A fat man and a marathon (part II)

Can't be hardcore forever

I have had my weight go up and down for years and I've come the conclusion that most people including me can only handle 3-6 months of hardcore dieting and working out. By that I mean no cheating on the diet and having quality high intensity workouts on a regular basis.

I think the secret is to go hard, rest and MAINTAIN and then hit it again. Nothing is more depressing than eating some crap food, mailing in your workouts and gaining 5lbs in a week when you know it's going to take 3 weeks to lose it again.
 
Well I have internet again after moving and spending 45 minutes talking to some guy in India to get my router working. Starting to think moving may have been another terrible impulsive decision I've been known to make. I mean, I had a whole plan to live with my parents for another year, and now I've DOUBLED all the stress in my life.

2010 has been a rough year so far. Today I even cancelled my half marathon I was supposed to run in 10 days, and now I'm feeling pretty terrible about it. It made sense seeing how I've already run 2 half marathons now (in training), and by passing up working 30 hours of overtime I'd be losing $500, but now my running partner is really upset with me and I get to add another goal to the list of shit I did not get done. Makes me pretty depressed. On the flip side, if I did run it, I would have had absolutely no sense of accomplishment of finishing a half-assed marathon and I'd feel just as bad about it. Guess I'm just mad I can't seem to make time to train.

I can't seem to figure out how to balance my life. I told myself I'd work as much as I had to this year, and I'm doing that, saved up money to move out and have a nice place (my friend's wife told me "Wow, you could actually have a woman over here!"), but at 70-80 hours a week (87 this week, 90 next week, but some of it is sleep pay) I don't have time to be a good uncle, brother, friend, and take care of myself. Especially since I now live across from my nephew and two friends just moved back and want to hang out all the time. So how do you consciously make the choice to be a shitty friend or Uncle and tell a 3 year old you can't take him to the park because you have to run for 2 hours and then sleep more than 4 hours in a night?

So my new plan is to just run a half hour here or there whenever I can and focus on my other goals in life. Of course, keep losing weight by eating well. I really would LOVE to be able to train for the full marathon in October still ... maybe.
 
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Just went on a 20 minute bike ride at work. That was FUN! I haven't ridden a bike in like 10 years. If I can have that much fun a POS bike someone bought for $3 on a rummage sale I might have to start looking for a cheap one to get some weekend rides on on that trail.

When feeling down, exercise always cheers me up.
 
Decided I was being a whiny bitch and just in an all around terrible mood the other day, so I'm rearranging my schedule so I can still do the half marathon! Woo.

Except I'm going to have to walk a lot. Or maybe just do the quarter marathon. Don't know what kool-aid I was drinking a few days ago. Haha! I'm a runner damnit! Just needed a swift kick in the arse. Also had another 45 minute bike ride with a client at work. That shit is too much fun! Makes you feel like a kid again.
 
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Hahaha I was going to start this post off by saying, NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but then I saw your new update and now I want to say YYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!! for not being a whiny bitch anymore and getting back in that half marathon! lol Just DO IT! You're the whole reason I even signed up for it. I never even heard of it before I started reading your journal. So you HAVE to do it!!! And you CAN do it... you are capable of running 13.1 miles already. Who cares if you have to walk here and there..... YOU CAN DO IT! :-D I can't believe it's only 6 days away... I'm soo excited!
 
Thanks Sarah. I was thinking of doing just the 1/4 marathon today. My coworker covered a few hours for me so that I could get a run in and so I ran, in long sleeves, in 93 degree heat. It sucked, but in a good way. Just like 2 miles, and I walked a bit. Makes the 13.1 seem daunting. If I do run the half I'll probably walk 1/3 of it or more and take like 3.5 hours. We'll see.
 
Woo! Just did the half marathon in Madison. It was BRUTALLY HOT! Said 93 degrees when we left just after noon. They even red flagged the course at 11 and advised everyone to stop, but of course no one did. I saw two people in ambulances getting carted off. I'm so proud that I finished it. I walked a lot though. I was planning on walking a bit and the heat just made it worse. When I did my 2:59 half marathon training run a few weeks ago, I thought it would be easy. Who knew what an extra 40 degrees would do? :ack2:

About 1 mile into the thing, I'm jogging along really slow, and I look at the people in front of me and see a yellow bib. Two of them! White, like I had, was the half marathon run. Yellow, the half marathon walk. There I am jogging and busting my ass, and I see these two women powerwalking AND THEY'RE GOING JUST AS FAST AS ME! Ahhhhhhhh! All I could think was how I was going to overtake them! But they beat me, as did a bunch of the powerwalkers. I walked pretty slow the last few miles because my feet and toe were killing me.

I'm SO happy that I took off work and did it, and the heat even made it better with the sense of accomplishment. It was cool because the neighborhood was out spraying everyone with their hoses, and the three courses (quarter, half, full) all overlapped in big chunks so even us slow half-marathoners got to see all the Boston qualifyers and elites running and watch as all the pace groups kept passing us. Great crowd support. Everyone cheered you on with the name on your bib, so I had all these strangers yelling, "Cmon Jeff, you can do it." It was pretty awesome. I had all these strangers in the crowd cheering me on as I was pushing at the end, and got so fired up I seriously thought I was going to pass out I ran so hard the last couple minutes.

Good times. My buddy kept running an hour+ after they closed the course to finish the marathon. He was popping vicadin for his knee, running in the heat, and looked terrible at the end. But we were all proud he made it.

Tuesday I start my marathon training. And I'm going to stick to it, so that I actually hit my goals for Milwaukee.

My feet are killing me, but my friend wants to play 18 holes of golf. Burn a lot of calories today!
 
I feel pretty dang sore this morning. My feet are really sore. I'm just not used to going 3 and a half hours on hot asphalt. Quads were killing just walking up the 1 flight of stairs to work.

Felt alright yesterday, a bit worse today. I may take an extra few days off to recover more before starting the new training.
 
Walk it off

No really..... after a big run if I just can't get the muscles going I'll go for a long slow walk. Another good thing is to ride the bike in the gym. Any thing low impact that keeps the blood flowing.

The executive triathalon is good too. Steam, sauna and jacuzzi :)
 
Yay!! I'm so proud of you for doing it! I was thinking of you while I was running it and was hoping you did the half. So much fun! Too bad it was so hot but hey atleast we weren't going for 26 miles in that! Congrats Marathon Man!!!!
 
caddyguy said:
No really..... after a big run if I just can't get the muscles going I'll go for a long slow walk. Another good thing is to ride the bike in the gym. Any thing low impact that keeps the blood flowing.

The executive triathalon is good too. Steam, sauna and jacuzzi :)
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Yeah, the more I move around the better I'm feeling today. Might have to make a trip to "visit" the parents soon so I can make sure they're keeping their hot tub in good shape.

skkroll said:
Yay!! I'm so proud of you for doing it! I was thinking of you while I was running it and was hoping you did the half. So much fun! Too bad it was so hot but hey atleast we weren't going for 26 miles in that! Congrats Marathon Man!!!!
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I was going to get on here before the marathon so I could find you and cheer you on, but I've been busy. My buddy keeps asking me if I'm going to be ready for the full in October. After that run I'm thinking it might be more fun to just focus on cutting 45 minutes or so off my half time. :) We'll see.

-----

Looking at the results and it turns out that the fastest female walker finished in 1 hour 51 minutes. I'm calling bullshit on that. How can someone walk 8 1/2 minute miles. NO FREAKING WAY! And apparently not everyone though the whole 1/2 and full marathon merging was a fun experience. There's a thread about the marathon on Runners World.

 
Where you at MarathonMan?! How are things goin? Hopefully you've been able to run. It took me 5 days after the half to attempt running but now I'm back at it! Just checkin' up, hope to hear from you soon!

~ Sarah
 
My router went to heck, so I haven't been on in awhile. Things have been good, but I've been slacking on the running due to working so dang much. But I'm gonna finally have a cushion in the bank and I just emailed my boss to tell him I'm cutting back from 70+ hours a week to 45 or so. It's gonna be so nice.

I start my 16 week marathon training plan on Monday! Woot! I'm so excited. But I think I'm just gonna modify the plan and run another half or two. I don't want to attempt a full unless I can do like a 2 hr 15 minute half. Back to running. Got a 5K in 2 weeks and I haven't run in FOREVER it feels like. Ahh!

Also, I'm feeling very fat, but I haven't weighed myself since I moved. But I'm getting back to tracking my calories along with my running. Feels good to finally take some me time to focus on myself. I needed the overtime, but damn, the last 6 months have kinda sucked.
 
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Alta818 said:
So ...where are you at?!
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Busy, busy, busy! Working my friggin ass off, got promoted, friends are back in town for the summer. Sometimes I'm going 2-3 days without even going back to my house since I'm making sure I keep all my family and friendships going strong (golf, cards, summerfest, fairs, movies). Buying a duplex next summer and making my parents my first tenants. I've got a plan damnit and I'm going to do it.

Also just bought a nice $500 trek bike. I kind of wanted to get a cool racing one, but I didn't want to drop a grand, so I got a basic cruiser to fly around on the bike trail behind my house. My running has been slacking since it got so hot. I've run twice, just TWICE! since the half marathon, but I'm biking a lot now. I've realized I love running much more when I can just wing it and enjoy it so I'm going to start adding about 2-3 runs a week to mix in with my 2-3 bike rides.

Now that the internet is back up on work (finally!) I'll be popping on here more often. Summer has been crazy busy fun!
 
Hey guys! Haven't been on here much lately because there hasn't been much to report. Since getting promoted two people have quit I've been working even more. Arggh! :( (But yah for paychecks with 100 hours of OT)

But EVERYTHING will settle down by mid August and I told my boss if I have to keep working like this come September he can demote me because I'm starting my running plan again to get ready for the Madison half-marathon! And I'm signing up for a new gym on Monday too. I'm so so so excited to get back in the swing of things and back to busting ass. Between work and my social life taking care of myself has been nonexistent. I love running outside so much, but I it's gonna be awesome riding my bike to the gym, banging out some intervals on the treadmill, hitting a few free weights, then riding back home.
 
So I haven't worked out much lately. But tomorrow I'm heading to the health club at 7am to look at a membership and starting my running plan for Madison next year!

6 weeks to get back to 3-4 miles
19 week marathon mileage build up
18 week marathon training plan

I'm back bitches! Gonna be great to focus on something other than work like the past 3 months.
 
Floyd133 said:
Next year? What about that marathon in October?
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Yeah, I got a little sidetracked by work and decided to downgrade and do another half ... but guess what? They don't offer a half at Milwaukee. I may actually end up doing the half in Madison. That was FUN. And I want to keep my running fun and have time to bike and lift weights still. We'll see how the training goes. I don't want to attempt a marathon unless I can do it in under 5 hours.
 
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