Week 43

It has been a very good week. I saw something I thought that I would never see: space between my thighs. When I was a preteen hooked on Cosmopolitan magazine, I read an article that stated that “perfect” legs touched only at the knees, calf & ankles. Well, if I stand just right I can achieve this mighty feat for the very first time in my life. As someone whose thighs have rubbed when walking for as long as I can remember this is truly exciting accomplishment.

Nutrition was on target this week. I averaged 1953 calories a day with 37% Protein, 24% Fat, 39% Carbohydrate.

Running was on plan but not 100% on schedule. Due to the Business Plan Competition, my Wednesday run happened on Thursday. My second 6 mile run of the week included 4 Yasso 800’s. I’m going to include them in one run every other week up to 3 weeks before the Marathon. I’ll work my way up to 10 of them. I’m training as if I will pull off a 4 hour 30 minute marathon so I’m running the 800’s at a 9 minute per mile pace (4:30 for the ½ mile). I find these surprisingly difficult and challenging.

Weekly weigh-in: 128.0 lbs and 16.8% body fat using my Omron. I think these values are extreme water retention from too much sodium yesterday. Obviously it’s pretty unlikely for me to have gained 4.5 lbs of lean and lost 2.7 lbs of fat over the last week. Yesterday’s weigh in was 126.4 lbs and 18.4% body fat which I suspect is a bit more accurate of a measure. Some people are opposed to weighing daily but I prefer to track 5 or 10 day moving averages to get a better sense of where I am. Since this weeks’ weigh-ins were 125.6, 126.4, 127.0, 125.0, 125.6, 126.4 and 128.0, I feel pretty confident that today is the anomaly. We’ll see next week.

Plan for the next week

Running: Week 2 of 16 week beginner marathon training plan: 7 mile run (Sat or Sun), 4 mile run with intervals & 5 minutes uphill time (Mon or Tues), 6 mile run (Wed or Thurs) Nutrition: Something between 1900 and 2100 calories a day with my usual 40:40:20 ratios. I am traveling three days this week for work so will do my best, but I’m not going to stress if I end up at maintenance this week.

Other Training schedule: 2 days of weights; 1 day stretch/bike/light weights; 1 day off (or walk/bike if the weather is great).