Today’s Run
Time – 1:20:47
Distance – 8.4 miles
Pace – 9:43 min/mi
Elevation – 215 ft.
This is my third run this week under 10:00/mile pace. Time to slow down! I cut my long run mileage by 25 percent for today’s run. Intentional easing off this week to give my body a break before I ramp up to 35–40 miles/week in the next block. I tried to run today a little harder than the “easy run” pace that I’ve been working with lately. This (along with a serious headwind!) caused a slow 5th mile and I dropped pace by 40 seconds/mile. I was able to pick it up after that and finish around the run’s pace for the remaining miles. Long run pace should be a little quicker than yesterday’s run, so this was good. I didn’t bring water or food, and I was feeling it by the end. All things being equal, I was able to make it the whole way without too much trouble.
I Continue to Bury the Lead
Post-run today, I weighed myself and the first number on the scale was a “1”! This is huge for me. I’m super excited that the months of diet, exercise, and changes and choices are coming together.
The obvious question might be, “How did you do it?” I’ve talked about it in the past in other blog posts. I’ll say this. Weight loss can be done via exercise, if you are willing and able to do enough to overcome what you are eating. That’s how I lost 65 pounds 10 years ago. Certainly, running has helped me get these last 10–15 lbs. off in the last few months. There is something else, though.
If you fill the engine of your car with bad fuel, it will seize, the internal components will fail, or the engine will just not run with it’s best efficiency. You can’t burn calories long and hard enough if you don’t have good fuel to burn. You’ll eat up your engine, get injured, or worse.
I’m no medical doctor, and I’m certainly not an expert at this, so take what I say accordingly, but this is what I do know. Good food = good body. If you eat correctly, your body will respond as it is supposed to respond to good food: It will run right, burn energy as it needs to do so, and will change in shape.
I once heard something, “Exercise creates the shape of my body. Diet is what I wrap around that shape.” In other words, exercise creates muscle, but if you eat garbage, you’ll be covered in garbage. The first thing I noticed when I changed how I was eating was that the dry patches on skin on my elbows went away. I didn’t change how I was scrubbing them, and I didn’t add lotion to my morning or evening routines (in fact, everything I had been trying didn’t seem to work). Once I started to eat correctly, my skin cleared up, my body responded by burning off the fat and getting rid of the crap that had been hiding out inside of me.
“Healthy food” is becoming something of a misnomer. “Good food” is something that you can recognize when you look at it, instead of having to open the seal (you know, for “freshness”) to get a peek. It resembles what it looked like when it was growing, instead of being manufactured. “Good food” tastes delicious when it’s all you eat, instead of filling your diet with sugars and fats to add flavor (or hide the mechnical taste when it was assembled).
Just my two cents…
I Will Run Today 