Back in the saddle...

Oops, I did it again. (I apologize for the lame Britney Spears reference. Totally unintended, promise!) It's Tuesday afternoon, and I was not able to keep my vow to post Sunday night or Monday morning. My apologies to all you faithful readers out there, anxiously waiting by your computers with anticipation...(I do  hope you can get the sarcasm here. Not that I am sorry, but that you have nothing better to do than to wait for...oh, you get the picture!)

So, let's jump right in, shall we? The stats:

Weight Sunday 4/14  275.8 

Weight Sunday 4/7    273.8 (down 2 lbs from previous week. Yay!)

Total weight loss to date: 14.9 pounds in 6 weeks

Mon 4/15  run/walk 4.1 mi. (time not kept-2 different outings-see last week's post)

Wed. 4/17 run/walk 4.65 mi.  01:09:00 -Windy as shit. Legs starting to feel good again though.

Fri.  4/19 run/walk 3.1 mi. 00:45:27  Rec center day. First really good feeling day in over a week though.

Sun. 4/21 run/walk 3.1 mi.  00:43:55 -Outside with my sister in-law, Rachel. Felt good. 

Distance for week: 14.95 miles. 

As the week was going on, I kept feeling like it was gong to be another "meh" week. However, each day out  was an improvement. And the weight loss was a vast improvement over the prior two weeks. A big shout out to my lil' sis Rachel for joining me Sunday morning. She's just recently started running to prepare for her employer's involvement in the Rochester JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge 5k in a few weeks. The run was good and almost a return to my previous best time. I'm sure she was holding back seeing as how she's 1/3 of my weight and half my height. (Had to dig-ha, ha.) But it was a nice run. It was interesting to do the whole "can you hold a conversation while you're running" litmus test. Admittedly, that was kinda hard.

Anyhow, it was a good week for finding my way back into it. There were no profound discoveries this week. No big connections (that was last Monday and Tuesday.) Really, this week was about getting back to basics. Trying to understand where my body and mind are at at this moment, so I can best use them this weekend. My wife and I are running the Flower City Challenge Wegmans 5k on Sunday April 28th. It should be fun. I've been following a solid run/walk pattern of 4min/6min runs separated by 3min walks. Lately I've been trying to up the later run stretches to 5min/7min. Seems to be working out. 

The body is an interesting machine. I still don't feel like I have found a "comfortable" place with it yet. That is, in terms of the mechanics of it. Lot's of good questions are popping up though. How does my foot hit the ground, and how does that affect how my legs feel? What is my posture like and how can that adjust to optimize efficiency, alleviate pain and fatigue, make for a smoother run? How do I breathe? When does it get difficult? What's the rhythm? Am I a mouth breather, a nose breather, or both? 

Then there's the mind. The old slogan for The United Negro College Fund says "the mind is a terrible thing to waste..." Robin Williams said, "the mind  is a terrible thing..." At the beginning of this process when I was asking my buddy Thom about how to approach training and the duration of running a marathon, he told me that my legs and body will be strong. In fact training now with the weight I'm carrying, by the time race day comes along and I am 60-70 pounds lighter, my legs will be like iron (in a good way.) Then we talked a bit about aerobic training vs. anaerobic training and the idea that you should condition your heart and muscles to rely on oxygen for fuel. Great. Working on it. Then, he said the muscle that will give me the biggest grief is my brain. Holy shit, is he right. Even when things are working well, and the run is good, there's my brain second guessing me. "Great, you feel good doing 3.1, but can you sustain this for 26.2?" Or, "Wouldn't this be easier and more pleasant if you just stopped and walked?" Or most of the time, "Are you fucking nuts? Why do you want to do this to yourself. Stay home. Watch Avengers (again.) Eat a bag of popcorn you fucking idiot..." I keep trying different things to occupy my brain, but haven't settled on any one formula yet. Some days it's listening to music. Other days it's news or human interest stories on NPR. Other times it's just silence and nature. It doesn't help that in my adulthood, I've recently come to the realization that I suffer from (and always have suffered from) a certain level of ADD, and can get easily bored and distracted. I guess in a way, the focus needed during running has been a good mental exercise for helping me deal with that issue. 

In any case, I guess what it all boils down to this week is that with all of the personal growth and discovery I have been making on this journey, I still have yet to really find my groove when it comes to the actual practical application of getting out there and running. That's not a complaint or a gripe. It's an observation. Lucky for me, I enjoy being a "student." I am as much about the process as I am about the goal. (Just ask anyone who works with me when I direct a show.) Do I want to move forward? Yes. Do I want to see results? Yes. But the things I am learning along the way, be they profound ("I'm connected to cavemen...") or mundane ("how do I breathe?") are as much of what this is all about as those 26.2 miles in October.

So why run a marathon?

I have no fucking idea. :-)

Say it with me...

All roads lead to Chicago!