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.