Week 52, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 185.4

Weight (weighted moving average): 183.5

Today's blood pressure: 136/91

Today's food: rice krispies with strawberries, pear, apple, 20 oz dr. pepper, halloween party (3 sugar cookies, 1/4 slice cake, chips, handful of candy corn, glass of punch)

Today's exercise: none

Week 52, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 182.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 183.3

Today's blood pressure: 140/91

Today's food: rice krispies with strawberries, 2 rice krispie treats, hot dog, arby-q, 6 jawbreakers, pear, 1 1/2 pulled pork sandwiches, doritos, handful of marshmallows, 1 dozen little iced oatmeal cookies

Today's exercise: none

Week 52, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 182.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 183.3*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: rice krispies with strawberries, 2 rice krispie treats, 4 jawbreakers, pear, seafood risotto, rice krispie treat, 1/4 cup chili, 2 pieces fried chicken, rice krispie treat

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 8:30, 1 mile cooldown; 60 pushups

* new low

Week 52, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 180.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 183.4*

Today's blood pressure: 124/75

Today's food: 2 donuts, yogurt, pastrami sandwich, 4 jawbreakers, 2 bratwurst, asparagus, 2 1/2 donuts

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 52, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 181.0

Weight (weighted moving average): 183.7*

Today's blood pressure: 137/82

Today's food: yogurt, apple, 7 jawbreakers, leftover chicken pasta, 2 handfuls caramel corn, 1 piece fried chicken, 1 piece garlic bread, potato wedges, 1.5 donuts

Today's exercise: 1.5 mile warmup, intervals (2x800 @ 7:45 pace, 1x800 2x400 & 2x200 @ 7:15 pace), 1 mile cooldown (total 6.67 miles); 60 pushups

* new low

Week 51 Wrapup

Fairly uneventful week. The intervals and the tempo run went fine.

I didn't get a chance to do a separate hill run, so I combined the hills and the long run on Saturday. First, I ran from home up to the top of Tumamoc Hill and back. Tumamoc is the hill behind our house, and the road up it rises about 730 feet in about 1.5 miles. It's a very slight grade for the first half, then some steep switchbacks until the top.

The thing about Tumamoc Hill is that it's a haven for "hikers". At any given time that the road is open, there will be dozens of people going up and down. I'm really puzzled, because it's not a good hike. It's paved road the whole way up, so it's not like being on a trail. The desert flora isn't any different than what you see in your backyard. There's way too many people to get anything like the solitude that I would normally enjoy while walking. There's a great view of all of Tucson from the top, so that's nice, and you do get some exercise from the steep part, so that helps. But otherwise, I don't see what the appeal is. I'll run it because it's steep and close, but that's all.

What surprised me is that so many of the people I saw on Saturday were carrying water. Yeah, it's a desert, but it's three miles round trip on a paved road, and it's only 65 degrees out. Someone carrying one jug of water wasn't a big deal, but I saw a few people carrying two. I guess they thought that being loaded up like camels might get someone to mistake them for a serious hiker or something.

After the hill run, I kept going on the Santa Cruz River trail, going north past the trail end on Grant, just on the bank for a couple of more miles. Between the hill and the long run, I got 14 miles for the day, which gets me back over 25 for the week. That's a welcome improvement over the last few weeks where I always had some injury or illness setting me back.

Week 51, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): 182.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.0*

Today's blood pressure: 128/85

Today's food: banana, 6 dinosaur chicken nuggets, bowl of leftover chicken pasta, 3 of Viddy's blueberry cheesecake squares

Today's exercise: day of rest

* new low

Week 51, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): 182.8*

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.2**

Today's blood pressure: 106/73***

Today's food: pop tart, 52 oz of gatorade, grilled cheese sandwich with pastrami slice, popcorn, curry pineapple mahi mahi with rice, 10 little iced oatmeal cookies

Today's exercise: run to top of tumamoc hill and back (3.5 miles); run 10.5 more miles @ 9:56/mile

* before running. after eating a pop tart, running, and drinking 40 oz of gatorade: 179.4
** new low
*** This 106 systolic is by far the lowest reading since I've started keeping track. I've had occasional diastolic readings higher than this. The big difference, I think, is that today's blood pressure was taken right after running.

Week 51, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 183.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.4*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, banana, 2 tacos, pastrami sandwich, halloween party (burrito casserole, potato wedges, spaghetti, 2 cupcakes, pumpkin cake, fun size almond joy, 4 whoppers (the candy, not the burger), caramel apple)

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 51, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 182.0

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.5*

Today's blood pressure: 124/84

Today's food: yogurt, banana, apple, 7 handfuls of caramel corn, seafood risotto, green beans

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 51, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 184.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.8

Today's blood pressure: 130/86

Today's food: yogurt, banana, 2 slices stuffed grilled pork loin, 6 fistfuls of caramel corn, one half of chicken pizza, other half of chicken pizza

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 8:30, 1 mile cooldown; 60 pushups

Week 51, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 182.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 184.8*

Today's blood pressure: 120/74

Today's food: yogurt, hot dog estilo sonora, apple, large handful halloween candy, bowl of chili with chips and cheese, 3 corn muffins, 1/4 cup almonds mixed with a few chocolate chips

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 51, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 184.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.1*

Today's blood pressure: 120/80

Today's food: yogurt, apple, leftover chicken pasta, 4 pieces halloween candy, banana, quesadilla, cinammon tortilla

Today's exercise: 1.5 mile warmup, intervals (2x800 @ 7:45 pace, 2x400 & 4x200 @ 7:15 pace), 1 mile cooldown (total 6.2 miles); 60 pushups

* new low

Week 50 Wrapup

I got sick on Monday, and didn't really feel any better until Thursday, so this was another low mileage week. I ran intervals on Thursday, then rested on Friday preparatory to the Bisbee 1000.

Bisbee is an old mining town in southeastern Arizona. It's up at 5400 feet in a little valley with a lot of hills, and people built the town up into the hills, with staircases connecting the various little roads that wind up into the hills. The Bisbee 1000 is a race that runs up 9 of these staircases (for a total of over 1000 steps), then winds through the roads in between them.

I went out on Saturday morning with my sister Elizabeth and her friend Chuck. I was running seriously, but Chuck stayed behind to walk it with Elizabeth. My strategy was to run as fast as I could on the road parts, then take the stairs as slow as I needed to recover. The stairs become bottlenecks and you can't go too fast on them anyway, so I figured I could recover a little on the slow climb.

This year, they tried to do a wave start to eliminate the bottlenecks, since otherwise you've got 1200 people all hitting the first set of stairs at the same time. They announced several times about the waves, but didn't have any clear organization at the starting line, like separate corrals or anything. Based on the times that they announced, I figured I'd start in wave 2, so after the first wave left, I crowded into the starting area as close as I could get, although I was still 8 or 9 rows of people back.

When the second wave started, the first few rows left, and everyone else just stood there. I realized that these chumps weren't planning on going anywhere in this wave, so I elbowed my way to the front just in time for them to pull a rope up across the people and yell at me, "you have to stay behind the line". I tried to explain to the guy doing the yelling that, no, this was the wave I wanted to start in, and these jackholes just standing around prevented me from doing that, but he wasn't listening. Just then, two other guys just went under the rope and took off, so of course I did that too. The yelling guy wheeled around and shouted "Where are you guys going?", which I thought was just a supremely dumb question. I mean, we've got shorts and running shoes on, we've got bibs pinned to our shirts, we're running in the direction of all the other runners...

I didn't get DQed, so my final time was 49:59, which was good enough to place 258 out of 1109 overall. It also got me 18th out of 43 in my age division. The total distance of the course is hard to measure via GPS because of difficulty taking in the vertical ascent in the stairs, but it seems to be around 4.5 miles, and the road stretches between stairs are all anywhere from 1/4 mile to a mile. I ran all the road stretches in under 9 minute/mile pace, and most of them were under 8 minute/mile. My slowest stretch was at an 8:52 pace and that was for a stretch that was mostly uphill.

I'd definitely run the race again, but I'd like them to fix the wave start, either with separate start corrals, or, since everyone's official time is the chip time anyway, just doing it waterslide style (where everyone lines up single file, and one bored looking high school guy just keeps saying "Okay, you can go. Now you can go. Okay, now you can go." over and over.) I would also request some better post race food. They had fruit and water, and people were giving samples of a gross energy drink and espresso, but there were no bagels or anything like that.

Chuck runs with the Hash House Harriers, and after the race, he took us over to where a bunch of hashers were gathering for a feast of boiled shrimp, sausage, corn, onions, potatoes, et cetera. The food alone was worth the trip, and it more than made up for the lack of bagels at the finish.

My next race is probably the stake 5k on November 15th, then something somewhere on Thanksgiving, and at least one in December. Then, I could still possibly do the marathon in Boulder City on January 3rd, or the Phoenix Rock & Roll on January 18th. I also talked extensively with my cousins David, Jimmy, and Tom to work up the idea of us all doing a marathon next summer somewhere. They seemed receptive, but we'll see.

These next few weeks, I'm still going to focus on short distance speed to improve my 5k time. I'm hoping to get to 24:00 (or at least sub-25) at the stake 5k, then to 23:15 by the end of the year, then to my goal of 22:30 by the end of February. To that end, I'm currently working with the following paces:

Race goal pace 7:45
800 - 3:52
400 - 1:56
200 - :58

Speed pace 7:15
800 - 3:37
400 - 1:48
200 - :54

Tempo run pace 8:30

Long run pace 10:00

Once I hit 24:00, I'll bump everything down by 0:15/mile. Once I hit 23:15, I'll bump everything down another 0:15.

Week 50, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): 185.4

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.2

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: apple, small pork burrito, 4 short sticks of celery with peanut butter, 4 pieces asparagus, 3 slices grilled stuffed pork loin, handful of almonds

Today's exercise: day of rest

Week 50, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): 184.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.2*

Today's blood pressure: 121/76

Today's food: yogurt, clif bar, banana, 1/2 orange, post-race hasher function (shrimp, 2 potatoes, onion, corn on cob, 2 sausages), 32 oz gatorade, 16 oz chocolate raspberry malt, wedding (hors d'ouvres, stuffed chicken breast, big beef thing, asparagus, lemonade, 2 slices wedding cake)

Today's exercise: Bisbee 1000

* new low

Week 50, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 183.0

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.3*

Today's blood pressure: 137/86

Today's food: yogurt, apple, chicken sandwich, small handful of runts, 1 fish stick, 1 chicken strip, 4 potato wedges, roll, green beans, roll

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 50, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 185.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.5

Today's blood pressure: 147/90

Today's food: jello, yogurt, buffet at China Vic, large handful halloween candy, chicken pasta, green beans, 1 slice garlic bread

Today's exercise: 1.5 mile warmup, intervals (2x800, 2x400, 2x200 @ 7:45 pace), 1 mile cooldown (total 5.11 miles); 60 pushups

Week 50, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 185.0

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.5

Today's blood pressure: 139/83

Today's food: yogurt, apple, leftover grilled chicken with stuffing, handful of halloween candy, 2 bowls café rio style pork salad, tortilla with cinnamon and sugar

Today's exercise: none (still sick)

Week 50, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 185.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.5

Today's blood pressure: 139/92

Today's food: yogurt, costco samples, apple, leftover grilled chicken and stuffing, handful of pringles, skillet chicken and rigatoni, one slice garlic bread, 2 helpings jello, popcorn

Today's exercise: none (sick)

Week 50, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): gone

Weight (weighted moving average): gone

Today's blood pressure: gone

Today's food: yogurt, apple, lil smokies, banana, yogurt, beef brisket sandwich, apple, 2 chips ahoy, leftover sticky chicken, handful of almonds

Today's exercise: none

coming back from Mexico

Week 49 Wrapup

I ran a tempo run on Monday, but my foot still hurt a lot after that, so I took a few days off to rest it. I did get to a spin class with my Dad on Wednesday morning. I fared much better than I did last time, which means that either I was really wiped out from the marathon last time, or I was just being smarter about it this time and not pushing so hard right at the beginning only to crash 10 minutes in.

We went down to Rocky Point for the weekend, and there was a bunch of family there that I don't get to see very often. My cousin Randy was there, and since I hadn't seen him in a while, I was unaware that he had taken up running and lost 40 pounds over the last year or so. He really looks great.

On Saturday morning, I enlisted Randy and his wife Lisa to accompany me on a long run. We left the house at about a 10:00 pace and ran down the Las Conchas road to the guardhouse, about 4.1 miles. They've both been fighting injuries the last few months, so they turned around at the guardhouse and then walked most of the way back. I continued on to the Pemex at the corner, then turned right and headed down the road that goes to the Caborca highway. I continued on that road for about another mile, then turned around and headed back, stopping at the Pemex to buy water, then stopping again to chat with my Dad, who was just headed out of the neighborhood on his bike. I ran back into Las Conchas, then stopped at the 12 mile point and walked the remaining 1/4 mile home.

It was a good run. My foot bothered me a little the first mile, but the pain went away, and it didn't hurt at all after the run. The last two miles were a little more of a struggle than the first ten, but only just barely. I think the fact that 10 of the 12 miles were on dirt helped a little so that I wasn't so sore afterward, but I also feel like I'm just getting better at this. I finished the 12 miles at a 9:54 pace, and that's even including the stop at the Pemex and chit-chatting with my Dad.

Lisa ran the St. George marathon last year, but Randy hasn't done a marathon yet. So, we all talked briefly about doing St. George or some other marathon next fall. I hope it comes together, because that would be fun.

Next week, I'll try to do a more normal training schedule, then on Saturday, Elizabeth, Chuck, and I are going to do the Bisbee 1000.


Moving Average

Carson asked how the weighted moving average is calculated, so I'll post my long-winded answer here.

First some review: I've said it before, but it's my strong belief that basing your weight loss on the comparison of daily readings is a recipe for failure. Any human will have a fluctuation from day to day and even hour to hour just from their own biological processes. The only way to directly compare one day's weight against another's would be to completely eliminate all food or waste products out of the GI tract, void the bladder, and bring the water percentage of the body to a specific predetermined value. To be really precise, you'd also have to make sure your hair and nails were at the same length, you had just showered to remove extra surface dirt, and that you blew your nose really well.

That's impossible to do on a daily basis, or at least really difficult. But, you still want sets of numbers that you can compare against each other. So, what's needed is to somehow average out these other factors to smooth out the noise introduced by measuring them day to day, leaving numbers that, while not technically an accurate picture of your weight at a precise point in time, are at least a better basis for comparison. You can do that in several ways.

You could only weigh yourself once a week, or once a month. That's what some diet places do. They tell you to not even bother to check your scale at home, and only go by what your reading is on their scale when you come in for your weekly visit. That will smooth things out somewhat, but it still has the possibility of tricking you. If one week you weigh in right after a heavy duty workout, but the next week you weigh in after a big dinner, it might appear you've gained 2 pounds in a week. In reality, your body may have burned two pounds of stored fat that week, but you have four more pounds of water and food in you than you did at your previous week's weigh-in. So, even weekly doesn't smooth out enough, and any longer than weekly and you're no longer getting useful feedback, in my opinion.

Another way to try to smooth things out would be to weigh daily, graph all the daily readings, and just see if the line is generally going up or down. That's easy to see once you graph enough readings, but kind of harder with just a few data points.

A more specific form of this would be to actually plot a trend line through your data points, plotting a straight line or a curve that fits the line such that half of your points are on one side, and half are on the other, and they're generally evenly spaced from the line.

That's too much work, I think, and although I could have Excel plot the trend line for me, a straight line plotted through all my readings isn't informative enough about whether I'm losing or gaining in a short period, like a week. And, the curved lines that Excel plots are not "curvy" enough to be useful for short periods as well.

So, I look to some sort of averaging method to tell me whether I'm really gaining or losing. For obvious reasons, I don't want to just average all the readings I take. If I did that, my current average weight (taking all readings from 11/07 until now) would be around 200 pounds. Yes, that's less than the average would have been in December 2007, but it's not a useful number. I could average all the readings in a particular month or a particular week and compare those, but I'm obsessive enough that I want a number I can compare on a daily basis.

That leads me to the idea of a moving average. Simply put, a moving average is just an average of the last x number of readings. I could calculate a 20 day moving average by just taking my last 20 days worth of readings and averaging them. Then the next day, I'd be counting 20 days back from that new point and calculating a new average. Each day, as I make a new reading, the oldest reading drops off and I make a new average from the 20 most recent days. This is cool, because it gives me a number I can compare on a daily basis, but has a little bit of a problem in that one big spike or dip has the same effect on the average on the day it happens as it does 2 weeks later. If I cram 6 pounds of donuts into my donut hole, then weigh 6 pounds more the next day, that abnormally high reading is going to pull my average up for 20 days, even if I pooped them all out and had constant readings since then. Then, when it drops off the list on day 21, my average will go down significantly, even though my weight was 100% constant during the intervening time. I didn't like the idea of something I did 2 or 3 weeks ago affecting my average as much as something I did yesterday.

Everything I've written here is pretty much an accurate depiction of my train of thought as I started to think about weight loss, and how I wanted to track whether I'm gaining or losing. Then, a couple of months into my health quest, I read The Hacker's Diet, and specifically the "Signal and Noise" section. Everything in there made perfect sense to me, specifically the argument that the best way to visualize a data trend hidden behind a lot of noise is to use a moving average that assigns a higher weight to more recent readings than to less recent ones. Once I got a handle on that, I converted all of the previous data in my logs to be able to chart a weighted moving average from it.

The actual formula used is an exponentially weighted moving average with 10% smoothing (or a smoothing factor of 0.9). There's something in the Excel Analysis Pack to do the incredibly complex (for me) math involved with making an exponentially weighted moving average, but the "Pencil and Paper" chapter in The Hacker's Diet taught me a little trick to make it easier. Basically, when using 10% smoothing, you can get the same numbers by just taking your current day's weight, subtracting it from the previous day's moving average, then multiplying the result by 0.1 and subtracting that result from the previous day's moving average.

So, in my spreadsheet, I punch in that day's weight, then the next cell takes that weight and subtracts it from the previous day's average. Then, it takes a tenth of the difference, and subtracts that from the previous day's moving average to calculate the new moving average. (Then, the number it displays is rounded to the nearest tenth of a pound before display in the cell. So, in it's calculations, Excel's keeping whatever precision it has for the individual cells where the weighted moving average is kept. If I were doing this by pen and paper, I would round off after calculating the weighted moving average, or perhaps even after multiplying the weight by 0.1. If I did that, I might find my average to be off by a tenth of a pound on a few days here or there compared to the computer version, but it would generally match what my spreadsheet comes up with.)

So, here's an example: On October 7th, my weigh-in was 180.2 pounds. Subtracting that from the previous day's moving average of 187.0 gives me a difference of 6.8 pounds. Multiply that by 0.1 and you get 0.68. Subtract that from 187 (the previous day's moving average again), and you get a result of 186.32. Round to the nearest tenth, and 186.3 is the number I post for my weighted moving average for October 7th.

A couple of other things: To remove as much variance as possible, I always weigh in naked right after getting up in the morning, but after voiding my bladder and (if possible) moving my bowels. I also will wait until after a shower if I'm taking one in the morning, because for some reason, my scale pretty consistently measures me 0.2-0.4 pounds lighter after a shower than before. I can't possibly think of why. The only possible theories I can come up with are these: 1. I just have that much grease in my hair and dirt on my body. 2. Being in the shower pulls more water out of me by making me sweat or through come other mechanism. 3. Being in the shower accelerates my respiration and metabolic rate so much that I just burn through the food or fat in my body. 4. The humidity in the bathroom somehow affects the scale to read lower. My money's on 2, although it's still weird.

Week 49, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): gone

Weight (weighted moving average): gone

Today's blood pressure: gone

Today's food: rice krispies with strawberries, banana, 6 scone cookies, pumpkin bread, yogurt, breakfast burrito, beans, crapload of brisket. It is at this point that the wheels fell off the wagon, and I could no longer remember the huge variety of things that I was eating long enough to type them in. Suffice it to say that there was a lot more.

Today's exercise: day of rest

in mexico

Week 49, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): gone

Weight (weighted moving average): gone

Today's blood pressure: gone

Today's food: 20 oz gatorade, 1 piece toast, yogurt, banana, pear, 1/2 grilled cheese sandwich, beef and cheese burrito, m&ms, banana, doritos, crapload of grilled shrimp and fish, big apple, cinammon tortilla, cheeseburger burrito

Today's exercise: run 12 miles; 60 pushups

in mexico

Week 49, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 184.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.5*

Today's blood pressure: 131/81

Today's food: 1/2 pop tart, yogurt, A&W (cheeseburger, small fries, chicken strip, 5 cheese curds), 2 tortillas, cashew mango crunch, spinach mozarella ravioli, m&ms

Today's exercise: none

* new low. Traveling down to Mexico today.

Week 49, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 183.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.6*

Today's blood pressure: 125/87

Today's food: yogurt, banana, pear, apple, mini Take 5 bar, small bag microwave popcorn, las cazuelitas (2 1/2 piece cheese crisp, chicken enchilada thing)

Today's exercise: none

* new low

Week 49, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 181.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 185.8*

Today's blood pressure: 120/80

Today's food: pop tart, cookie, yogurt, grapes, chicken sandwich, handful of various halloween candies, 3 pieces manti chicken, asparagus, stuffing, 2 large cherry sprites, microwave ice cream, bowl of ice cream stuffed with cookies

Today's exercise: spin class; 60 pushups

* new low

Week 49, Day 2

Weight (today's reading): 180.2*

Weight (weighted moving average): 186.3*

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, solaris (roll, mesquite grilled salmon, scalloped potatoes, vegetable medley, 1/2 tiramisu, 1/2 chocolate mousse cake), pear

Today's exercise: none

* both new lows

Week 49, Day 1

Weight (today's reading): 183.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 187.0*

Today's blood pressure: 145/81

Today's food: grapes, yogurt, nectarine, apple, peanut butter crackers, noodles in cream sauce

Today's exercise: 1 mile warmup, 3 miles @ 8:40, 1 mile cooldown; 60 pushups

* new low

Week 48 Wrapup

At the beginning of this week, Haile Gebrselassie broke the marathon world record with a 2:03:59 time. I thought this was pretty phenomenal, but I didn't quite realize how phenomenal until I did the math. That works out to about a 4:44/mile pace. I can't run a mile in 4:44. I don't mean that I can't do it now (which I can't). I mean, if I quit my job and got a coach and trained full time, I don't think I could ever get to the point where I could run even a single mile in 4:44, much less sustain that pace across 26.2 miles. As of right now, I can't even do a 100 meter dash in a 4:44 pace.

On my mountain run last week, I rolled my left foot a couple of times on the way down. It felt okay unless I landed in a certain way, so it only hurt about once every hundred steps. As I kept going down and got more fatigued, it ended up being more like every 50 steps, then like every 20 steps. It didn't really feel that bad afterward, but when I started running again this week, it really hurt a lot. The pain's in the foot itself, sort of just to the front of the ankle and to my left. I don't know if it's a pull or sprain or stress fracture or what, so I'm just icing it until it goes away.

On Monday, my muscles were too sore from the mountain run to go running. On Tuesday, I went out and ran a mile, which hurt so much I stopped and stretched and walked another mile. After that, I tried running another mile, but I was still way too sore. On Wednesday, I skipped running again. By Thursday, I was no longer sore, so I went to the track for my speedwork. I did 6x400, but again had to stop and walk a lap between 3 & 4 to catch my breath.

After the running Thursday, my left foot hurt a lot, and continued to hurt on Friday. I weighed the idea of cutting back a little versus trying to run more and having a real injury that forces a longer cut back. In the end, I decided to skip the long run I planned for Saturday, leaving me at a total of less than 7 miles for the week. Boo-urns.

Lab Test Results

I got the lab test results back from the doctor visit a couple of weeks ago. The results are impressive, to say the least.

Here's a very lengthy recap with all of my prior test results thrown in: When I was struck by lightning in the summer of 2006, the emergency room doctor said their tests all showed me as normal except for an elevated level of ALT (a liver enzyme), and suggested I talk to my doctor about that. My doctor's tests confirmed that, and he said the most probable cause is fatty liver infiltration, basically where too many fat cells clog up the liver and keep it from working right.

At the same time, I asked my doctor to check my testosterone levels because I was suffering from some of the classic symptoms of low testosterone (fatigue, inability to concentrate, liking Coldplay). This wasn't just a "tired from working all day" fatigue. It was a "man, there's really something wrong with me" kind of thing. The worst was just not being able to focus or concentrate. I just felt like my brain didn't work right, and I couldn't snap out of it. In a surprise to no one, the lab confirmed that I indeed had low testosterone.

These first tests with my doctor were on 8/31/06, and showed my ALT at 71 IU/L. Reference range is 2-60. My total testosterone level was 268 ng/dL. The reference range is 250-1100 ng/dL. So, I was on the low end of that scale, but not completely out of range. The reference range is misleading, though, because I'm of the understanding that this particular test is not taking age into account. If the reference range is just the middle of the bell curve made by plotting all the results from all men tested, the old men whose testosterone production has naturally declined will be skewing the curve. However it's derived, and even if I wasn't technically out of range, 268 is a number more typical of a 70 year old than a 35 year old. My free testosterone was 46.8 pg/mL. Reference range is 35-155 pg/mL, so again, I was close to the low end. Percent free was 1.75%

The only other thing out of range on that test was a low BUN to creatinine ratio of 9.1 The reference range is 10-28. The doctor dismissed that as an anomaly since it was barely out of range and both my BUN and creatinine were in normal range anyway.

I followed up with the doctor a few months later (1/5/07) to find that the ALT was no longer out of range. But, he tested my cholesterol and triglycerides, and they were too high. ALT was 39 this time. Total cholesterol was 231 mg/dL. Cutoff for that is 199, and anything 200 and over apparently spells early death. Triglycerides were 179 mg/dL. Cutoff for those is 149. HDL cholesterol (the good kind) was 30 mg/dL. That should be over 39, and also should be over 20% of the total. LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) was at 165 mg/dL. That should be under 100. VLDL (another bad cholesterol) was at 36 mg/dL, which was actually within the reference range of 5-40.

One other abnormal result was that my bilirubin was at 1.3 mg/dL, but that's just barely out of the reference range of 0.1-1.2. In other words, ignore.

In the meantime, I went to the urologist seeking testosterone. Quite a few blood tests were taken to check on all of the other things that could be interfering with testosterone production. In one of them, I had a high level of prolactin, which is the hormone that makes you lactate. I've never lactated yet, but I still needed an MRI to rule out a prolactinoma, which is a kind of brain tumor (the less bad kind, from what I hear). In the end, all other causes of low testosterone were ruled out, and it was concluded that I was low in testosterone either completely idiopathically, or because I'm a lazy, fat slob.

First urologist test was 9/16/06. Prolactin was 20.9 ng/mL, out of a reference range of 2.5-17. Total testosterone on this test was 309, and this test didn't calculate free testosterone. A followup test on 9/22 measured SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) at 15 nmol/L, out of a reference range of 5-49. Using that value for SHBG, and the 4.6 value for albumin from my 8/31 test, an online calculator figures my free testosterone on 9/16/06 as 84.6 pg/mL or 2.74%. That's almost twice as much as the 8/31 test, so either the online calculator's methodology is flawed, or the first lab's methodology for deriving the free amount is flawed, or attempting to use results from 3 different dates to get a meaningful calculation is a bad idea.

Because I wasn't yet ready to accept the possibility that my being fat and lazy was responsible for my woes, I tried some prescription testosterone gel (AndroGel, 50mg) starting 10/1/06 for about 5 weeks. After about 3 1/2 weeks, I could feel a definite difference. I wasn't so tired all the time, and I could feel a certain clarity of thought that had been missing for a long time. A blood test on 11/1/06 showed total testosterone at 325, and free testosterone at 60.3 (1.86%). That was an improvement, but I had been expecting to see something higher after taking testosterone for a month. Turns out that there's an enzyme in adipose tissue (fat) that converts testosterone to estrogen. So, even adding testosterone to my system wasn't increasing my overall level so much since I had so much fat to just swallow it up.

I was in a bit of a quandary at this point. I could feel the benefits of having more testosterone in my system, but long term use of external testosterone starts a feedback loop that eventually renders you sterile. The body sees the hormone levels increase, then cuts its own production until the testes no longer produce sperm. And, cutting off the external source doesn't bring them back on line. So, if I wanted the benefits of taking it, we were going to have to decide if we wanted more kids, plus actually bank some sperm for the future to either use to have more kids, or as a hedge against changing our minds. That wasn't a really desirable future, but it beats how crappy I had been feeling for years.

While we debated this future, I went off the testosterone, then had another test on 3/16/07 to use as a baseline of all the sex hormone levels for if I did go back on it long term. This one had total testosterone at 331, and free at 85.6 (2.59%). This didn't make any sense to me, because it was the highest level yet, but I had been off the prescription for a couple of months. It's still a low reading compared to other young males, but still, why so high relative to my previous tests? I still can't explain this one. I wasn't checking my weight during this time, so it's possible I lost a few pounds somewhere that made a difference, but other than that, I have no theories.

Before deciding on long term prescription testosterone, though, we had to explore our other option. Exercise stimulates testosterone production, and losing weight means there's less fat to convert it estrogen. It was possible that I could lick the problem through exercise alone, and even if I couldn't, less fat would mean a better ability to use the prescription stuff. I decided I just couldn't consign myself to a lifetime of medication without knowing if there was another way. So, on 11/5/07, I started a plan of exercise, and started this blog to track it.

I had originally thought I would exercise for 8 weeks, then see if my levels went up or my symptoms went away. I figured if my levels went up and I felt better, then I've found my cure. If they didn't go up, well then I needed to go back on the prescription, with the added benefit of being a few pounds lighter when I do. I did a baseline test on 11/7/07 that showed my total testosterone at a nice, low 255. Free testosterone was 52.4 (2.05%).

After 8 weeks, I was definitely feeling better, like I didn't really have the low testosterone symptoms anymore. However, I didn't want to retest until I had gone a few more weeks or made a bigger change in my weight. I was afraid that if I tested too soon, I wasn't going to get a definitive enough answer. If I was feeling a little better and my levels just went up a little, that doesn't give me clear direction about which way to go. So, instead, I kept putting off the retest. It was about 10 months later by the time I actually got into the doctor's office to test again. I had lost about 35 pounds, and any low testosterone symptoms I previously had were long gone.

The lab results I got this time are certainly definitive. These most recent tests were done 9/11/08. My total testosterone is 437, which still isn't a really high reading compared to some people, but it dwarfs any previous reading I had. Free testosterone is 84.9 (1.94%), which is right up there with the highest ones I had before.

So, it's now painfully clear to me that to remain feeling good, I need to keep myself at or below this weight, and get at least 4 hours of exercise per week. I know what the alternative is, and the way I felt before is still fresh enough in my mind to be able to know that I prefer feeling this way. If for whatever reason I couldn't exercise and stay trim, I would absolutely head back to the prescription testosterone now that I know how valuable this stuff is to me. However, being able to handle the problem solely through exercise avoids the side effects of the prescription route, and has a huge amount of other great side effects of its own.

In the category of "other great side effects" comes this: The 9/11/08 labs showed my ALT all the way down to 15, so any possible fatty liver problems I had are long gone. Triglycerides are way down, to 78. Total cholesterol is all the way down to 187. The actual breakdown of the cholesterol is still a slight concern. HDL is up to 35, but still should be over 39. LDL is down to 139, but should still be less than 130. VLDL is way down to 13. Because the HDL is low by a smidgen and the LDL is high just a tad, I'm barely missing that magic 20% minimum target ratio of HDL to total cholesterol (these numbers put me at 19%). If I could just move the LDL and HDL a bit to put them in range, I'll be golden. The only other out of range result is bilirubin, still a little high at 1.6 (and still completely ignorable at that level)

One other side effect is that I can pay a whole lot less for life insurance now. My existing policy is priced kind of high specifically because of my weight and the cholesterol. Assuming the insurance company's tests jibe with my doctor's, I can probably pay about half what I'm paying now for the same coverage. After getting these results, I went ahead and applied for a new policy, and scheduled the physical for Wednesday morning.

The only problem is that I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to eat less the next couple of days. I don't know how the insurance company breaks down their weight categories, but just in case it has anything to do with BMI, I want to make sure I weigh in inside the normal range. For a six foot height, that would be 184.2 or less. Since I normally weigh myself naked, I'll have to pick out some very light clothes to be weighed in as well. I feel like a wrestler trying to make my weight class. I would just wait a few weeks to get my weight down another couple of pounds by itself, but, I'm going to Mexico on Friday, and that's usually good for a gain of a few pounds. So, I figured I'd just get it over with now.

Week 48, Day 7

Weight (today's reading): 185.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 187.3

Today's blood pressure: forgot

Today's food: yogurt, grapes, celery with peanut butter, grilled chicken breast, brown rice with peas, handful of almonds

Today's exercise: day of rest (and a 2.75 mile walk)

Week 48, Day 6

Weight (today's reading): 185.6

Weight (weighted moving average): 187.5

Today's blood pressure: 130/87

Today's food: 1/2 piece bacon, yogurt, 1/2 navajo taco, nectarine, costco samples, chili dog, birthday cake, small bag of whoppers, mini snickers, 5 marshmallows

Today's exercise: 60 pushups

Week 48, Day 5

Weight (today's reading): 184.2

Weight (weighted moving average): 187.7

Today's blood pressure: 134/86

Today's food: yogurt, plum, banana, plum, 3 pieces fried chicken, potato salad, 1 1/2 pork chops, noodles with cream sauce

Today's exercise: none

Week 48, Day 4

Weight (today's reading): 186.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 188.1

Today's blood pressure: 127/85

Today's food: yogurt, chicken sandwich, banana, apple, 2 pieces pizza

Today's exercise: 1.5 mile warmup, intervals (6x400 @ 7:15 pace), 1 mile cooldown (total 4.89 miles); 60 pushups

Week 48, Day 3

Weight (today's reading): 187.8

Weight (weighted moving average): 188.3

Today's blood pressure: 139/90

Today's food: yogurt, pop tart, banana, apple, baked cheetos, sticky chicken with rice, green beans, bowl of ice cream, apple

Today's exercise: none