So, You Gained a Little Weight

Well, it happened. The moment I long suspected would come, finally arrived at 6:32 a.m. this morning. Here it is: I’m fat.

Everybody relax. I say this tongue-in-cheek, mostly trying to scrape the last remnants of peanut butter from said cheek. But, I found out this morning that indeed, I have gained nine pounds since the New York City Marathon.

My suspicions began long ago, right around Thanksgiving. Right around the time I poured myself another Belgian Trappiste Triple and went back for thirds. Right around the time I deleted the Greg McMillan e-mail, “How to avoid the holiday bulge” with a dismissive sniff.

I ignored the warning sides signs. The day I lost a notch on my belt. The day my abs disappeared.

“You’re just full,” my kind wife would say. And normally, I’d believe her. I tend to get the food baby after big meals. Then I entered my second trimester. Then I ordered the eggs benedict. Then I ate a second lunch of coldcuts at Rachel’s grandmother’s (little known fact: the Boston roads are actually paved with Italian coldcuts). Then I finished everyone’s dinner…and dessert. Then I went to bed full…again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“I may not be running 60 miles a week anymore, but I’m still eating like it, yuck yuck yuck. Speaking of which, you going to finish that?” I would say to anyone who hadn’t already heard me say it, as I reached across the table with my fork. Then I’d tweak my ankle and softly sob into my fully loaded baked potato, reminded that I actually wasn’t running any miles anymore.

This morning, I signed in at the gym, my friend standing behind me. “Oh, look,” he said, eyeing up one of the signs on the counter. “The Tannita scale is back…today! We should do it.”

I put the pen down and rolled my eyes toward him. “I don’t know,” I said, already knowing the prognosis. “I’ll think about it.”

So we went on with our workout. I hoisted weights and thought about how nice it is to finally be doing some real work again. I’ve ridden over 25 miles on the stationary bike the past two days and think, think, that I can start running again on Monday…and not a moment too soon.

On my last set, my friend walked by me and hopped up on the scale to get his reading. The Tannita scale calculates your weight, body fat, BMI, and hydration. Though neither of us could quite remember exactly what our numbers were last time, I did know that my weight was 158 and my body fat was in the single digits. I touched at my sides looking for those ribs to pluck.

My friend stepped off the scale. “Did you pass?” I asked, snickering as he pulled his shoes back on.
“I think so. I also think you should do it.”

And so, I started to untie my shoes. The trainer went on about doing it at the beginning of our workout next time because of the hydration factor, and blah blah, I’m sure these are valid points, but my workout time won’t affect my weight. I stepped on and watched the numbers climb. They skipped right over where I had been back in November.

First the digital confirmation. Then she kindly printed out the paper for me with all my readings.

I, of course, am perfectly healthy. My weight and other readouts actually fall smack in the middle of the “normal/recommended” range. It’s just, well, I’ve felt healthier. And I’ve certainly eaten healthier.

“How was the gym?” my wife asked when I got home.
“I’m fat,” I said holding up the paper for her.
“I hate you,” she said, before softening. “So, you gained a little weight. If it’s any consolation, you still look emaciated to me. Idiot.” Then she kissed our food baby.

So, I sit here (part of the problem), longing to stoke the fire and get the furnace hot again. And no, you can finish that.

Getting my (Running) Life in Order

The text came in moments after my tweet went up. It read, “Get a life would you!” Ah, a father’s love. The tweet in question said: “Just spent 20 minutes in @officedepot flipping through day planners to find the perfect training log and finally settled on one. #runnerd.”

*Sigh* It’s a sad admission. But alas, it’s true.

First, some context. I spent a lot of my childhood fretting over binder tabs, folders, and organizing my Topps hockey cards by number and year. I even had those little white circle stickers that you could put over sheets of looseleaf when the binder rings ripped a hole in your paper so a third of your sheet hung out of the binder and crinkled up in your backpack....My palms are sweating just thinking about it. I'm not even going to mention the folders on my computer except to sum them up in one word: immaculate.

I digress....

For the past couple years, I’ve been using my free Runner’s World training log, and it’s served me fairly well. For those wondering, I keep an online training log as well, i.e, I don't completely live in the dark ages, or the early-90s.

But there’s something about holding all those miles and workouts in my hands. For big races, I like to pull it out of my bag and flip through the days, weeks, and months of sweat and ink that brought me to that moment. It somehow brings more gravity, more enormity, to the situation. It makes me believe. Somewhere lurking in those pages is the reason for the PR, the knowledge that I can kick the pace down at mile 20, start an 800m kick at the end of a 5K, or drop more than a minute off my 10-mile PR.

I’m also a big believer in quotes and printing out articles and neatly placing them between the pages of my training log, something I can’t do online.

So, with 2012 just a week old, I decided it was time for a more serious training log. And, dear readers, the day planner is made for this. But which one?

I strode with naive confidence down the bright white aisles of Office Depot and found the display marked “Calendars.” I skimmed the three shelves and quickly realized I’d gotten into more than I bargained for. I also discovered that I am incredibly particular. For those who already know me, zip it.

There were 8.5x11 sized calendars, 5x7, and pocket-sized. Ones with a page for each day, each week, each month; hard covers, soft covers; black, red, green, purple covers. Some were lined, others blocks of white space. And still more had the hours of each work day.

I stood there, mouth falling open, eyes trying to drink it all in. What did I really want?

As I started to thumb through each one, there were attributes that I liked in each but not one that had everything. I realized, that a true day planner would be too thick. I liked the weeks, but I wanted one that also had the full month at the beginning. The one with tabs for each month was nice too. I definitely didn't like having the hours on each day. I'd narrowed it to three, when I saw her.

I picked up the Day Minder Executive Weekly/Monthly Calendar.

This beauty features a one page monthly calendar at the front end of each month. Behind the monthly page, each seven day week gets a two-page spread with eight lines to fill in whatever is going on that day, and it doesn’t have the annoying hours on it, which, as I mentioned, I am not a fan of. Plus, each month and week comes with its own notes section so I can jot down goals for the month, a specific race, or general comments. In short, my OCD-self was in love.

Naturally I wasn’t thinking of cost. I mean, how can you put a price on getting (and keeping) your (running) life together? However, after I swiped my card, it hit me that the cashier said $26.24. I thought, Really? I just dropped almost $30 on a calendar?

When I got home and explained this to my wife, her friend piped in and said, “Money is no object for this. I mean, you have to live with this thing for a year. I support your decision.”

My face lit up. Someone who understands.

What do you think?

The Payoff

Not the actual sunrise this morning since I regrettably did
not have my camera. But this comes courtesy of photolvr35
on Flickr.

The alarm went off at 7:00 this morning. I know what you’re thinking, “He said he was getting up at 6:00 to ‘feel the day’ and squeeze in a morning run.” Everybody relax. On Fridays, I get to work from home, which also means I can cut out my commute and snag an extra 30-60 minutes of sleep.

However, this morning, as I said, the alarm went off at 7:00 and I wobbled. Do I really need to walk the dog longer this morning? She’s going on a hike with Rachel this afternoon. The rationalization was in full effect, as went through the motions of pulling on my warmups. The longer morning walk for the dog is secondary, I shouted in my head. The longer morning walk for you is primary.

Still wrestling with the idea, I slid on my gloves and tuned in my iPod, all the while thinking, If you don’t get out the door to walk long every morning, how are you going to get up to go run short every morning?

This morning, the payoff came almost immediately, and it’s not even ankle related. No, the payoff was this: a magnificent sunrise. My only regret is that I didn’t have my phone with me to take a picture.

Normally when I wake up, the sky is still dark or the eastern horizon is beginning to soften. Somewhere between taking a shower and getting out the door, night has officially receded and the sun blares through my windshield causing all traffic reports to reference the dreaded “sunshine delay.”

At 7:00 today, however, the timing was perfect. I stepped out of the house and glanced over to my left to see the fleece of clouds glowing like the orange embers of a roaring fire. All of the rationalization and second-guessing burned away.

Mattie and I walked toward the sunrise to start the front end of our 1.6mi round trip out and back. The sky continued to glow, changing from orange embers to the buzzing of neon pink signs. And when we reached the turnaround point near the 18th hole, a haze of pink water shimmered in the hazard where the reflection of the bare trees swam.

We stopped for a second to take it all in. Mattie sat down at my side as if appreciating the moment with me. It quickly became one of those times that no matter how much you didn't want to get out the door and run (or walk in this case), you're always glad you did.

We continued on with the sunrise at our backs until we reached the house again. By then, the sky had lost its palette of colors and instead reflected an ordinary crisp winter morning.

Today, the day felt good.

Feeling the Day

When I let the words come out, they sounded like a bad New Year’s resolution. The kind that you might stick with once, maybe twice, and then bail on. You know, how suddenly the gym is overcrowded and filled with pretenders and the good intentioned.
It sounded like that. I believe it went something like, “I’m going to start getting up 30 minutes earlier to get an easy three miler in.”

“At 6am it’s not really a training run,” Brother Colm said. “I call it ‘feeling the day’, and it’s not compulsory, and not supervised. And yet every one of them will do it.”

Brother Colm is a Kenyan Athletic coach who has hosted the St. Patrick’s Training Camp every year since 1989. He lives in the distance running mecca of Iten, and he’s speaking to Ian O’Riordan, an Irish journalist, known as a Mzungu, or white man to the locals, who spent three weeks living and training at altitude at an Iten running camp.

The run Colm references is roughly three miles and hardly factors into each athlete’s mileage, if they give it a second thought at all. It seems as much a part of their morning routine as brushing their teeth. And, as the article goes on to say, Colm and O’Riordan are on their way to the first true workout of the day, a hill session at 10:00 a.m.

O’Riordan’s entire account of the camp is a great read, but the idea of “feeling the day” immediately jumped out at me when I read this article after it popped up in an e-mail from my dad. It is in fact the culprit for my cheesy sounding resolution.

Prior to reading it, I’d made adding mileage to my weekly totals a 2012 priority once I can hit the roads in earnest again. I’ve dabbled in morning runs before, mostly to squeeze a workout in because of afternoon/evening plans or to beat the summer Virginia humidity. But I’ve never considered making them a staple of my workouts, preferring instead to capture 30 precious minutes of sleep.

At first, I thought about those three miles and considered how much value they might actually add. But when you stack three miles up over four to five days of running, that’s an extra 12-15 miles per week. In addition to adding a sixth day of running (I’ve only ever run five days a week), it seemed like the next logical step. Plus, I’ve seen my body respond pretty favorably to shake out and recovery runs, which this would no doubt become.

With my ankle on the mend, I thought I could not only get in some extra work on it, but also begin priming my body to be up at 6:00 when I can run again.

So, yesterday morning, bundled up and with dog leash in hand, I took off into our dark and still neighborhood before the sun had begun to lighten the sky and the coffee percolated in lit kitchens. I set off to “feel the day” and shake the grogginess from my head and my limbs before the day’s work began. My dog Mattie had a skip in her step when she realized we were continuing on past our normal loop, then scampered ahead of me when we set off down the path normally reserved for long-after-work-walks. I had my iPod tuned in to the local morning show that gets me to work in the morning. When we returned to the house, it was no later than normal had I bagged that extra 30 minutes of sleep, and instead of moving from room to room half awake, my thoughts were clear and I felt oddly alert for that time of the day.

When I take these on later in the month (fingers crossed), I’ll do so without a watch, not really caring what the time or the pace is, but rather to feel my body coming alive with the day rather than forcing it to.

After all, as one of the Kenyas points out, “The Mzungus, they say, have the watches; the Kenyans have the time.”

Get out and see what the day feels like before the real work begins.

One Small Step in 2012

The Confucius saying goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." With that in mind, I began my first run of 2012. The sun disappeared behind the woods-lined track in the late afternoon dusk, and I cinched up my laces extra tight, paused at the starting line, and took my first step around the oval.

The step is only significant in that it’s my first determined step since spraining my ankle just over three weeks ago. While the coloring and shape of my foot has returned to normal, I’m just now able to walk without the lace up brace I’ve relied on so heavily over the past 24 days (who’s counting?).

January 2 has been the date circled in my head that would mark my return to running since being relegated to the couch.
In these 24 days, I've written the alphabet backwards and forwards, in uppercase and lowercase, in cursive (remember cursive?) with my right foot. I've done tight circles and long lazy circles with it while watching TV, watching traffic, or simply watching the world slip by. There's been no heat, moist heat, heat from the steam room, the sauna, the shower, ice cubes, ice packs, and icy hot. I've hopped, hobbled, and walked (forward and backward) around the house, up and down stairs. I've poked, prodded, and massaged the swollen areas.

Everytime Saturday came around again, I marveled at the progress and imagined with great hope and whimsy what it might look like in seven more days.

My wife and I took our dog to the track and began speed walking to get things loosened up. When we reached the back stretch, my confidence rose with every step I took without pain. Gone was the tightness in my Achilles, the quick, sharp pain at the top of my toes, and the dull ache that lingered on the outside of my ankle.

Memories of races past and hard fought interval workouts on this very backstretch began to whisper to me as the wind bit at our faces.

When we hit the quarter mile mark, I chickened out and decided one more walking lap was in order. My wife urged me on and laughed as she dropped a few steps behind me and mock chased me as we sped around the turn.

A small pit grew in my stomach as we took on the final 100m that would mark a half mile. This feeling, at this moment, on this track, was familar. It's the anticipation of the next interval, when the first 100m of recovery feels like there's an infinity of rest to be had. At 200m, the breathing returns to normal, the stinging in your muscles recedes, and you think that, "Hey, this isn't so bad." But after 300m, when you steer around the final turn and stare at the final 100m of straightaway that 90 seconds ago seemed to go on into eternity, is suddenly approaching at warp speed, and though the stinging may have receded, the body never forgets.

“I’m nervous,” I finally said out loud.
“Don’t be nervous,” Rachel said. “You’re going to be fine, whether it’s today or another day.”

I crossed the line, took a deep breath, and said, “Here we go.”

My first footfall on the injured foot rattled with pain. I grimaced and trudged on in a slow jog around the first turn. My foot felt like the heavy, yet delicate tree limbs encased in ice after a day’s worth of wet snow. With each step, the casing began to crack and my foot gained a wider range of motion. Like Forrest Gump, the braces fell to the roadside, only instead of getting faster, I grew more uncomfortable. My foot felt like it lacked the up and down flex it needed to complete each stride. At 50m, the pain grew too great on the inside of my foot and throughout my Achilles.

“I have to shut it down,” I said, and I returned to a brisk walk.
“I’m proud of you,” Rachel said.
“For what?”
“For not pushing it and letting it heal correctly.”

We forged on until crossing the line for the fourth time to mark one mile, the first of the new year. Rachel carried on while I moved to the outer lane and worked on my core. At least I could keep getting stronger so that when I can finally run, I’ll be ready.

“Are you disappointed?” she asked as we made our way back to the car.
“Not as much as I thought I would be,” I said, actually believing that answer. “It’s my second full day without the brace and I can walk pretty damn fast and my ankle actually feels better that all the scar tissue is breaking up. I’m not thrilled but I’m optimistic.”

So, where to go from here? I am a walking, foot-flexing machine! To the dog’s delight, I am trying to get in three miles of walking a day and will see if I can pepper in some Gallo-walking. It’s 11 weeks until my first goal race of 2012, the Rock ‘n Roll DC Half Marathon. Will I hit my sub-1:20 goal?

One step at a time.