Week 39, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 188.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 191.2*

Today's blood pressure: 139/81

Today's food: yogurt, solaris (escargot, 2 rolls, kobe beef burger, tiramisu), small bean burrito, peanuts

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 39, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 188.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 191.5*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, nectarine, hot dog estilo sonora, 2 pieces barbeque chicken, pizza buffet (salad, 2 breadsticks, three pieces pizza, 2 chicken wings, a few bites of lasagna and spaghetti, cottage cheese with peaches, mountain dew), pretzels

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 8:57, 1 mile cooldown

* new low

Week 39, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 188.6*

Weight (weighted moving average): 191.8*

Today's blood pressure: 140/93

Today's food: pop tart, yogurt, 2 plums, pork tenderloin sandwich, onion rings, orange chicken, rice, broccoli, watermelon, cherries, barbeque chicken

Today's exercise: run 2 miles

* new lows

Week 39, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 190

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.1*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: corn muffin, yogurt, banana, leftover pork roast and potatoes, beef 'n' cheddar, curly fries

Today's exercise: none - too much work tonight

* new low

Week 38 Wrapup

This was a rest week, with easy runs all week. Next week starts the last phase of the marathon training program, with a long run of 20 miles, then starting in to the taper.

For the last few months, I've been doing pushups after my runs. This week I couldn't do any because I've screwed up my left shoulder/clavicle/armpit somehow. I don't think the pushups screwed them up, because I haven't increased the number I'm doing in weeks. It's more likely that I slept on it funny, or I have some sort of shoulder cancer or something. I first noticed it on the drive back from Alex's house last week. It's gotten slightly better all week, but if it doesn't improve in a few more days, I'll consider going to the doctor or the acupuncturist or shaman or something.

Week 38, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): 190*

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.3*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: banana, bowl of cherries, 1/2 pint of beans + tortilla and cheese, barbeque cornish game hen, corn muffin, broccoli, jello, plum, fritos

Today's exercise: day of rest

* both new lows

Week 38, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): 191

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.6*

Today's blood pressure: 125/74

Today's food: 2 plums, costco samples, leftover lamb stew, crock pot pork roast with potatoes and green bean, watermelon, thai noodle stir-fry

Today's exercise: run 6 miles

* new low

Week 38, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 191

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.8

Today's blood pressure: 130/76

Today's food: nectarine, 8 mini donuts, spanky's (teriyaki-pineapple chicken sandwich, side of cottage cheese, handful of fries, 1 onion ring)

Today's exercise: none

Week 38, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 191.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.0

Today's blood pressure: 131/75

Today's food: banana, yogurt, hot dog estilo sonora, banana, leftover tortelloni mixed with leftover london broil, cheeseburger, watermelon, popcorn, circus animal cookies

Today's exercise: none

Week 38, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 191.4

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.2

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: banana, yogurt, chicken/broccoli lean pocket, el pollo feliz (two pieces chicken, 1 ear corn on the cob, beans, tortilla), mike and ikes, handful of pretzels

Today's exercise: run 6 miles

Week 38, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 191.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.4

Today's blood pressure: 143/84

Today's food: banana, yogurt, manuel's (chips and salsa, ribeye, baked potato), sausage and onion and pepper and potato skillet dinner

Today's exercise: none

Week 38, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 196.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.6

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: banana, chicken/broccoli lean pocket, beef and rice noodle stir fry, 1/2 chocolate chip cookie

Today's exercise: run 7 miles

Week 37 Wrapup

This week the tempo run on Wednesday went fine, which was a marked improvement from the last tempo run two weeks ago. The long run was 16 miles this week. I thought it would go just fine since I had done 20 last week. However, I did it a day early because I was going to be out of town, and that made me suffer a little bit. Also, I just couldn't stomach eating another clif bar, and I hadn't gone down to the running store to find any gels yet, so I had no nourishment on the course aside from the two liters of gatorade I had on my back.

So, the 16 ended up the same way that last week's 20 did, with me kind of petering out the last 2 miles. My dad was out bike riding at the same time, and we met up about halfway through my run. He rode slowly alongside me for a few miles while we chatted, so that helped me out a little bit.

One highlight of this week's long run was my first really gnarly blister. I have had maybe only three blisters from running prior to this, and those were very infrequent. After yesterday's run, though, I notice a huge blood blister on the tip of my left middle toe. Those middle toes were the sites of my blisters before, so I don't know if that means I've got the wrong shoe size or what. Either way, I stuck a needle in it, and it was under such pressure that blood actually spattered across the bathroom on to the wall. I highly doubt this one will be the last I see, either.

On Friday night I went up to my cousin Alex's house for the semi-annual McRae Bachelor Party/Video Game Fest where all the men-folk get together for two days to play video games and eat, and leave their women-folk to do women things together (like see Mamma Mia in this case). We also saw The Dark Knight on Saturday. I ate quite a lot there, as well as eating a lot on Friday as well. I was kind of alarmed to find out that my weight on Sunday was around 5 and a half pounds higher than my weight on Friday. I know it's not possible for me to have actually gained this much weight unless I had eaten well over 20,000 calories in those 48 hours, but it was still disconcerting. The real reason for the weight gain is that all of the crap I ate over those two days is sitting in my gut waiting to be pooped out. It will take a couple of days, but I'll be back down to normal in short order.

Week 37, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): 198.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.3

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: banana, leftover meatballs, 1/2 chocolate chip cookie, bowl of cherries, cheeseburger macaroni with a side of broccoli, watermelon, dq chocolate dipped cone, more watermelon, 2 chocolate chip cookies

Today's exercise: day of rest

Week 37, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): not at home

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.7

Today's blood pressure: not at home

Today's food: from what I can remember, it's a muffin, cookie, squirt, large popcorn, 2 large cherry cokes, root beer, orange cream soda, a few more cookies, spaghetti, 2 bratwurst

Today's exercise: none

gorging myself at the movies and at alex's house

Week 37, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 192.8*

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.7

Today's blood pressure: 126/82

Today's food: big chocolate chip cookie, 12 oz pepsi, yogurt, banana, bk (rodeo burger, 2 tacos), subway (foot long double-meat seafood & crab, 44 oz dr pepper), watermelon, chips and cookies, can of squirt

Today's exercise: run 16 miles

* before the long run. 189.6 after

Week 37, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 190.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.7

Today's blood pressure: 138/85

Today's food: yogurt, watermelon, big chocolate chip cookie, 1 1/2 donuts, hot dog estilo sonora, cheeseburger, potato chips, watermelon, great big cookie

Today's exercise: none

Week 37, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 191.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 192.9

Today's blood pressure: 135/95

Today's food: grapes, yogurt, big chocolate chip cookie, hot dog estilo sonora, london broil with onions and peppers, cheesy broccoli rice, another big cookie

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 5 miles @ 9:12, 1 mile cooldown; 60 pushups

Week 37, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 190.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.1

Today's blood pressure: 138/82

Today's food: big chocolate chip cookie, yogurt, grapes, ribeye steak, baked potato, chips and salsa, salmon in mushroom cream sauce with rice, 2 big chocolate chip cookies, handful of almonds

Today's exercise: none

Week 37, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 192.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 193.3

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, peach, 2 big chocolate chip cookies, salmon burger sandwich, handful of almonds

Today's exercise: run 2 miles, 60 pushups

Week 36 Wrapup

This week was the first 20 mile run. I thought it could possibly go either way, like it could be totally disastrous or could be just fine. It ended up being mostly fine. My target pace for the run was 10:36, and I kept that pace just fine through the first 18 miles. The last two were just killer, though. I was completely drained, and stumbled through them. Those really slow last two dragged my overall pace for the 20 miles down to about 10:57. It was hot, too, but I'm running out of different ways to describe running in the heat.

But, I finished, and I was not dead. My goal all along was really to see if I could get through this first 20, since in my mind that represents the most difficult point of the marathon training. From this point out, there's one other 20, and it's a tiny bit faster pace, but that should be easier having done it once already. Every other long run from this point is some shorter distance, and then there's like a three week taper.

So, I thought all along that if I could get through this first 20, I should have no problem getting through the rest of the training and being ready for a marathon. The end of my training schedule just happens to coincide with the Park City Marathon on August 23rd, which Scott has been bugging me to do. So, since my likelihood of finishing training is all but assured, and my likelihood of finishing a marathon seems pretty high as well, I'm going to go ahead and register for it. I still don't think I'll put in a good showing, since the race starts 4000 feet higher than where I'm at and only goes uphill from there. But, it should be fun, nonetheless.

One important thing I learned from the 20 is that I feel like I need to get more energy during the long run somehow. I bought a big box of clif bars down to the Costco, and my usual long run routine is to eat one before the run, and eat another about halfway through. This worked fine for shorter runs, but now that they're getting longer, it's not quite doing it for me. Look at this week's run, where I felt like I was just completely sapped of energy those last two miles.

I can't just eat more clif bars, because I've noticed that the longer the run, the more I hate eating clif bars. They taste perfectly fine to me before the run, but during the run, they taste like poo. And not even that nice moist poo, either. It's the been sitting out in the sun for a week dried out variety. On this last run, I actually stopped at a drinking fountain and ran the rest of the clif bar under water like a raccoon so I could choke it down. So, assuming my lack of energy can be remedied by an increased intake of carbohydrates during the run, I'll have to switch to some sort of clif shot or gel or Gu or something. I've always been of the opinion that those things taste like snot, but I'd much rather have snot than poo at this point.

Starting next week I'm going to start posting the weighted moving average of my weight along with the daily weight. Since I've always maintained that the moving average is more important anyway, I probably should be posting it.

Week 36, Day 7

Today's weight: 192

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: 12 oz pepsi, 2 pieces cinammon toast, pop tart, grilled cheese sandwich, watermelon, big chocolate chip cookie, glass of milk, fajitas with side of beans, 1/2 chocolate chip cookie

Today's exercise: day of rest

Week 36, Day 6

Today's weight: 193.6

Today's blood pressure: 125/83

Today's food: granola, 2 oreos, clif bar, pint of chocolate milk, watermelon, ny strip steak, grapes, leftover toretelloni, swedish meatballs with noodles and peas

Today's exercise: run 20 miles

Week 36, Day 5

Today's weight: 193.6

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, apple fritter, hot dog (estilo sonora), 1/2 a taco bell big bad bell box meal, 2 large moutain dew baja blast, leftover fish with rice, mixed fruit chunks

Today's exercise: none

Week 36, Day 4

Today's weight: 191

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, banana, apple danish, carl's jr (six dollar western bacon combo), dq dilly bar, dragon view (orange beef, salt and pepper squid, egg drop soup, fried rice, honey walnut shrimp, steamed fish, chocolate mousse)

Today's exercise: none

Week 36, Day 3

Today's weight: 191.2

Today's blood pressure: 129/89

Today's food: yogurt, banana, lunch at ikea (salmon with vegetables, a few meatballs, fries, 1/2 almond torte), dairy queen (2 chicken strips, fries, ice cream cone), tri-tip steak topped with unmeltable slice of processed cheese

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, (run 1 mile @ 8:32, jog .5 miles) X4, 1 mile cooldown (total of 8 miles); 60 pushups

Week 36, Day 2

Today's weight: 191.6

Today's blood pressure: 133/87

Today's food: yogurt, nectarine, garlic squid, tortelloni and tomato sauce, tri-tip steak, watermelon

Today's exercise: none

Week 36, Day 1

Today's weight: 192.8

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, banana, 2 pork chops with peach onion marmalade, 1/2 cup of fruit, 2 slices of pizza, 2 garlic knots, 1 liter pepsi

Today's exercise: none (too tired/busy/rainy/sore)

We had to pick up new students at the airport today, and my legs still hurt from saturday, and it was raining. Today's scheduled run was only 2 miles so I skipped it.

Week 35 Wrapup

It was really hot this week. Overall, the temperatures are slightly lower because the monsoon season is in full swing. But, the arrival of the monsoons brings the terrible humidity. So, my sweat, it does nothing.

On Wednesday's tempo run I had to stop a couple of times to cool down. I maintained the pace while I was running, but stopped and walked 2 or 3 times because I just felt too hot and sick (This was at 10:30 PM or so, too). Saturday for the long run I was supposed to do 18 miles, but at 17.5 I just said "screw it" (out loud, to no one in particular) and walked the remaining half mile.

I'm learning quite a lot during these long runs, especially about hydration, and how much water actually passes through my body. For reference, I usually drink a half liter before I leave, drink a little over 2 liters out of my camelbak during the run, then maybe a liter when I get back to the car. Afterwards, I'm still down a few pounds, so I obviously sweat and exhale more than that.

For this week's run, I was on a trail with a lot of drinking fountains, so I wasn't trying to ration the camelbak. I figured I'd just drink as much as I need, and use drinking fountains when it's empty. What I discovered is that the rate at which I lose water is higher than I can comfortably replace it (in this heat at least). I tried to drink as much as I could to go through the camelbak as fast as I could, but drinking too much while you're running like that makes your stomach not feel great. So, I just barely finished the camelbak before I finished the run. I felt like I needed and wanted more to drink, but just couldn't do it without risking puking.

So, this tells me that there's got to be some point in this kind of heat where the distance of the long run gets so long that even with an unlimited supply of hydration, I would still drop dead of dehydration on the route because my stomach wouldn't take water in fast enough to replenish what I've lost over the time spent running. I don't know how long that distance is. Maybe it's 50 miles. Maybe it's 26.2. Maybe it's next week's 20 miles. Either way, it's enlightening to discover that even with unlimited leg strength and unlimited water, my maximum running distance is limited by how well my stomach handles being full.

I could probably figure it out mathematically. Take my weight loss during the run, add the weight of fluid consumed. Divide by time, and I get a loss of around 3.7 pounds of fluid per hour. Let's convert to kg since 1 liter is usually 1 kg and call it about 1 3/4 liters of fluid lost per hour. I drank 2 liters of the camelbak in 3 hours (2/3 liter per hour) and felt kind of sick, but let's say I could push it up to 3/4 liter per hour. That's still a net loss of 1 liter per hour. Human body averages 60% water by weight, so I might be around 53 kilograms of water. So, if I lost a liter per hour, I would be completely dessicated after 53 hours. However, I'd die a lot sooner because of blood volume. I read that for every 1% of body weight lost in dehydration, 2.5% of blood volume is lost. If that held true throughout the entire loss, then at 1kg per hour, it would take me about 35 hours to be completely fresh out of blood. It's likely that I would be dead much sooner, however. My quick googling says that 9-12% loss in body weight through dehydration is fatal. If all that's true, that would give me about 8 hours of running in this heat before I die, although I would likely see some pretty severe symptoms before then.

I had previously thought that my concern would be getting enough water, so I had started looking for places on the trail to stash bottles for when my camelbak gets empty. Now that I know that I can't really drink more than what I have, I've got to explore other options. I believe there are three things I can do: 1. I can get in better overall shape so that my body sweats less in the exertion and therefore loses less fluid. 2. I can train my stomach to handle being more full when I run. Or 3., I can hook up a second bag of glucose/saline through an IV. Or, of course, there's always option 4, wait until it's not so blasted hot.

If I'm still running a lot by next summer, I'm hoping that I'm in better shape so that the heat and the sweating wouldn't be such an issue. Otherwise, I'll definitely do what everyone else here does and just switch to shorter milder more infrequent runs in the summer just to maintain until you can really start training again in the fall.

Week 35, Day 7

Today's weight: 194.6

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: banana, tri-tip steak, beans, potato chips, quart of orange juice, grapes, 3 oreos, lamb stew with mystery beans

Today's exercise: day of rest

Week 35, Day 6

Today's weight: 195*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: 2 clif bars, a lot of gatorade, 1 pint chocolate milk, mixed fruit chunks, yogurt, tri-tip steak, beans, potato chips, cookie, brownie, fried fish and shrimp with fries, a few sundae bites

Today's exercise: run 17.5 miles; 60 pushups

* before running. after running it was 190.4

Week 35, Day 5

Today's weight: 194.4

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: ward breakfast (2 pancakes, some kind of egg and sausage bake), orange juice, root beer float, chili dog, 1/2 chili burger, chili fries, 1/3 corn dog, granola, fruit bowl

Today's exercise: none

Week 35, Day 4

Today's weight: 191.6

Today's blood pressure: 129/85

Today's food: yogurt, banana, carl's jr large prime rib burger combo, orange chicken with rice and peas

Today's exercise: none

Week 35, Day 3

Today's weight: 193

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, banana, piece of bread, hot dog (estilo sonora), pot roast and noodles, slice of bread

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 5 miles @ 9:12, 1 mile cooldown; 60 pushups

Week 35, Day 2

Today's weight: 194.6

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, peach, french fries, half a hamburger, slice of french bread with butter, 4 pieces french toast

Today's exercise: none