Monthly Archives: May 2010

What happened on the #CMM

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#CMM is the hash tag from Twitter for the Country Music Marathon. Occurring on April 24, 2010, It was going to be my first marathon, but so many things went wrong. First and foremost: I didn’t make it.

There are many reasons, but there are also no excuses.

  • My nutrition training didn’t work. I trained throughout the past 6 months with e-gels. I used them whenever I went more than about 10 miles, which frankly, was a lot of times, especially in 2010. But, I don’t think I have ever used them in the conditions I was in and pacing I was on.
  • It was warm and muggy. Not hot, and not particularly bad, by any means, but practically all of my training was done in cold weather. I didn’t consider how much the temp difference and additional humidity would make. And that course has hills. Now, it’s not got a few HILLS, on it, it’s more like it has a few flat areas. I wouldn’t say there were any killer inclines, but they simply were everywhere.

So, When combined with the next reason below, my body simply didn’t have enough experience to deal with the gel load and stress load I was putting on it. So I’ve got to try harder to use my nutrition in a race setting and get something that works better for me.

  •   My expected finish time. I’ve been pushing myself harder and harder over the last year. That’s the easy way to describe it. About this time last year, I started running. 2 miles in 30 minutes was pushing it, and there was some walking involved. I’ve done a 10k (my first race ever), a few 5k’s and two half marathons. Reasonable people tell me that even doing a marathon now is pushing it a bit. Frankly, my expectations were too high. I was pushing for the sub 4 hour marathon on my first go.

I told everyone that I would be happy with a finish, but that wasn’t quite true. As I trained, and ran, and put those miles behind me, I kept speeding up. Starting out, 10 min miles were pushing it, especially over distance. But I kept at it, did speed work, and low and behold, my times came down. I consistently was running at a sub 9 min mile. But the kicker was the distance… Most of my speed came after I had done my really long runs, and had started into the taper down phase. Plus, in something I disagree on, most advice tells you that your long runs should be ran slower to minimize injury.

So yes, I went out with a sub 7:30 pace. Yes, I slowed back down pretty quick. But I held a 9 minute average for the first 19 miles. Mile 20 is when it all fell apart for me. I took my fourth egel, walking up the hill into Nashville and it just came right back.

Which leads to the final, real reason… The weather.

  • Tornado warnings, and the course being shut down. I crossed the bridge in downtown Nashville after gel 4 issue, pretty much at a fast walk. I hurt. I knew I was going to be be slow at this point. Looking at the sky, and knowing that they were planning on closing the course, I knew my race was done. I don’t mind running in rain, but walking in hail, lightning, and tornados seemed to be too much. I took the turn at 20 miles onto the half course. I didn’t think that I had the time to recover enough to finish the race. I knew I could finish, but I knew I was going to have to slow down a bit, and probably alternate some walks into the mix. I didn’t know what the plan for getting people off the course was going to be, in the case of really bad weather.

What I didn’t know is that they were pushing everyone off the course right around the bend anyways.

Does that make a difference? I don’t know. I guess I know I wasn’t going to make it, regardless. Could I have made it?

YES. I know that. I wouldn’t have been sub 4 hours, but I ran the mile and a half to the half finish line at a 9:15 pace. I could have finished. It probably would have been sub 4:30, although maybe not by much.

It wasn’t my day (nor the day for many others on the full course.)

Elite offered many discounts on the next race, and opened additional slots for San Diego. I didn’t receive such an offer. I don’t mind the race fee… You take your luck. I do wish the slot offer had been extended, as there wasn’t any availability, and I DO want to get this marathon behind me.

So that’s it, in a nut shell. Now I have to keep training (harder) and move on to the next race.

What happened to you?

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(This got way too long, and has had too many edits. I’m pushing it live, and will stop trying to write novellas into a single blog post)

Everyone has seen the weight loss ads with the fine print underneath “Results not Typical”. This is my beginning story of my results, without the weight loss products.

My wife mentioned to me recently of a report saying that obesity in America had recently risen. I’m not going to go into all of the causes, fixes, etc. There are FAR better areas to discuss that. But I do want to write a little bit about something that did happen with me.

First, some pictures. I’m only going to show face shots.

This was me about 3 years ago.

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This is me, a week ago.

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Let’s get the obvious out of the way, immediately. I still don’t have hair. Strangely enough, I might have a BIT more hair now, but that’s also probably an illusion based on the fact that there isn’t as much face as there used to be. I don’t even want to think how much I weighed then. I know that my waistline was a generous 36, IOW a realistic 38, but I wasn’t going to wear 38s. I’m currently wearing a pair of 30s, loosely. And frankly, 28s would probably be a better fit now.

What I do know is that I had already started to loose some weight in May 2008. That’s when my wife bought us a Wii fit. And no, it didn’t cause me to loose weight, but it did allow me an easy way of tracking my weight. 209 pounds. I’m 6′ tall. I was not obese. But yeah, that’s heavy.

So let’s bring out the graph. Click on it for a larger, more readable version.

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This capture is current as of 5/18/2010. So, it’s about 2 years of weight data. It’s also about 1 year since I started running.

What happened to me? I’ve lost over 60 pounds of weight. My average weight seems to be stabilizing around 162, although I’ve said that before. I’ve recently been hitting 158 as a low, and as my training continues, who knows? Body fat keeps falling, based on the scale. The scales I have (Withings Scale) aren’t exact on body fat accuracy compared to calipers or water weighing, but they certainly are good enough, and very useful in terms of showing a trend.

Exactly zero of the clothes that I had fit anymore (including, distressingly, my tailored suit and shirts from Hong Kong). I have 2 pairs of jeans that fit, and I don’t buy clothes unless absolutely needed, because it seems that if it’s in my closet for more than a month, it probably won’t fit anymore. That is the downside, that no one tells you about.

It’s expensive buying new clothes just to replace your previous clothes every month. It’s really cool the first time. Slightly less so the next. And it gets OLD real quick.

So what happened?

I started eating smaller portions.
Healthier foods, although I wasn’t eating HORRIBLE.
I eliminated Soda. Period. Diet or otherwise.
Lots of water replaced it.

Oh, and I ran. A lot.

Last year, I spent the majority of the year in Denver, on the weekdays. As part of the contract I was on, we worked all the time. I couldn’t sleep very well out there for a significant time. So, it quickly because a situation where I would wake up early, and could either get started working again, or run. Easy access to running trails helped. Living with a guy who does Ironman Tris regularly helped tons.

I couldn’t run 2 miles. Heck, I couldn’t run 1 mile without including walking. But I kept going. I entered my first race (a 10k after the aforementioned Ironman convinced me to do it instead of the 5k) on Labor day.

I’m also going farther. After the 10k, running 5k distances just didn’t challenge me. Nor did the 10k to be honest. So, I started training for the Half Marathon. I ran the Nashville irunfortheparty.com Half Marathon in November 2009. I then ran the Memphis St. Jude Half Marathon in December 2009. I dropped about 4 minutes off my time in the month between.

I trained for the Country Music Marathon in April 2010. What happened there will be another post. During that training, I was regularly running longer than those half marathons, and wasn’t even thinking about it.

So, now, 3 years after that first picture, I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m loving running, and I’m actually happy about my body. I wouldn’t say I was unhappy before, but I know I wasn’t happy. I did it gradually, and I don’t regret or miss a thing, except perhaps, that I didn’t start earlier. I focus on the running, but in regards to my weight loss, it was really only part of the equation. I changed my lifestyle. I didn’t diet. I ate well and moderately (although in fact, I NEED to eat more now). I firmly believe that eliminating Soda made a huge difference.

I’m not setting any speed records. I’m ok with that. I read tons of blogs of very competitive racers, and I’m just not there. Yet. I enjoy running, I enjoy racing, even though I KNOW I’m not going to win against Ryan Hall. But against myself, that’s another story completely. I’m still early enough in my training that I continue to improve my Personal Record regularly.

Anyone still reading?