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.