December Goal Met

With a final ride on the exercise bike this morning I managed to achieve my goal for the month. I ended with a total of 301.28 miles on the bike in the month of December:

 

I was also lucky enough to have Erin join me on my training run this morning (although I'm not too sure she actually wanted to). I think both of us were wishing it could have counted towards our goal for next year. It happens so infrequently but I really enjoy when we can train together. 

Updates And A New Goal For 2017

With 4 days remaining in December, I am currently at 288.77 miles on the bike towards my goal of 300 and I intend to finish that up later today. My running mileage continues to gradually increase as I work towards the start of my marathon training program. This past Saturday I put in 5 1/2 miles on some slushy trails.

When I checked in at the pool this morning they informed me that my yearly pass would expire next week. I decided that before renewing my pass I wanted to ensure that it was saving my money (I was pretty sure already but wanted to verify). The yearly pass costs me $160 while an individual trip to the pool without the pass is $4, so simple math says that if I took more then 40 trips the to pool it would be worth it. The beauty of tracking all of my training on Garmin Connect is that I can run reports for situations just like this one. In the past year, I have logged 81 trips to the Urbandale pool, well worth the cost of a yearly pass.

With New Years just a few days away, I have been spending some time thinking about what goals I would like to set for 2017. As mentioned in previous posts, I am already planning to run my first marathon and compete in my first half iron distance triathlon, but I also want to continue to build my on my endurance base. I will save the 2016 training numbers for a later post, but in reviewing what I did in 2016, I thought it would be a great idea to build on those numbers for 2017. Ironically, as I was already thinking about the topic, my wife, Erin, floated an idea for something we could both do together. So here it is, our goal in 2017 is to run 2,017 miles combined. To put that in perspective, that equates to each of us running a little over 2.75 miles per day. A lofty goal for sure, but one that should propel both of us towards our other goals for the year.

Big Week And Big Decision

If you read my last post, you know that after going several months without stepping on a scale I weighed myself last week and was surprised to see that I had made my way back up to 269 lbs. Well, I'm happy to say that after a week of refocusing myself, I was able to drop 9 lbs. My weigh in Friday morning was 260 lbs and falling.

A few more updates on the week:

• Through the first 18 days of this month, I have put in 180 miles on my exercise bike (towards my goal of 300) and I still intend to ride some tonight to add to that number.
• On Saturday morning I took a trip to the YMCA in Bettendorf with my father-in-law. It was fun to swim in a new pool and I ended up swimming 1,250 yards. That is the farthest I have swam since the Des Moines Triathlon
• I also was able to get my long run in while in the QCA on Saturday. Bettendorf is one of my favorite destinations to run because of all of the beautiful parks and trails that they have. I used my running spikes for the first time this winter and they worked perfect on the snow and ice packed trails and sidewalks
• The cold and windy weather forced me to run on the treadmill Thursday. It was only 3 miles but it reinforced my desire to run outside

Lastly, I have added another big race to my schedule next year. I am planning to participate in the Legend Ad Astra Triathlon in Lawrence, KS on September 10. I will be competing in the Legend 70, which includes the same distances as a Half Ironman:

• 1.2 Mile Swim
• 56 Mile Bike
• 13.1 Mile Run

If I'm able to complete the triathlon, it would allow me to cross 2 races off my bucket list in 2017. I can't even wait!

Updates And Facing The Music

Let's start with the good news first. We are 11 days into the month of December and I am making great progress towards my goal to put 300 miles on my exercise bike. As of today, I am just shy of 120 miles.

I also have completed the 4th week of my run training program that included a long run of 5 miles yesterday morning. The temperatures have really started to drop over the past couple of weeks but I have managed to bundle up and stay running outside as I dread the thought of running long distances on a treadmill. 

The one thing that started to get to me over the last week was always running in the dark. Most of my training runs occur before work, around 5 am, after supper, or after the girls go to bed. All of these times result in running in the pitch dark and for some reason that was starting to get to me. This week I managed to sneak a run in after work one day and during lunch another day. Running in the daylight did me some good. 

Now for the not so good news. During my long run yesterday morning I managed to trip over a rise in the sidewalk and fall flat on my face. This is one of the major risks of running in the dark. For the most part I am okay. I scraped up my left knee and palms and have bruises on both knees, my left elbow and nose. Mostly I was impressed at how quickly I was able to pop back up and run the rest of the way home.

Lastly, the really bad news. You may recall a post back in July/August when I stated that I was going to shift my focus away from weight loss and just worry about training for my races. Well, with that decision, I made the mistake eliminating my twice a week weigh ins. As my racing season came to an end, my training tapered off and the idea was to shift focus back to weight loss (also mentioned in a previous post). 

Even with a weight loss goal, I failed to start up regular weigh ins. Over the past couple of weeks it finally hit me that I had to be gaining weight, I could just feel it. Although I was fitting in what would be plenty of exercise for most people, I was no longer burning the 1,000 - 3,000 calories a day that I was during peek training season. At the same time, I didn't take the time to evaluate my nutrition program and decrease the number of calories that I was consuming daily.  

I'm sure at this point you can guess where this is headed. Yesterday morning I stepped on the scale for the first time in months weighing in at 269 lbs, which is a little more then 30 lbs over my lightest weight back in August. One thing that I will qualify here is that I did put on a significant amount of muscle from August to early October that had me weighing in at 251 lbs. During that time I was actually trying to work on bulking up so the weight gain was expected. Sadly, I am painfully aware that the last 18 lbs was not muscle at all. 

I consider myself a very intelligent person, but right now I feel like a complete idiot. I flat out screwed up and I am owning that. The good news for me is that I did decide to step on the scale yesterday to bring this issue to light. Knowing their is a problem is the first step to fixing it and I am well on my way to doing just that. I am already making alterations to my diet to account for burning fewer calories each week. I am also ramping up my training (this has been happening over the past couple of weeks anyways). My plan is to get back to what I was doing last December - March when I lost a significant amount of weight. Diversifying my workouts to include a variety of exercises and strength training and sticking to a schedule. Also, being more conscientious about what I am eating compared to the amount of calories that I am burning.

Another positive is that nothing else has changed. I still have huge goals for next year that I fully intend to accomplish. It isn't like I have been secretly skipping workouts or gorging on food. I have been maintaining a consist level of training and am loving nearly every minute of it. I made a mistake and lost my focus and in an instant, yesterday morning, I got my focus back. This journey is a roller coaster ride, and to this point I had only been experiencing the highs. Yesterday was a low but less then 48 hours later, I'm already working my way up the next hill.