Reeling in the gluttony

I admit it.  I love to eat and I eat a lot.  Food is pleasurable.  It is comforting.

My diet consists of mostly healthy foods - fruits, vegetables and legumes - but I am not kidding when I tell you I eat them in bulk. Not long ago, I bought 21 pounds of apples and finished them all within three weeks.  Seriously.

But even good food has calories and they do add up, so even in the thick of the heaviest weeks of training - 50+ miles - I noticed I was gaining weight.  Almost 10 pounds, in fact.

Last week I pulled up my old "Daily Diet" Excel spreadsheets that I had set up a few years back when I wanted to lose some extra pounds during short race season, and have been sticking to the plan:

1500-2000 calories per day, plus 100 for each mile I run while still keeping the carbohydrate, protein and potassium counts high.

I do not enjoy restricting my food intake and I tend to get grouchy when I do, but already in the first 10 days, I have noticed a difference in how I feel and on the scale (three pounds already gone).  I will continue until the race (24 more days).

And then I am going to feed my face.

A positive take on negative splits

I never could get the hang of negative splits.  No matter how hard I tried, I usually failed to run the second half fast enough.  So I stopped trying, figuring it was not my style.

This year's harsh weather sparked a turn in my thinking.  All the snow, ice, and freezing-cold single-digit temperatures forced me to take my runs a lot more slowly.  The upshot was that I ended up with negative splits, almost every time, and that is when it hit me:

The problem I had before was not that I was not running the second half fast enough; it was that I was not running the first half slow enough. 

In the past, I would do a five mile run in, say, 38 minutes by running either even splits or doing the first half at a low-7:00s pace and gradually slowing down.  But now, I am doing 38-minute five milers by starting with an 8:00+ pace and gradually speeding up.  Saving all that energy for the second half feels great and by the end, I feel better and stronger.

Now, I make it my goal to do a negative split on every run that is not a "quality" workout (speed, pace, tempo, etc.).  I truly believe this will help my marathon, which is in 25 days.

And I used that Garmin right away!

I do not care about football.  The Super Bowl would not have meant anything to me this year had it not been at the Meadowlands, a mere 10 miles from my home.

And what it meant was that I had to get the hell away from it.

So I headed west and booked myself a room (with no TV!) at a lovely little place on the Delaware River called the Indian Rock Inn, in Upper Black Eddy, Pa. (about 20 miles north of New Hope).  The goal for the weekend was to run 30 total miles on the Delaware and Raritan Canal Towpath trail as I continue to try to traverse its entire length, piece by piece.  On the Saturday, I ran 10 miles - covering five out and back.  

On Super Bowl Sunday, I fired up the brand new Garmin watch and hit the trail, starting at the northern terminus of the trail's New Jersey side in Milford.  About three miles in, I crossed the bridge from Frenchtown to the Pennsylvania side. 

The Garmin worked beautifully as I tracked the slow-going miles on the snow- and ice-covered trail.  It gave me my splits for each mile (in the upper 8s and lower 9s), my current pace, and total distance covered.  

It also came in handy while I looked for the bridge to cross back into New Jersey at Bulls Island State Park at Lumberville, Pa.  I had miscalculated just how far that bridge was, so by the time I hit mile 11 and still was heading south, I knew I had better make a decision to turn around.  If not for the Garmin - and the huge bulldozers ripping up the trail in front of me for what I am hoping is an improvement project - I might have kept going.

Instead, I headed north again, but this time along River Road.  On the pavement, I was logging much faster miles - all sub-8s, some in the low 7s.  The tough footing of the first half that caused me to go so slowly worked in my favor in the second half as I nailed an amazing negative split and finished without any exhaustion.  

The end result - 22 miles (again, perfectly calculated thanks to the Garmin) in three hours and three minutes.  That extrapolates to an approximate 3:34 marathon, which means I could easily hit that mark at my next race if I follow that course of action and keep the first half comfortably slow.  

And though the goal for next month's race is 3:17, this experience got me thinking about negative splits...

Bought myself a Garmin

On Saturday, I made the leap into the 21st century and bought a Garmin GPS watch - the simplest, most basic model, of course.

Throughout eight years of running, I have kept it pretty simple.  Gadgets are not my style. At first, all that mattered was the will to get out and run five days a week.

I got my first pair of Sauconys after my first few months of running in my beat up Skechers. In Year Two, I got serious about the rest of my clothes - technical polyester shirts and such.

For tunes, I carried my old Sony Discman for well over a year. My brother gave me my first iPod in the fall of 2006, a first generation Shuffle. But even then I sometimes carried my ancient cassette player to listen to my old Phish tapes.

And for timing, I used the stopwatch on my various iPod Nanos before switching to the newer Shuffle and buying a simple stopwatch with a lap timer.

But I wanted a tool that would help me with my pacing and would save me the hours spent mapping out courses on Google Maps. And I wanted it to be lightweight.
 
For $130 at Fleet Feet in Montclair, I bought the Garmin 120 in lime green and I already love it.

To Jazz Fest! Or not.

For a brief moment, after Phish announced they were playing at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, I actually considered attending.

It will be, of course, a special show for two reasons: 

First, it will be a part of a festival and, if their stints at Bonnaroo and their own festivals are any indication, it is sure to be a great time. 

Second, it is their first April show since the Vegas shows that brought the band to its nadir a decade ago, prompting them to call it quits. Goodness knows we need a good April show to push that bad memory out of our heads.

Personally, though, it would be huge for me.  A one-off Phish show at a festival in a state to which I have never been...and it would be my 100th.  

Certainly, they will tour this year and I will hit the three-digit mark, but to mark the 100th with such a unique show would be incredible.

I could not justify it to be within my budget, so I searched for marathons in the vicinity in order to make the expense more worthwhile. I even checked the whole state...and in the surrounding states...but to no avail.  No marathons in the area that week.

Ah well.  I will save myself a grand, I guess.

Registered for Marathon XI

During the months of marathon training, sometimes the hardest thing to do is actually pull the trigger and register.


I started marathon training again as soon as I completed my last two 5Ks in December.  I had my eye on an early March race, but could not bring myself to register until I was absolutely sure.


Now, in Week 11 of Hal Higdon's Advanced I training program, I finally did it.


My 11th marathon will be...


<drumroll>


The Lower Potomac River Marathon in Piney Point, Md., sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Running Club.


<fanfare>


Though I have run in Maryland before (when Phish played at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia in 2011 and 2012), this will be my first race in the state!

No more ice baths

At some point. I had read that taking an ice bath after a long, strenuous run helps with muscle recovery. For a few years, I had been doing so and it may very well have been helpful.

But I am done with it. The past two times I did it, it was just too cold and uncomfortable. In the past, I could sit in there for 15 to 20 minutes, but lately, all I could manage was 15 to 20 seconds.

So, no more ice baths. We shall see if it affects my weekly long-run recovery. As an extra precaution, I will be upping my protein intake instead. Hopefully, that will make up for it.