Six more months till marathon day.
Can you believe it? Marcia is ready to reveal her current weight. The latest photo will go up on the iTriage Facebook page on August 20th. You have a chance to win $50 in iTunes Gift Cards, if you hit the right number. Just hit the “like” button on the iTriage Facebook page and post your guess about what she currently weighs in the latest photo. Contest will run one week. First one to guess right, wins! Is she gutsy or just crazy — you decide!
Can’t say I’ve seen a lot of speed just yet on this marathon journey – glimpses of speed on the down hill runs, but nothing substantial. And, those glimpses scare the heck out of me. The thought of running that fast for that long is a bit overwhelming.
However, I have seen my fitness level increase. Living in the foothills of Golden where hills are of monumental proportion, we have in our neighborhood what we refer to as the Mother Lode and the Super Mother Lode. Since my running partner suffered a sprained ankle this past month after stepping off a ladder, we decided to walk the neighborhood one morning instead of running so that the ankle could heal a bit more. When we got to the top of the first hill, I turned around and said, “WOW, we just walked up the Mother Lode and never stopped to catch our breath.” That was a first!
So, the fitness level is definitely improving. The speed is a bit pokey still, but the real success is the weight loss. Everyone is curious how I’m losing weight so quickly. Well, the fact that I’m working out for three hours a day (5:30am, 12:00pm and 7:00pm) surely helps, but being totally focused on what fuels my runs at every meal, also contributes. I’ve broken my weight loss down into 10 pound goals and then have further broken that into a 5 pound weight loss every two weeks, so that’s all I focus on at one time.
After 50 years, one just learns what you should and should not eat, so I don’t follow any one diet. I credit much of my nutrition knowledge to what I’ve learned from Oprah’s trainer Bob Greene, who wrote numerous books, including Make the Connection and also helped me finish my second marathon in Portland, OR in October of 1998. Likewise, I’ve learned a great deal about nutrition from Dr. Phil Maffetone, who wrote In Fitness and in Health and other nutrition and health books. So my secret is really no secret at all. I focus on two weeks at a time and eat normally for one week, if I think I’m too far off my two-week goal by the end of that first week, I don’t eat any carbohydrates for three days and usually the weight falls off by the end of the second week. Then, I do it all over again, and again, and again, and again.
I feel a bit better about my method of losing weight this week after learning about a recent study conducted by Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. That study, published August 3, 2010 in an issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, concluded that a low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in weight loss and cardiovascular disease risk factors. While the study showed that both the low-fat and low-carb diets promote successful weight loss, the low-carb diet increased the body’s levels of HDL “good” cholesterol by 23 percent. That was nearly twice as much as the low-fat diet, which increased HDL levels by only 12 percent.
I’m six months out from marathon day, and only two months before the difficult and more serious training begins with hills, speed training and intervals. The whole four-month marathon preparation is a bit daunting and I truly don’t know what to expect from my coach, so I try not to think about it too often.
Let us know how your fitness and health goals are coming along and don’t forget to check out the iTriage Facebook page on the 20th of August so you can log your guess and win $50 in iTunes cards.
Leaving it all on the asphalt…
Marcia (the turtle one)