I had planned a 16 miler, but I ended up doing 18 along the bosque. The plan was to run 3 miles hard, cruise for 7 and then do the last 6 at marathon pace (what that means right now, I’m not sure). I took the first mile easy, then ran the next 3 hard, from the Bio Park to the Nature Center, like a 3 mile tempo run along the bike path. After that, I went back into cruising mode and moved over to the dirt road. A few miles later, when I was almost to Paseo del Norte, I heard some heavy breathing coming up from behind. A man pulled up along side me. I continued running with him, and he gasped “You’re running 6:17 pace” (according to his wrist gadget, I suppose). He had been using me as a rabbit to pull himself ahead of his 2 training buddies following behind. He was working pretty hard and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we weren’t going that fast. Sub-7s maybe, but not 6:17. We ended up talking and I decided to continue running with him all the way to Alameda just to help him keep the screws tight. That’s where the extra miles came in. This course is an out and back, so there’s no shortcut home.
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He’s part of a training group of over 40 guys trying to do the same thing I’m doing - get in shape and run a marathon. They are going to do the marathon in Phoenix, which is one of the ones I’m considering as my Boston qualifier.
He stopped at the Alameda bridge to wait for his buddies to catch up and I turned around and headed back. I decided to do my 6 marathon pace miles from there, and go easy for the last 3 back home. I accelerated until I became a bit anaerobic, then backed off a tad and held on. This method has worked well for me in the past. I maintained it with surprising ease. I didn’t time the six miler by itself, the distance wouldn’t have been very precise anyway, but I hit 16 miles at 1:54, a 7:08 pace. That’s pretty good. I cruised home with a couple of 8:30 miles to finish it off. I finished the week with 62.5 miles.
Afterwards, I weighed myself. The first number I saw on the scale was an alarming 133. That couldn’t be. I checked and the zero had been reset, way off. I’d originally set this scale to read the same as the one in my doctor’s office. I reset it by memory and got 145, about 4.5 lbs in a week. This number is still a cause for concern. That’s too fast. I think it had more to do with dehydration than anything else, though. It’s been really hot lately. Also, the scale is now zeroed differently, so I’m not going to worry yet. I’ll have to wait another week to see what my weight loss rate really is. It should never exceed 2lbs a week, and 1 is more like it when I’m training hard like this.
However, even allowing for some dehydration and a possibly more optimistic scale, I’m taking this as my warning to back off on the training a bit. I was planning on going from 60 to 80 mile weeks in three weeks, but after I hit this weight so quickly, I’m going to stick to 60 miles for another week at least. I’m feeling really good and I don’t want to mess around with extreme weight loss. Slow and steady is the way to go, as far as weight loss is concerned, anyway.