This morning I completed my long run for the week. For the past three weekends in a row, I have been doing 10 miles. Previously I incorporated about three miles of trail running into the ten mile run, but today, I just stuck to the roads. I covered the distance in 1:41:57 at a pace of 10:09. The temp was not too bad, 41.4°F, with a slight wind of around 6 mph. By the time I started running at 7:30 am, the sun was already up, and it was nice to run in daylight for a change. I normally have been trying to run five days a week. Monday through Thursday I get in three miles a day before work, and it is usually quite dark then. I try to take Fridays off, then a long run on Saturday, and a recovery day off on Sunday.
Perhaps a little history is in order. This past July, I weighed 267 pounds. I stand about six two or so and have a large frame, but there was no doubt about it, I was way overweight. I think an apt description would be fat. I had tried to start running again this summer (I had done some running back in 2001 but never trained properly and gave it up), attempting to jog and walk a bit on the weekends, but I was not backing that effort up with additional weekday attempts, nor was I even the slightest bit considering going on a diet. I had not been a meat eater for quite some time, but I consumed lots of soft drinks and chips and pizza and pasta, and I never wanted to exercise that much, even though I have actually always loved getting out to the woods, and going on the occasional bike ride. But as my weight kept increasing, I was finding those activities harder and harder to do.
So around the first week of August this year, a friend decided she was going to try a diet, even though, in my opinion, she didn’t need to go on one, and I did. It was called the Fat Smash Diet. I never had much belief in diets, yet alone something with a “fad name,” but something about how she described it to me made sense…I could eat all the fruits and vegetables I wanted, and I had to incorporate cardio. This seemed quite a logical and healthy way to lose weight.
When I first started out, I was hardly running at all. In fact, for that first month, I barely could run for 5 minutes without significant pain in my knees and ankles, and I was totally out of breath after about one minute. But I still lost about 20 pounds, just from eating better. To be honest, I haven’t even read the Fat Smash book fully. I just followed the general guidelines, and it’s been working. The bottom line is I have lost over 40 pounds (with a goal of losing about 30 more) and I am now running about 22 miles a week. Oh yeah, and I am now a running addict.
