Passionately Moderate Marathon Weight Loss: Eating, Right?

In honor of running six miles yesterday (!!) up and back City Creek, finishing strong, and finding my mojo again, I celebrate with this. As sort of an appendix to my Marathon Story that starts here, I thought it might be of benefit to document the significant weight loss that resulted and how. So climb into the Way-Back Machine with me and set the dial to 2001: 

Checking myself out with the doctor, I got all the middle-aged male tests. Then the results came back. The cholesterol problem had been ignored for a few years, but the blood tests showed my cholesterol at 295 and my triglycerides at 400. That’s not good. Normal range for cholesterol is supposed to be under 200. Some people are down below 100. 200 to 240 is considered moderate risk. 240 plus is high risk. My scores were so high on the bad cholesterol that the lab wouldn't do the ratio calculation between bad and good cholesterol.

Marathon Part 10: We Did It

Yep. 26.2 miles.

ST. GEORGE 2002 

The speed picked up once we were past the chute but not by much. The crowd was shuffling, tripping and jostling along. There was no worry about a too-fast start. Openings appeared here and there and I moved towards them generally to the left going a little faster than the crowd but there were still a few people passing me by. There was some guy wearing a Petrobras bicycle-racing shirt but he would not engage as I voiced “Petrobras” behind him in a proper Brazilian accent. At the first mile it looked like about a ten minute pace.

I started hitting my stride after mile 2 and then ran off the rode quickly for my first and last bathroom break by a convenient tree. There were a lot pulling off here and there including some women with bare buns showing with their giggling evidencing some remnant of shame. Mile 3 was the first station for aid with water in Burger King cups and Gatorade appropriately in Gatorade cups. I planned on water for at least the first part of the race at my Cousin’s suggestion not to dribble sticky stuff all over too early. More practice drinking on the run might be good. It was fun to try to toss the cup in the garbage boxes and I had no compunction if it landed on the asphalt with the others by the hundreds.

Marathon Part 9: Final Prep

Now we're finally heading into the 2002 St. George Marathon. For the beginning of this series, click here.

FINAL PREP

Time is reckoned differently for me now. There is before the Marathon and after the Marathon. The weekend was full of “times” yet such a blur: two eleven-hour car rides; hours of excited anticipation in a night of two hours of sleep; just over a four-hour Marathon; a half-hour turn on the Jacuzzi dial; two two-hour sessions of conference. But I didn’t puke, I didn’t need oxygen, didn’t hit a wall and thankfully didn’t injure anything but my pride. In casting away vanity, I delved a deeper well of satisfaction and confidence that will change me forever. I ran a Marathon. Athens still lives.

The training went well. My program was simple yet effective. Every month I added two miles to my Saturday long runs. So it was 14 in May, 16 in June, and so on. My longest run was about 21 miles, which I did twice, once on the C&O towpath up the Potomac from Washington, D.C. out to Maryland and beyond the Beltway and back in the cool summer rain. The other was a 21-mile run in town where I changed plans mid-route to run all the way from freeway to freeway, I-40 to I-25 along Tramway, down from the Mountain and back, then down to I-40 and back home where my wife drove me to pick up the other car at the Tramway stop sign. August was the month for these and two other early Saturday runs of 20 miles each.

Marathon Part 8: With Malice Toward None

This is part of a series on my first Marathon. It starts here. The previous installment (intended as Part 7 but previously published out of context) is here.

WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE

Tramway Boulevard belongs to me. I own it. It’s mine. 

A place can never truly belong to anyone and no one can be attached to a place fully until they have covered it with their own feet. This occurred to me in Santana do Livramento, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil when I was driven around town in the mission assistants’ little red Volkswagen. As we puttered up the street, while not at racetrack speeds, it was still so much faster and we covered so much more ground than my missionary companions and I were used to walking. It was way too easy. We zipped past a blur of colonial baroque house fronts, each one worthy of its own lingering look with its individual pastel hue and unique metalwork around its tall windows. No such luck in the Volkswagen.

Marathon Part 6: Grandma

This is part of a series that begins here.

GRANDMA 

Exactly six months before the Marathon, I thought I would practice on the Veyo Hill. Actually, it wasn't that well planned but that’s how it happened and I learned an unexpected lesson in endurance. 

The Department of the Interior Solicitor’s Conference was scheduled for Las Vegas, Nevada that year. Now that I was a supervisory attorney and even Acting Regional Solicitor for the past year and one half, I had to go. It may have been my idea or AA's, but we easily agreed that I would drive to Vegas with my old friend and former boss from Santa Fe. Even though I was now his boss at least in my acting capacity we have remained good friends. The plan was to drop AA off in Zion National Park the Friday before the conference so he could hike for the weekend while I stayed in St. George, Utah with my grandmother. Then I would meet AA at a designated spot and drive the two hours on to Vegas arriving Monday afternoon as scheduled. 

Marathon Part 5: Serious Running

Another in a series. Start here for Part 1.

SERIOUS RUNNING

One of the secrets of life is that once you run three miles you can run forever. When I had run regularly before in college, I only went a mile and a half to two miles at a time. That was good basic exercise, but I never understood that you have to run beyond two to three miles before the endorphins kick in.   Everybody hears about the endorphins and Dr. Caesar referred to them as a natural substitute for medication. My earlier running never gave them to me because I didn’t push myself far enough, but I knew the endorphins from my hiking.

Marathon Part 4: The First Race

For the first in this series, click here.

ALBUQUERQUE TURKEY RUN 2001

The first race happened almost by accident.  I have a good friend in my wife’s sister's husband who very occasionally posts here as AnonymousD. They went down to Albuquerque for Thanksgiving in 2001 and Doug is a runner. He had recently gotten back into it and I recalled that the year before his wife, Doug and my father-in-law went down to a run on Thanksgiving morning. I thought that I might join them this time.  They got such nifty tee shirts. My plan was to join the walk that my sister-in-law went on because I was down on running with my knee problem. However, when they told me the walk was only two miles, I thought that was not much of a challenge as my walks were generally 3 to four miles. The other options were the five and ten kilometer races. Doug was going to compete in the 5-K and then run the 10-K just for the fun of it. I decided to take the challenge of the 5-K - just 3.1 miles.

Marathon Part 3: The Beginning

Third in a series. Part One is here and Part Two is here.

THE BEGINNING

The exercise program began the next Monday. My office was located right across Louisiana Boulevard from the Coronado Mall. Sears is the best place for general merchandise so they had the bathroom scale I needed to track any weight loss. Mervyn's had some Nikes on sale that I thought would serve for running shoes and some cheap navy blue cotton shorts, size large. For years I had not owned any exercise clothes.

Marathon Part 2: Motivators

This is the second part of an ongoing series I wrote ten years back about my first (of four) Marathons. Some of this was already published in my comments on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. My life change was in part motivated by that tragedy. And you can click right here for the first installment of my running history. I will keep this going until you see me finish St. George 2002!

MOTIVATORS

The horror of September 11, 2001 came over me slowly. The first reports were from the rock station playing on the car radio. Thinking it was somebody’s bad joke I switched to an all-news AM station where the disaster was confirmed. The fragmented news reported a car bomb at the State Department and smoke behind the White House. The Interior Department sits between the two. I became very concerned about my co-workers and friends at Main Interior.

Marathon Part 1: My Non-Athletic Life

As I am working on my resolution to prepare for Ragnar, I thought I might publish my Marathon story I wrote some years back. This may serve as motivation for some or at least for me as it guilts me into continuing. (Four miles yesterday on City Creek!) Names have been changed for various reasons.

MY NON-ATHLETIC LIFE

James was right. Even though Brazil is still better than Korea he was right about the 50-year-old thing.  And I proved it at only 45.

He had it all figured out at 18. As college freshmen while living in the “jock” dorm we were about as far away as you could get from the athletic-type. James always resented the good-looking sports guys in high school with their cheerleader girl friends. He was smart enough to figure that by the time we were fifty, the jocks would have potbellies. His long range plan was to keep up basic physical exercise and then increase attention to a fitness program in middle age so he could be a good looking fifty-year-old and show himself off at high school reunions.

A Philmont Story from 2002

I was driving back into Cimarron from my Santa Fe Trail explorations today and Paul McCartney came out of random play on my iPod. It reminded me of something I had written a few years back in my Albuquerque days wrapping together running, Philmont, and even sort of a love story. 

LAZY DYNAMITE

My wife is getting a little jealous because I’m in love with my shoes.