately to "counsel" myself out of certain behaviors. Is it an issue of willpower? willingness? habits? desire? I'm not sure. I've been trying to work it out in my head for weeks.

When I was working with volunteers to figure out my Wellness Coaching lessons, a common theme for weight loss was willpower. However, I would give them this example for what willpower does for you... Imagine that you took a double dose of x-lax. Do you think that if you had all of the willpower in the world, that you could avoid the inevitable? I doubt it. It needs to be a permanent change.

So far, I've learned to enjoy drinking water. I've learned to eat healthier meals in smaller quantities. I've learned to enjoy a sport (running) that I formerly hated. I'm a more positive person. I'm happier. I'm healthier. However, I continue to struggle with weight loss. 225-230 is a fine weight. Just not for me.

If you ask anyone who knows me very well, they'll tell you that I'm a good talker. I can argue any point to death until I win the argument. Whether I'm right or not. Unfortunately, this "skill," if you will, also allows me to justify pretty much any action that I do as the right thing to do. I also truly believe that I'm right, most of the time. Which makes it really hard to talk myself out of doing something that I shouldn't... you know... since I think it's the right thing to do at the time.

After that long run of 16 miles the other week, I used my rationalized goal to eat extra calories on days when I burn 1500 or more and ate an extra 800-1000 calories. Except I ate junk food. That wasn't the point of the goal. But that didn't matter at the time. I wanted chips and beer and pizza. I said to myself that it was OK because I had the calories and it didn't matter where the calories came from. I was wrong. I gained weight. After a 16 mile run, I gained weight. After running for nearly 3 hours straight, I gained weight. After burning 2500 calories (1000 shy of a full pound), I gained weight.

So what did I do? I had an easy next two weeks for workouts because of an Ultimate Frisbee tournament and a 10 mile beach race yesterday. I took those two weeks off from my goals because I didn't feel like I was working. I had family in town who wanted to take us out for meals, too. But I wanted to go. I wanted to eat those deep fried meals, the french fries, burgers, etc. So I did. I ate and drank whatever I wanted. I did fine when I was at home, mostly... keeping my food in check. But at this point, the damage is done. It's time for damage control.

I'm not going to finish this 56 Day challenge. I need to take some time to reflect. I'll do another challenge down the road, maybe. I had a friend tell me the other day... "don't give up what you want MOST for what you want NOW." I think she hit the nail on the head.

Right now, I need to figure out what I want MOST. I also need to figure out what I'm willing to sacrifice for it. I'm hoping to spend this week figuring that out. A new challenge may be in order to help me stay on track, but for now, I'm putting a halt on this challenge to figure it all out.

Stay tuned. I'm hoping that I can be back on track soon.

Start of Week 3

As many of you know, I am training to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. in October. My wife and I have been building a base of miles since January. Originally, it was training for a half-marathon that we finished in a respectable 1:59:21, accomplishing our goal of a sub 2 hour half-marathon. When we finished that, we took a week off and then maintained our base at around 10-12 miles until it was time to start training for MCM.

Now that training is under way, we're already up to 15 mile runs for our long run. We do a long run once a week, usually on Saturday. Our longest long run will be 20 miles, and we're supposed to do that three times before we start to taper off before the race.

This week, we decided that because it's been so hot when we go out for our long runs on Saturday, and we don't want to wake up with the sun, or worse... before the sun, to get the run in, we'd wait for it to go down. Around 7:30 on Friday night, we hooked up some lights... I put one on my camelbak (basically a backpack for water), and one up on my shoulder. My wife put one on the front and back of her fuel belt. Obviously, we didn't get it by a car or anything. We also didn't trip, surprisingly.

Night runs are super fun. I used to do them in college sometimes. People would bust my chops because they'd be going to parties on a Friday night and I'd be heading out for a run. Mind you, my runs were usually around campus which was about a mile. I'd add a little bit here and there, maybe hitting two miles, so Friday's run was nothing like that.

The temperature was so much cooler than running during the day it was insane. I was so much happier, and to be honest, we both felt so much better running in the cooler 70-75 degrees in the dark than the 80-85 degree heat of the day. We'll probably continue Friday night runs through our training.

We also had a bike ride on Monday where we averaged 19.5mph. It was awesome. I didn't want to leave that tidbit out.

As far as my goals go, I did great with the exercise, I only used one high calorie day, and my pushup regimen is going well. I did 21 pushups in two out of five sets in my last workout. My max when I started was 25. I'm sure I could do more than that now.

The weight is the problem. I can't quite figure it out. I think my body is confused. During the week, my lowest weight was 224 (extreme loss, but I figured it was mostly water weight). I had been steady around 226-228, which would put me on target for my goal. After my high calorie day on Saturday, I woke up at 229 on Sunday morning. Fine, since it was after a meal out, probably lots of salt, holding water... no big deal. but this morning, I was 230.5!

I'm not sure what's going on. I'm going to stay the course. I feel good. I know that this process works, and I will continue to work on it. To be perfectly honest... my scale is from my freshman year of college which means it's a solid 8 years old at this point. I might need a new one. It's sticking a little bit and I wonder if that's effecting the read-out.

Start of Week 2

This week was a roller coaster. I lost a bunch of weight really early on in the week. In fact, I had gotten down to 228 at one point. I knew it wasn't real weight, probably water weight. It was so hot here that I've pretty much been swimming in a pool of sweat since the heat wave came in two weeks ago. I woke up this morning at 231.5 again.

Although I'm not shocked, I'm disappointed at the weight. I should be lower. I know exactly what I did wrong, though. While using my 1/3 extra calories from the longer workouts, I pushed a high calorie day back so I could eat more. So on Friday, I went for a bike ride, burned 1800 calories, ate back 1/3 of them, and instead of having pizza that night, we had salads with chicken on them to stay under my new calorie budget. Pizza was eaten Saturday instead, which really messed me up. Not to mention the alcohol. Ugh. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned. I'll fix it this week. I will not be pushing off a high calorie day because of a workout again.

Last week I did something I've never done before in my life. I ran 14 miles. My wife and I got up at 5am to try to beat the heat, and went out running. I used a hydration pack, she brought a water bottle and some cash. We stopped at a Wawa for some calories and water, then got back to running. By the time we got finished with our half marathon (13.1 miles), we were both really struggling. The heat does terrible things to a run. I finished, not strong, but finished. I thought my legs were going to be shot for the rest of the weekend. However, I recovered pretty quickly.

Saturday morning, I was planning on going out for a short bike ride to work the kinks out of my legs. Once I got going, I was pulling 20mph into a slight headwind. It felt awesome! Until I ran over a nail and punctured my tire. Once I got off, pulled the nail out, and threw it in anger, I realized that I didn't have a spare tube with me. I was able to patch the tube, ride to a bike shop, buy a new tube, and get going again at full speed. Unfortunately, my water was pretty much gone and I didn't have the money to go to a store to buy more, so I went home. I ended up being out for a little over an hour and a half and averaged over 18mph.

I also did a baseline test for my pushups this weekend. I completed 25 with good form. I could have probably squeaked out a few more, but I stopped at 25. I really just needed a number to get me started in the program. I also hit my calorie goal 5 times this week, and completed all of my workouts.

Here are some pictures.

Little blurry on the side picture, but you get the point.

Relaunch - 56 Day Challenge

It’s really time for me to get this going again. I’ve strayed too far. I am pleased to say I didn’t gain much weight, though. I like to think that I didn’t gain because I’ve learned how to eat properly and exercise enough to maintain my current weight. The problem? I’m still at least 30lbs overweight.

My motivation for weight loss has changed. When I started this blog, I wanted to lose weight so that I could play Ultimate Frisbee without getting so winded. I wanted to lose weight because I was ashamed of the way I looked. I also really didn’t want to buy yet another size larger of all my clothes.

This time is different. In fact, ironically, the motivation stems from a very similar place as the original post for my blog. A magazine. This time the magazine is Running Times. The article is called “The Skinny: The simple/complex issue of weight and running” by Rachel Toor.

It isn’t another “how you lose 20 pounds in 3 days” kind of article. It’s more about how weight effects your running speed and efficiency. Rachel begins and ends the article talking about Seabiscuit. Yes, the horse. The owner of Seabiscuit had to decide which jockey to use when racing him and when it came down to it, there was a 3 pound difference. This 3 pound difference of the jockey meant a world of difference. But how? Race horses weigh a ton! Literally! If 3 pounds on a 1 ton animal makes a difference, then what does 3 pounds do to me?

I’m also reading a book called “Racing Weight” by Matt Fitzgerald. It’s a similar topic, but much more detail and instruction. Matt talks about the optimal height, weight, and body shape of athletes in different endurance sports based on averages of the elite performers. I’m only a little bit into the book, but I’m very interested.

The theme runs through both articles that a decrease in weight is equal to an increase in performance. Sorry for the pun. I am finding that I enjoy this sport of running. In fact, I’m already eyeballing my second marathon. I’m not registering for it until I get over how much I hate running a marathon when I’m done with Marine Corps in October. I hear it’s inevitable, so I’ll just accept it and look past it.

For me, I feel a need to lose more weight. I don’t care about what I look like nearly as much as I used to. I’m not fit looking, but I can outrun most of my friends and family by far. My cardiovascular system has improved dramatically. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I want to lose weight to become better. I want to be faster and more efficient. I want to be logging 50 effortless miles a week without being so cared that I’m killing my joints. I want to be able to run 10 miles and have it not feel so much like an event (thanks for the wording, babe!).

Up until this point, the farthest I have ever run is 13.1 miles. I’ve got training runs planned for the rest of the summer that will get me far beyond that. I’ll be running 20 miles three times before my 26.2. Just about every week I will go one mile farther than I had ever done before.

For the next 8 weeks (56 Days), I will be working towards accomplishing a few goals. I’ll tell you them in a minute. Why 8 weeks and 90 days? In exactly 8 weeks, Sunday the 26^th of August, I will run my second official Half Marathon in Wildwood, New Jersey. This will be the last day of the challenge. The next day I turn 27. I can’t see a better end date.

My first goal is to lose 1.5 pounds per week for 8 weeks which means 12 pounds. The rest of my goals will support this goal.

According to my calorie needs calculator, I need to eat between 1840 and 2433 calories per day. I will do this 44 out of 56 days (that’s 12 high calorie days). Exceptions will be made for days where I burn more than 1500 calories in a workout (about 9 mile runs or more). For those days, I will be allowed to eat 1/3 of calories burned back. For instance. If I burn 1500 calories, I can have 500 extra calories that day, OR the day before. Not both. I make this stipulation because I’ll need the calories in at dinner if I have a long run the next day, or calories at lunch if I have a long run at night.

I will run a minimum of 3 days per week for 7 out of the 8 weeks. I will also ride my road bike at least 1 day per week for 7 out of 8 weeks.

My fourth goal is to complete 50 consecutive pushups with good form (nose to the ground).

I slept in late this morning so I missed my wife for pictures. I'll try to remember tomorrow morning. 232.5 this morning.

It's been a while...

I realize that I haven't posted in a while. I want you all to know that I'm still around, but I stopped working on my weight loss. Not formally. I just had lost focus of it. I really honestly thought that my metabolism had kicked in and I didn't need to work as hard anymore.

WRONG.

I have friends coming in this weekend. I'm going to spend some time formulating new goals that align better with what my current priorities. I need a new way of thinking about things and what the purpose of these goals are. I also need to do some new math for caloric needs. With marathon training officially under way, I'm going to need a different amount of calories. Some days I won't need as many as others. I just need to research how to do this without sacrificing my training.

Stay tuned. Monday will come with a new post, new goals, new pictures, and hopefully, new motivation.

See you Monday.

Train.

Start of Week 5

I'm starting to wonder if my body goes through alternating weight loss/muscle building phases.  There are times when I look in the mirror and think that I look like I've lost weight, or I notice certain spots on my body looking slimmer, but the scale hasn't moved much. This morning when I got on the scale, I wasn't sure if it was dehydration, or I really lost a decent amount of weight last week. 226.5 this morning. Maybe it's both. I don't know.

I notice most of the muscle building in my legs. I guess that makes sense since I'm not doing much upper body exercise. The running/cycle combination that I've been doing is pretty nice. I'm finding that I still enjoy cycling more than running at times. At least when there's a tailwind and no mechanical problems. Riding into a headwind is worse than most runs.

My Friday run was an exception. It was possibly the worst run I've ever had. It was supposed to be 10 miles, but some bubble guts and joint pain had me stop at just about 9. It's been a while since I've hit my mark on a long run, but I'm ok with it for now. My wife and I have about 21 weeks left until Marine Corps Marathon, our main race, and are ahead of the game at this point as far as training goes.

I'm a little fearful that we've been too aggressive in our training up to this point. I'm going to be working on a new training schedule this week so we have more rest. I feel like our bike riding is a good break from running because it's less pounding on the joints, but it's still stress on the legs so they don't recover as well. I'm thinking about 5 days a week instead of 6 and doing 3-4 days of running and 1-2 days of cycling depending on what races/rides we've got coming up.

I have to make a confession. I disregarded the goal of not drinking through the end of the month on Saturday. When I wrote the goal, I forgot to take Memorial Day into account. The goal wasn't meant to punish me, but to break the habit of drinking alcohol so frequently. It's done that. I had a few on Saturday and had no desire on Sunday. I feel like I'm in a good place right now. I will be abstaining until at least Friday, though, just to reinforce the goal.

Speaking of Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I had a great time on Saturday. We rode our bikes over to the beach for the morning/afternoon. At night, I grilled some sweet potato fries, carrots, and london broil. We ate outside for the first time in the new place and when dinner was over, we lit our fire pit out back and sat around talking. It was really nice. We spend a lot of time in the living room doing separate things.. I play video games or watch TV. She'll watch TV with me sometimes, or make jewelry. But regardless, we don't talk much in the living room. Being out by the fire was pretty great. Yahtzee liked being outside most of the evening as well.

And a special thank you to all of our past and present service members, especially those who have given their lives to protect ours.

Start of Week 4

I had a pretty great week of training this week. I covered almost 72.5 miles and worked out for over 6 hours. I like those numbers. But I also want more! Exercise is apparently addicting.

I had thought for a while that I might be over training. Five days a week seems to be about right, six might be a little bit pushing it, but it gives me something to look forward to most days. I'm not a huge fan of hill repeats and 800m repeats (that's half a mile for you non-metric people). We have the 800's this week. Ugh.

Yesterday we got a little cross training in by doing yard work. I'm pretty sure we were outside for about two and a half hours. I was trimming the bushes back, my wife was pulling up ivy. We both got lots of splinters. It was awful.

As I sit here and reflect on my eating for the last week, I have to say that I did not do well. On Tuesday my dad and step-mom came to visit. They took us out and I had pasta with a cream sauce. Probably 1800 calories or more. That's my lower limit for an entire day. My mom and step-dad were in town on Saturday, so they took us out for dinner. Ribs and fried shrimp. And then a huge ice cream sundae. Sunday, we went out for lunch. Cream of crab soup and a burrito. After all the yard work, neither of us wanted to cook. Got takeout. Broiled crab cakes with french fries. I ate relatively well for the rest of my meals, though. Mostly, we ate grilled meat of some sort with grilled veggies and potatoes.

The goal of abstaining from alcohol is going well. It's not easy. I'm finding that I have been replacing beer with soda. I drink one or two a day. I guess that's better than 2 or 3 beers, though. Something that's helping, though, is my wife's snow cone maker. I have had a couple of cranberry juice slushies. They're awesome.

We found a better spot for pictures. But apparently when the camera is in my face, I can't keep my eyes open. Oh well.

Weight this morning was 230. I'm not going to stress about it. I'll be back down next week.

Start of Week 3

No alcohol is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, but these next two weeks are going to be the real trial. I've been able to have some drinks the last two weekends because of Cinco de Mayo and our bike ride over this past weekend. Both days I probably had too much. I guess I rationalized and said I could drink what I wanted because I wasn't going to be drinking for the next two weeks or so.

This weekend was the Quad County Metric Century. We chose the 45 mile route because none of us had been doing much training. Fortunately, it wasn't that big of a deal. The 45 mile route was just about right. We had two tough climbs and lots of smaller ones.

On the second of the two big climbs, I was chugging along, going slow, and then all of a sudden I see someone coming up on my left. I look over and it's my wife! She never claims to be a strong climber. She has problems with her asthma when she climbs big hills. But damn if she didn't pass me. I told her I was impressed as she rode by, but she yelled at me and said she had to focus. I heard her say something to the effect of "I need to stop. No. No I don't. I'm fine. I can do this. I'm gonna do this." And then, of course, she did. I love her.

Later on the ride we were all working our way up a small incline and something caught our eye. We look over to the left at a horse farm and two horses are running back and forth in their fenced in area. They were going so fast that it looked like they might try to jump the fence. On one of the runs, they hit the gate and knocked it down! One horse got out, the other got spooked and ran back to the other side of the fence. As we rode on, we saw the owners run out and go chasing the horse that got out. We didn't stick around to watch it play out.

I was disappointed that there was only one rest stop during the ride. I was about out of liquids by the time we got to the finish. Other than that, the ride was great. Also, the one rest stop we did have was very well stocked. I found my new favorite guilty pleasure... brownies with chocolate chip cookies baked into the top. I don't know how I'd never had this before Saturday, but I hadn't. Fortunately, if I bake something like this, I'm stuck eating the whole thing by myself because my wife is gluten free. Motivation to leave the brownie and cookie mix at the store!

Ride stats:
46.19 miles ridden.
3:05:26 finish
14.9mph avg
38.9mph max speed

Anyway, this morning I woke up at 229.5. So despite my antics over the weekend, I'm in the 220's. I'm happy with that. I'm going to hope that a full alcohol free week will give me a better number by the end of next weekend.

Start of Week 2

The challenge of not drinking hasn't been as bad as I thought. Granted, I got to drink on Saturday for Cinco de Mayo, but I'm not dying for a drink. I certainly would have liked one on occasion during the week, but I was ok without. I had ginger ale instead. Close enough, right?

I'm slightly concerned that my training is starting to put a toll on me physically. On Saturday, my wife and I did a 40 mile bike ride. This is by far the farthest we've ridden all season so far. Normally, this distance is no problem. Especially on the flat roads of New Jersey. Saturday was bad. For me, anyway. My wife was fine, but I struggled from mile 18 on. When we got home, I was trashed. I showered, ate a sandwich that my lovely wife made me, took some advil, and then slept for the next few hours.

When I woke up, my wife said I felt hot, so we took my temperature. It was slightly high, but nothing to write home about. I think maybe the advil had brought it down some because on Sunday night I registered a 101.4.

Bed time was terrible. I took some Nyquil and tried to sleep. I got the sweats, the chills, you name it. Luckily this thing doesn't come with a stomach bug. Mostly head stuff.

I'll be taking some time off from training. Definitely not doing my 6 mile run today, possibly skipping my 20 mile ride tomorrow. We'll see how I feel. My temperature was normal this morning, so I think I'm on the mend.

I don't have any pictures because my wife left for work before I got up. My weight was 230.5.

Starting again...

I think that at this point, it's no secret that this cycle isn't quite accomplishing what I had set out for it to. I'm basically right where I was when I started. 231.5 this morning. So the question is... what's the problem?

It's not really a question for me... I know the answer. It's not something I like to admit, because, well... it's hard to admit. Booze.

Alcohol is full of empty calories and I've probably been averaging 2-3 drinks a day. Maybe more. I'm not proud of it, but it's reality. I guess I'm also not being as careful about my food intake as I had been previously.

In order to make a good choice on goals, I have to figure out what my priorities are. Here they are... lose weight (duh), running, and cycling. I don't need to make a goal for my training. I work hard at it because I'm motivated by doing well. When it comes right down to it, I really enjoy the training. Mostly.

So when I think about my needs and what's worked for me in the past, I have decided that alcohol is the factor that needs to be changed. How am I going to change it? Good question. I'm giving it up.

Drastic, I know, but I need to see if this is really the problem. The only way to experiment is to remove the factor entirely. Well, not entirely. I'll make exceptions. Such as Cinco de Mayo and May 12th for the Quad County Metric bike ride. Other than that, I don't really have a reason to drink. I also realize that's two out of the four weekends in May, but this kind of goal will cut out the mid-week drinking.

So the goal is this... no alcohol for the month of May with the two exceptions I made above. I'm starting today, a day early, but it's going to help the weight loss for sure. I'm only doing a month, not my typical 90 day cycle, but if all goes well, I may extend it. For this kind of goal, I need to start small and build on the small successes.

In this month, I'm hoping to lose 8 pounds. From 231.5, that means I should be down to 223.5 by the end of May.

So I'll raise my water glass and toast to an alcohol free month of weight loss!

Start of Week 10

As some of you know, my wife and I moved over the weekend. Our stuff is still in boxes and I get to spend the day trying to unpack. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where my scale is, or even where to put it in the new house, so I'm not getting a weight this week. That might not be a bad thing considering how much junk food I ate over the weekend.

My brother in law, brother, and a friend came to help us move. It was uneventful and relatively easy, but we're still unpacking. I ate hoagies, pizza, and chicken wings on the weekend with lots of beer. I'm not sure why I didn't try to be healthier, but I didn't. Sometimes you just have a weekend like that.

I've got a great workout schedule for the week. Hopefully it involves losing some more weight. I'd like to get close to my weight goal if possible, although I'm not so confident these days. On the bright side, I'm still running and have started cycling. I'm doing well at both, I think.

On Friday, my wife and I woke up early so we could get our 10 mile run in before anyone showed up to help us move. My brother and brother in law were supposed to be here in the afternoon, so we figured we'd get some errands out of the way as well. When my brother got here, we hung out a little bit and then went for a bike ride. We only did 13 miles, but averaged 19mph. A pretty decent ride, but my legs were shot.

Since he's training for a sprint triathlon next weekend, he wanted to run right after the ride to get used to the transition. I tried it with him. I'm not sure if it was the 10 miles early in the day or the ride, but I got about a quarter mile before I decided I couldn't hang anymore.

I'm gonna try to get myself back on track this week and drop a few more lbs before the 90 days are over. I'll be keeping a glass of water by my side while I unpack. Typically if I'm busy, I'm not hungry, so we'll see how this week goes!

Start of Week 8

I need to be honest. These 90 days are not going so well.

Things just aren't the same as they had been when I started. Trying to fuel properly for endurance sports doesn't really coincide with eating a low calorie diet. With that, the goal is then hard to follow and my exercise goal has been hard to stick to because of a taper and a rest week. I'm already out of weeks where I can make a mistake. Not to mention that my weight loss is almost laughable.

It's time for me to really go back and look at these goals to see what I can salvage.

I'm keeping my weight loss goal. I want it, but I need to go about it differently. In reality, my other goals are "supporting goals" for the most part. They all are meant to help me continue to lose weight. The problem I'm starting to have is that certain days during the week, I have what my wife and I refer to as "hungry days." We called them that before we were swept up in the whole Hunger Games phenomenon. I know that losing more than 10 pounds in the next 5 weeks isn't going to be easy, maybe not even possible, but my training is picking back up this week and I'm excited about trying at least.

Hungry days are the days where I feel like someone has poured an entire truck load of coal on the fire that is my metabolism. I've got insatiable hunger. I try my best to satisfy it in a healthy way, but sometimes it takes a large quantity of food to get it to subside. This usually blows up my calorie limit for the day. At this point, I'm not sure I'd make it to the end of my calorie goal successfully. Since I have about 5 weeks left until the end of my 90 days, I'm going to rewrite my goal, start from scratch and give myself two high calorie days per week. I'll see how that does for now.

Starting today, I have 33 days left, which is just about 5 weeks. That means of the 33 days, I can make 10 of them high calorie days. So I need to stay within my calorie limit 23 of the next 33 days.

I'm going to remove my clean eating goal. I'll replace it with a new one that I'll write about at the end. When it comes down to it, I can't eat that cleanly. It was worth a shot, but it's not reasonable for me at this point in my life. I've made some changes, though. I eat better cereal in the morning and I'm more conscious of eating stuff with chemicals.

I don't feel like I need my exercise goal. I have a pretty intense training schedule that I am motivated to sticking to. I don't need a goal to keep me motivated to continue to do it. It's one of those things that I've figured out how to do on my own, which is kind of the point of the goals in the first place.

I'm also going to remove my time goal. What it really boils down to is that I'm simply not focused on that goal. It's not important enough to me at this point in time.

I need to make a new goal. This is a goal that I have had before, but in more than one way. I have found that if I drink anything other than water, I generally don't go back to water for the rest of the day. I have an addictive personality. I know this about myself. If I drink beer with dinner, I have beer for the rest of the night, or nothing. The same goes for juice, soda, and any other form of drink. So to combat this tendency, I'm going to write a goal for it. I'll call it "Liquids."

I may not have anything other than water until I've had my two liters for the day. Once I have done that, I may have whatever I'd like. Before I can have a second drink other than water, I must have another glass of water (my glasses are 20oz). This should save me some calories in the long run as well. I will accomplish this goal 28 out of the next 33 days. I have a reprieve from this goal during training... I drink Gatorade on longer bike rides and runs.

Hopefully these goals help me through the end of the 90 days with some success. My motives are different than they have been in the past, so I need to adapt for them. My number one priority is not weight loss right now. It's still important, but I have a marathon to run in 6.5 months, and I don't want to make a fool of myself.

For the record, I want to be between 200 and 210 by Marathon Day. Maybe lower. 232 again this morning.

Start of Week 7

I want to start off today by saying this week's post is a little bit different than most of my others. My wife and I ran a half-marathon in Atlantic City over the weekend with some family members. So this post is less about my week, and more about the race and what lead up to it.

Weight was 232 this morning. Still holding steady. Tapers do that to you, I guess. I'm not planning on running this week, so I imagine the weight will stay the same again next week. We'll see.

Shout out to my father in law for getting 5th in his age group for the 11k. Shout out to one of my wife's uncles for doing the same. Also, shout out to one of her aunt's who I didn't realize was running the Boston Marathon in two weeks. So cool.

This was one of the most anticipated weekends of my short running career. As the weekend approached, I knew that I had family coming in to visit/run with us, I knew that I would be running 13.1 miles in Atlantic City and neighboring beach towns, and I knew that it was going to hurt. How much depended on how much I put into this run.

Yesterday I spent the day freaking out about the weather. We had to drive up to get our race packets, so we did, but on the way we stopped at a few stores to see if I could find compression sleeves… just in case. I finally found some at a Nike outlet store. We picked up our packets, met up with one of my wife’s uncles, then drove home to relax for a little before going to church. My father in law met us there. I prayed for good weather and strong legs.

When we got home, it was time for dinner. Spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti. We spent a lot of our dinner conversation talking about what would be the appropriate attire for the anticipated temperatures. 42 degrees at the start time, partly cloudy, 4mph winds. A little chilly. Chilly enough for long sleeves? Tights? Just a t-shirt and shorts? WHAT TO DO?

Later in the evening, another uncle and aunt showed up with wine and bagels for the morning. It goes against my nature to drink alcohol the day before a race, but I admit that I had a glass. We talked a lot about what to wear with them as well. It was obviously stressing everyone else out too. I came to the conclusion that I would be wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and my new sleeves. It wasn’t going to be windy, and I’m a sweater. I’d rather be cold than hot any day of the week.

After pinning our numbers to our shirts laying out our clothes, and packing a bag, it was bed time. I didn’t sleep well.

I woke up before my alarm at 5:28. Beautiful. Got the dog, fed her, walked her, and brought her back in so I could use the bathroom and shower before leaving. After suiting up, it was out the door.

Once we went through the parking debacle of 2012, we finally checked our bag and got to the starting line. I’ve been stressing out about our time on this half for some time. My goal has been to run it under two hours. I did pace calculators that told me I couldn’t do it. I asked people on a running message board if I could do it, and many said no, it was too ambitious.

Tell me I can’t, and I’ll show you that I can.

The race starts, and we’re off. The goal was to stick to a 9:30 pace for the first few miles. We run past mile 1 and my watch beeps… 9:10. Ok. Too fast. Gear down turbo.

Mile 2: 9:29 – perfect

Mile 3: 9:15 – good enough.

Around now, I start feeling a sharp pain in my lower right back. I’ve never felt this before while running and wasn’t sure what to do about it. My wife, a physical therapist, tells me that it’s muscular. She can give me a stretch to do when we get home. Nothing I can do about it right now but tough it out.

As the miles tick away, we’re staying steady at a 9:10-9:20 pace. A little behind what we need if we’re going to stay under 2 hours, but we know we want to speed up to the end. After the turn.

As mile 4 passes, we’re off the boardwalk and onto the street. It felt like we were running on the side of a hill. My right knee, left hip, and right foot are all throbbing. The slope is killing me. We try to move up to the center of the street a little where the slope’s not so bad, but we end up getting pushed back down a little bit as runners are on their way back from the turn around.

As we hit the half-way turn around, my Garmin says we’re just over an hour. Pace is good, but we definitely need to pick it up here.

My wife is struggling with her asthma. I know she’s had to take her inhaler at least twice, maybe three times by now. I don’t want to push her too hard. I don’t want to leave her behind. But I also don’t want to miss my goal of a sub two hour half marathon.

Luckily my wife is a trooper. We’re pacing nicely. I’m throwing out high fives to the people who are still on their way out. I know that they need the motivation, and God knows I need the distraction.

Miles 6-9 are still on the street. We’re keeping it steady at around a 9:05-9:10 minute mile. We’re chipping away at the deficit, but not fast enough to be comfortable. At mile 8, I’m feeling like a champ. Although my foot is still bothering me and my hip and knee are still a little sore, I’m feeling great. Sub two hours here we come.

We decide that we want to hold back on increasing the pace too much until the last 5k or so. We turned back on to the boardwalk for the last 5k, and I’m hurting. My wife is pushing hard, I can tell. I feel like I want to stop for a second to walk. I don’t say anything.

We’re still running. Mile 11 comes, and our pace is right where it should be… 9:05 or so. We have moments of sub 9 pace, according to my Garmin, but I’m not sure if I trust it. It tells me 10:30 sporadically. I know we’re not that slow. I ignore the pace window on my watch.

We pass a clock. It doesn’t agree with mine. Neither does the distance. What the hell is going on? My wife reminds me that the clock says the time the race started. It took us a little over a minute to cross the line, so our chip time will be different. We’re still not going fast enough.

I feel like hell. I want to give up. My wife is ahead of me, and I don’t think she’ll notice if I drop back. She turns to give me a high five because “we’re doing it!” I start to get frustrated. I’m in a lot of pain. I just want to be left alone and concentrate on picking my feet up, and put them down. Quickly.

Mile 12. We’re not gonna make it. According to what I think I see on my watch, we need to keep a sub 9 pace to get there in time. I know I’m not going to have a kick. I don’t think I can pick up the pace any farther.

Mile 12.5. Wait a second. Do I have 6 minutes left to finish this thing and hit sub 2? I go into my head, throwing numbers around. I’m going to fast to focus, but I think I’m right. That’s a 12 minute mile pace. I can slow down.

No. Screw that. My wife’s setting the pace, just keep up. She has no idea how much farther we have to go, and she doesn’t know what the time deficit is. She’s just running hard. Keep up. Focus.

I can see the finish line. My father in law pops up on the side of the road for some pictures. I smile… or try to… but it’s time to focus. Head down. Move your feet. And do it faster.

We get close to the finish. I see the time clock. 2:00:**. Son. Of. A. BITCH!

Wait. We’ve got a little over a minute deficit from walking to the starting line. Our chip time isn’t the same as the clock. run. Run. RUN!

No kick. I’ve got nothing left. I’m about to collapse. I throw my body around like a maniac, and try to get my legs to move a little bit faster.

We cross the finish line. I look up to see our time, but my name is off the screen already. Shit. Did we do it? Don’t care… about to pass out. I kneel down for a moment to catch my breath. My wife looks like she’s about to topple over too.

We find the family that came to run (my father in law and one uncle finished 5^th in their age group for the 11k that they ran… April Fools apparently means weird distances in the running world).They tell us that there’s a computer that you can plug your bib number in to get your unofficial chip time. After getting some refreshments, we make our way over. One of my wife’s uncles is checking his time too, so he gets ours for us.

1:59:21

Oh. Hell. Yes.