Weight and Recovery

I've been pleased with my running lately. I'm getting in all of my scheduled runs and haven't had too much trouble hitting the pace for harder runs. Even though it can be depressing going for a run when I know it's going to be dark well before I finish, I'm still hitting the road without having to talk myself into it. However, the one area where I need more dedication is in nutrition/weight control. I still eat way too many sweets (candy and ice cream mainly).

I serve on active duty in the Coast Guard. We don't have physical fitness tests (yet) like the other services, but we do have monthly weigh ins. I weighed in at 208 pounds (I'm 6'3" by the way), which is eight pounds heavier than I was when we were weighed in April. The good news is that I put on a lot of that weight during our move this summer when we were eating out for almost every meal for a month, and I spent a lot of time in a car and not much time running. In the four months since I've been in my new position, I've lost over ten pounds. If I can start to eat better, I'm confident that I can not only continue to lose weight but can lose even faster. I'm hoping to run a marathon under three hours in 2006. To reach this goal, I'll definitely need to be below 200 pounds. Around 190 would be even better.

I've been pleased with my recovery runs lately. On Thursday I ran a short recovery run (five miles), which was difficult due to the two more difficult runs on Tuesday and Wednesday; however, after my recovery run Friday's medium long run went really well. I had a lot of energy and finished the run strong. This seems like a simple thing, but only a couple of weeks ago I was running the recovery runs too fast and wasn't getting the benefit I needed from them.

I'm running another recovery run today and will go long (18 miles) on Sunday.