Over the past month or so, I’ve been trying to get back into shape by running on a regular basis. It was actually quite timely, because my first day of running was actually July 4th. It was the following day that Larry posted his entry about getting serious about doing something about his weight. BTW, Larry, let’s see some updated figures!
 I had decided I had to get serious too because a few weeks prior when I was packing for our Battle Creek golf trip I tried on some of my golf shorts, and most of them didn’t fit because I had gotten too fat. I didn’t start running at that time because back in mid-May, I was playing basketball in our driveway with Eric and was attempting to save a ball going out of bounds. I was right on the edge of the driveway and rolled my right ankle and went down like a pile of bricks. I was in maybe more pain then I’ve ever felt in my life. I didn’t see stars, but I did see one bright sun. Eric was to later say that that was probably the stupidest thing he’s ever seen me do. The kids are at the age where they show us no sympathy.
 It ends up that I not only sprained my ankle, but several days later I realized that I had strained my achilles. So due to that injury I wasn’t able to start running until it had healed significantly. It still is a little tender, but it actually gives me no problems when I’m running. It’s more bothersome in the morning when I wake up and everything has tightened up.
After a few weeks of running, I decided to start a log of my runs, so I’ve posted it here. Sorry, no time to make any graphs, but maybe on my next update.
| Date | Distance | Time | Min/Mile | Comment |
I usually run at Moraine Hills State Park a few miles from home. They’ve got 3 interconnected loops of cinder trails that are great for running. I usually do the 3.73 mile loop, but have occasionally added a second for a 6.2 mile run.
I haven’t lost much weight, maybe 4 pounds, but my clothes are fitting much better. My goal is to first run the 6.2 mile run in under an hour. I should be able to do that relatively soon. As soon as the weather cools down a bit, I’ll give it a go. My other goal is to see if I can do the 3.73 mile loop in under 30 minutes. That’s going to be the tough one, but hopefully with another couple of months of serious running and some 50 degree weather and low humidity (as opposed to the 80’s and high humidity I’ve been running in, I just may have a shot of doing it.
 I’ll work on getting my stats to publish a little better, but right now I’ve got to run. Not literally, I already ran today and it was tough. I hate running in the morning. My times are always slower because my body just isn’t ready to perform and I think it goes into shock.
I haven’t updated the chart for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was a computer crash (I’ve had to go to a backup computer – I lost a couple of things one of which was the spreadsheet that generated the chart – no biggie since it would probably only take me 10 minutes or so to recreate but that’s fallen down on my priority list.
I’ll give you the prose version of my weight loss efforts. As I said earlier, I wasn’t going to worry about my weight over the Arts Fest weekend. As should have been expected, I gained most of the weight back when I weighed in on Monday – 242.0 to be exact. By the end of the week (Fri Jul 20th) I had gotten it down to 239.0.
At that point I came up with a plan that I thought would help keep my weight in check. I set target goals for each weekend and told everyone that I wasn’t going out partying on the weekend unless I made my weight goal (the goal dropped by 5 lbs every week). That worked for a while – I make 235.0 on July 27th, and 229.5 on Aug 4th (didn’t make it on Friday the 3rd but was ok by Sat).
BUT… I soon realized there was one big problem with this strategy. 5 lbs a week is pretty aggressive but doable. My problem was that I would make weight on Friday then go out on Fri/Sat with the result that I’d put 2-3 lbs back on on the weekend. So rather than have to lose 5 lbs in 7 days, I’d get on the scale on Monday morning and realize I’d have to lose 7-8 lbs in 5 days. That meant I’d be starving myself during the week to make weight by Friday.
So last Monday, when I weighed in a 232.5 (that was an increase of 3 lbs from Sat), I changed my plan. I decided to eat a little more sanely but take a break from the weekend partying. That seems to be working well. The weight’s still coming off fairly quickly (helped no doubt by the fact that I’ve just upped by daily run/walk mileage to about 4 miles) and I won’t have that big weight gain back this weekend. I weighed 228.0 this afternoon, so, by Monday morning I should easily drop five pounds this week without limiting my food intake to something absurd.
So the five week total loss is 16.5 lbs. I hope to drop another 10-15 before my Labor Day race – which I should be able to do as long as I don’t do anything foolish on the weekends.
226.0 today for those who are keeping track. So that’s 6.5 lbs in the last seven days. I’m so encouraged that I might skip drinking this weekend too.