I have achieved a lot in the last year and I’m feeling better than ever before. I have a year’s worth of data that shows my progress numerically.

I started out at 237 lbs and 38% body fat. I’m currently 165 lbs and 12.2% body fat according to a 7 point caliper measurement from last Saturday. I have lost over 70 lbs of pure fat and maintained pretty much my entire muscle mass.

I worked out tremendous amounts over the last year. I walked four times for a total of 4 and a half hours. I used the elliptical machine at work and at home 93 times for a total of 74 hours. I have burned over 46,000 calories with walking and the elliptical machine. But these numbers are nothing compared to what I did with running.

Since January I ran 250 times for a total of 1,426 miles in just shy of 189 hours. I have burned 168,000 calories. I have completed numerous races, I even ran a marathon with a Boston Qualifying time no less.

I counted calories and tracked my caloric intake for 6 straight months where I wrote down every single food item I ate. I put myself on a 1,800 calorie diet and stuck with it until I was happy with my weight.

But none of these numbers compare to the improvement in how I feel about myself and how I feel about my life. I’m feeling better than ever in my entire adult life. I’m happy, full of energy and I can’t wait to get up tomorrow at 5:30AM to go out and run again. My wife is happy that I no longer say that “I don’t want to go to the zoo ’cause my feet will hurt from all the walking”. My kids are happy that I can run around the yard with them and I can throw them around with joy.

My transformation was not a stunt. It was not a diet fad. It was not a “I want to run a marathon in my life just so I can say I did it”. It was a lifestyle change. And I have the bitter reminders in my family photo album to make me remember just how miserable I looked a mere year ago. There is absolutely no way that I will ever go back to being that guy. Ever!

So I would say that at this point I’m at 1 year down, another 50+ to go…

The Cliff Notes version is that I ran a 7:09/mile average for a 3:07:26 which is indeed a BQ time. All that hard work and training has paid off and I’m on cloud nine. For the longer version feel free to read on.

Here is a video of me at mile 16.5 and 25. I was looking and feeling a lot better at mile 16.5 than I was at mile 25. 3:07:26 finish was awesome though just as much as my family cheering me on!

I have arrived in Tyler Saturday around 4:00PM with my wife and two kids, picked up my bib, t-shirt and goodie bag at the sponsor hotel. They also had the medals and age group awards on display and they all looked very nice. The goodie bag was rather Spartan, a couple of coupons for New Balance and some free music download, it was nothing like the bags celebrities get at the Oscar’s. But then again, I was there to run a marathon not to load up on freebies. The shirt was a nice technical New Balance shirt, nothing special.

I ended up with bib 220 which my wife liked a lot; her favorite number is 22 so 220 worked out to her liking. The bib numbers were in alphabetical order up to 260 or so and the rest of them were scattered all over the place. On the registration sheet the highest bib number was 274 and unless some more people registered Saturday that was going to be the final count. There was no race day registration.

Once we picked up my bib and shirt we drove to our hotel and checked in. A fellow runner who I see in the mornings as he lives real close to me was also running the full at Tyler while his wife was running the half. They were also checking in and we went out to drive the course together just to get a feel for it. The full course was basically 15 miles on a large loop then it connected up with the half marathon course and the two were running together to the finish. When you go to the Tyler Marathon website they describe the course as “There will be some rolling areas and a few hills on our course”. Well they weren’t kidding. The course is actually extremely rolling and there is really no flat in it at all. You’re either going up or coming down. And while the mapped course on mapmyrun.com indicates 430 ft of elevation they’re clearly lying. My Polar RS800cx with the barometric altitude measured 1,100 ft of elevation on the course which was not at all surprising once we drove the course.

During our course drive we found a great location for my wife and kids at mile 16.5 that we also hit at mile 25 on the way back so they had a chance to see me twice and there was a nice park with playgrounds right next to it. I told them to expect me to roll by around 9:30 and again around 10:20 and be on the lookout.

Once we drove the course I had serious doubts about whether it will be a BQ course for me at all, it just seemed way too daunting with the constant hills and slope changes not to mention the dozens of turns in the second half of the course.

I also checked the weather forecast and it promised a scary 56F start with temperatures steadily rising to mid 70s by the finish. The hot weather combined with the rolling hills was a recipe for disaster. So I thought that I should get at least my nutrition right.

I had been eating pasta dish after pasta dish for the past 2 days and Saturday night we went to a great little place where I had a nice bowl of pasta with mushrooms in marinara sauce and a dinner roll. I was also going to get some sweetened tea to get some more carbs in my system but it was so sweet that I could not drink it and had to order an unsweetened one instead. Then I sipped on some Powerade Zero throughout the evening to get some minerals in me.

Race day nutrition plan was one 100 calorie gel pack at every 4 miles with taking a cup of water at every water station. I ran a 22 mile long run with this setup and my stomach did well with it so I figured it would work on race day too.

I went to bed at 10PM but woke up at 12AM and kept awake for a while thinking that it was close to morning and the alarm was about to go any minute but once I checked the time I realized that the morning was far away so I fell back asleep only to wake up at 3:30 to take care of No. 1 as I drank way too much Powerade the night before. The alarm went off at 5:15. I had no BM on Saturday which gave me a major concern as I’m usually not shy when it comes to No 2s. I woke up at 5:15 on purpose to hope that I could take care of things before the race and luckily I did so that was a big relief that I did not have to worry about mid-run “runs”. I ate a plain bagel for breakfast; I’m not a big breakfast guy on race days.

I went down to the hotel lobby where a bunch of other runners were getting ready and sipping on coffee or having toast or a bagel. I talked with a couple of them. One of them ran 117 marathons so far. He ran his first one in 1976 and 50 of the 117 were sub 3 hour finishes. He also ran marathons in all 50 states and ran the big 5, Chicago, Boston, New York, London and Berlin. His goal was just to get one more marathon under his belt.

A lady was running the half but told me that he had two friends who were running the full and one had a 3:17 finish from last season and wanted to better that while the other guy was shooting for a 3:05-3:10. I figured he’d be my guy to run with if I wanted some company.

My neighbor, his wife and I headed over to the start where I hit up the port-a-potties one more time, with success, checked in my sweat pants and compression shirt with bag check, put on my nipple guards, applied copious amounts of Body Glide to all parts of my body whether they were prone to chafing or not and headed to the start.

15 minutes before the race start I had another 18 Oz of Powerade Zero and a 100 calorie gel pack. At the start I saw Kiplimo Chemirmir, a local elite runner, and I figured he’d be the one to win this one. I also talked with two other guys. One said his goal was 6:52 pace so I knew he was going for the sub 3 marathon finish. He said he’d been trying for 3 years with no success. The other guy was a 38 year old lawyer who said it was his second marathon and he was hoping for a BQ time but he was going to go at 7:00 pace at the beginning to “bank” some time. I knew there was no such thing as banking so I tried to talk him out of that idea and I figured we could probably run together, at least for a while.

There was no bullhorn or air horn or gun, just a “Runners Ready, Go!” at 7:30. And we were off. Me and my newfound lawyer friend stuck together and after the first straight’s 6:20 pace we slowed it down to a more manageable pace.

Mile 1: 6:53. I knew it was fast and I knew that it was not the pace I wanted to run but it felt easy. I thought there were about a dozen people in front of me at this point.

Mile 2: 7:05. That’s more like it. It was still fast with some rolling elevation and by now we were stretched out pretty far and were just me and lawyer guy. We had a good conversation going, I felt like I was doing a long run with a friend. We also had a women pass us at this point and I thought to myself some people are going out way too fast.

Mile 3: 6:58. Another rolling section and we were just talking away. Turns out that my lawyer friend did not drive the course the day before so I thought he was in for a bitter surprise. I tried to warn him and told him that things were going to get ugly and these rolling slopes were nothing compared to what the second half was going to look like.

Mile 4: 6:50. Another fast mile. This one was pretty much downhill the entire way so I felt good about the pace. Legs felt fine and refreshed at this point. Took my first gel.

Mile 5: 7:06. I felt good about the pace, 7:06 felt certainly doable at this point and it was a mostly flat mile. At the end of it we finally got off the major highway and started running on a narrower one lane farm road with much less, practically non-existent, traffic.

Mile 6: 7:05. Another great split, or so I thought. This one had two little humps but it was nothing major at this point in the game. We also found our first group of supporters who yelled and screamed at us. They were carrying signs that said “Go Ashton” so we told them that they should relax as we were not Ashton. Waving back and cracking jokes was fun at this point, things were in smooth sailing.

Mile 7: 7:11. You would think I was fading rapidly by now but it wasn’t the case. Mile 7 had some massive climbs and this is where I realized that my lawyer buddy was more of a constant pace runner than a constant effort runner. He was pushing hard on the climbs but he was running slower on the downhill. I let him get ahead on the climb but I caught him on the downhill. I felt that I had to run my own race and I wasn’t going to jeopardize my finish just to keep with a stranger on some hills.

Mile 8: 6:57. Mile 8 was mostly uphill and apparently I was getting dragged along for the ride. I took my second gel closer to mile 9 right before the water stop.

Mile 9: 6:57. It was mostly flat with a bit of downhill running. Just before the mile marker we had a water stop where we caught up with the 6:52 guy from the start. We told him that he was running 6:59 average and his sub 3 was dwindling away. He said he was aware but he wasn’t feeling it. We stuck together and we were a pack of 3 at this point as we turned back onto another major highway heading back towards town just passed circling around the airport.

Mile 10: 6:46. My fastest mile split. We were running into the sun heading east and apparently 6:52 guy was still hoping for that sub 3. I told lawyer guy that we should let him go as he’s still trying to shoot for that sub 3 and it would be foolish to try to hang with him. We also saw the “Go Ashton” cheer group again and we clapped and yelled “Go Ashton” as we passed them to everyone’s great enjoyment.

Mile 11: 6:52. We were still hanging with Mr. 6:52, he was surging ahead but he’d walk the water stops where we’d catch him.

Mile 12: 7:24. Me and lawyer guy were talking about our half PRs, I told him I ran 1:31:20 and he said he also had a 1:31 PR. We felt like a good match and we were thinking about how we just might break that PR today if we keep up the pace. That was until we came up on the 4% incline at the end of mile 12 that killed our split. Took one more gel, little did I know that this was going to be my last.

Mile 13: 7:05. After that tough climb it was mostly downhill for Mile 13 where I picked up some momentum and started pulling away from my lawyer friend. Then just as mile 13 was coming to an end we hit another 4% climb and he started catching up. I asked if he was still with me and he assured me that he was.

13.1: 1:31:59. Not a PR but that wasn’t the goal. It’s still blistering fast and much faster than what I probably should have run. It was a 7:02/mile pace up until this point. They say unless you feel like things were too easy so far you’re already in trouble. I felt things were going easy so I thought I was doing well. Lawyer guy ran the split at 1:32:03.

Mile 14: 6:51. This mile had a massive 6% climb at the beginning then a -4% drop. By the time I hit bottom I never heard of lawyer guy again. He was behind me and so was 6:52 guy. They checked out so it was my race from here on out, no small talk, no BS, just running my own race.

Mile 15: 6:59. Mile 15 ended with a massive climb. I saw the Ashton cheer group one more time and I ran into the back end of the 5K race. They were at mile 1.5ish into their run and they were slow and walking. I was dodging them and hoped that the cops would stop traffic if not for them but at least for me. Luckily they did and I managed to run through the rough patch without much issue.

Mile 16: 6:56. My hams were starting to get a bit fatigued but I knew that I have “banked” an incredible amount of time for my BQ goal. I knew I needed a serious bonk to screw this one up. I was getting to the point where my stomach wasn’t feeling all that hot so I switched from water to Powerade and stopped taking gels.

Mile 17: 7:01. By now I was picking off the walkers at the back of the half marathon group and I was running pretty good. This mile was great as I finally got to see my wife and two kids by the playground as I ran by them. They waved at me and made me feel pretty darn good. One of the best miles on the course despite the fact that my hams were getting really worn out.

Mile 18: 7:03. The calves were cramping. They started cramping pretty bad and I was a bit worried about my run. I still had a whole lot more to go. This was the fastest 18 miles I have ever run and it was getting pretty toasty. Temperatures were in mid 60s by now and I could definitely feel it. I was passing more and more half marathoners and I passed a full marathoner as he stopped to take a walk. I knew I wasn’t the only one hurting at this point.

Mile 19: 7:10. This was definitely fading. The alternating 4% ups and downs were getting more and more miserable and my calves were killing me and I wasn’t even at the 20 mile point.

Mile 20: 7:13. More of the same except mile 20 was mostly uphill. I also almost sprained my ankle on a tight corner as I passed some half marathoners. For a moment I felt like it was going to do me in and my chances of finishing were gone but luckily the ankle held up and I kept running.

Mile 21: 6:57. You might think this was me getting a second wind but I wasn’t. I just happened to run down some steep 6% grades for a little while that helped my pace along nicely. This was the point where I knew that I would BQ. And this was the point where I almost sprained my ankle a second time. This one felt a lot more severe than the first one but it still ended up being nothing.

Mile 22: 7:18. This mile had two steep and persistent hills that were killing me and my pace. I kept thinking that these hills sure sucked ass. But there was nothing to do but run them. I tried to mutter a “thanks” or “keep it up” every time I ran by a group of half marathon walkers but it was getting harder and harder to say anything to them. The times of waves and jokes and claps were long gone. Running was no longer fun.

Mile 23: 7:14. I was inching up on another marathon runner and I finally passed him on this section. I really contemplated to just sticking with him but when I got next to him the momentum just carried me away from him and I never looked back.

Mile 24: 7:42. A miserable split. But this was the split where I had to be thankful for some nice people who decided to run their sprinklers in their front yard so I could run through it and enjoy a much needed shower. Temperature was 70F at this point and everyone around me was hurting just as much as I was.

Mile 25: 7:53. Getting close to that magical 8 minute mark. It was downright pathetic but that is all I could muster at this point on some tough 4% elevation grades. I saw my family one more time, I was much less receptive of the cheering and I barely waved at them, I was ready to check out.

Mile 26: 7:57. Worst split of the day. I was done. My legs were done, mentally I was done and I just wanted to call it quits. I knew I had the BQ in hand even if I ran a 9 minute pace and I no longer cared about my time or anything else other than finishing the course. The last climb was another killer and while the elevation chart indicates a mostly downhill mile it didn’t feel that way with the two short but sweet climbs in it.

Mile 26.2: 1:42 I had a tiny bit of kick left in me and when I heard over the PA my name and that I was 4^th overall I could not believe it. I hoped that I finished in the top 10 but to be 4^th it was just awesome. 3^rd would have been better but I’ll take what I can.

When I stopped my Polar it read 3:07:28 and I knew I BQd. It was a fantastic feeling but I needed a good 15 minutes of walking and stretching before I had the guts to sit down without the fear of cramping up to the point of no return.

If you had asked me at that moment whether I was going to run another marathon I probably would have said that you were out of your mind. I felt like that even though I BQd I’d never run Boston or any other marathon. I was done with this stupid distance forever. But 30 minutes later I was already contemplating whether I should run a full or a half next month, under ideal conditions at the Fort Worth Marathon where the course is straight, it has +200 ft of elevation in the first half and -200 ft of drop in the second half on an out and back course by the Trinity river that I run every week.

My family made their way to the finish by then and I learned that I finished 4^th overall out of 252 runners and 246 finishers. I got 2^nd in my age group out of 16 and I got 3 out of 145 for men. Top women ran an impressive 2:54:15 with an awesome negative split (1:28:16 at 13.1). I was 9^th at the half marathon point, one guy DNF and I picked off 4 guys. My age group winner finished with a 3:06:45.

Lawyer guy ran a 3:56:13 after that 1:32 half. I’m glad I didn’t stick with him for the second half and I didn’t bonk as hard as he did. I think “6:52 guy” finished with a 3:19. My neighbor was shooting for a 4 hour marathon and ended up running 4:08. The guy that the lady at breakfast mentioned running for 3:05-3:10 ended up running a 3:28:26 after a 1:24:15 half, another serious bonk. “Go Ashton” ran a 1:38:42 half and ended up with a DNF. I was wondering about him and the lack of his supporters after mile 14, he probably threw in the towel shortly after the first half.

According to my GPS I ran 26.39 miles but we all know that I ran 26.2. It was a tough course with tough weather but I still managed to run what I planned to run. A BQ at 7:10. I wish I had achieved it with more even pacing but I take it either way.

Some other aspects of the race besides the incredible amounts of rolling hills and elevation and the high temperature worth commenting were the road quality, the number of turns and the race organization.

Roads for the first half were very coarse highway asphalt where I could feel every single gravel packed into the tar. It was a choice between that rough texture and running on the tight camber of the concrete curb. I chose the rough surface to save my knees. Once we were back in town running through the historical Azelea trail the roads turned into red brick that had zero give or cushioning but in return they were perfectly uneven.

When I thought of road racing I never considered the number of turns and how it might affect your run. That was until I ran this race. The first 15 miles had 7 turns and some mildly winding roads. Things were perfect. The second half was an utter disaster in terms of turns. I counted them on the map and there were a whopping 42 turns in the last 11 miles which means that on average we had to make a 90 degree turn every quarter of a mile. It was utter misery. Some of the turns were well manned and marked while at others I was hoping to see some half marathon runners in the near distance to know which way to go even though I already drove the course the day before and had some recollection of which way the race was meant to go.

The organization of the race was great. Start was prompt and friendly, port-a-potties were abundant, and the water stops were well manned and stocked with ample warning about which side had which kind of refreshment. Post race food offerings were plentiful 3+ hours after the half marathon start even though I only had a banana as that is all I could stomach shortly after the race.

So there you have it, my first marathon race report. Thanks for reading and hanging with me throughout my training, it was a great experience and I can’t wait to do it again!

In my last post I wrote:

So how did I do in terms of Diet? Well let’s just say that weight management and all inclusive resorts with all you can eat buffets don’t mix too well and I think I’ll need to write another blog post about that one…

And “Jim” posted a comment on my blog saying:

Tweets are boring. Let us know how all this training is impacting on your weight now that you have fallen off the chuck wagon —- so to speak! It is always my major problem and I am interested to see whether you are coping better than I do. I am sure others are too!

So I think I owe an update on how my training is impacting my weight. Last time I blogged about my weight I was down to 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg) after a month of not counting calories and eating healthy. That was 2.5 months ago. Since then I have been training for a marathon, running a lot of miles, some weeks over 50, I traveled to Europe and ate a lot of garbage while I was there. I not only quit counting calories I also quit weighing myself while I was in Europe.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture (chart) of what happened to my weight in the past two and a half months:

Holy smokes Batman! Despite burning calories at an alarming rate my weight has not been doing as well as I would have hoped. The gap in the chart shows my European vacation and you can see the sudden climb in the average weight as soon as I returned and stepped on the scale. I gained about 3 lbs (1.3 kg) in two weeks while I was on vacation. That means a 750 calorie daily surplus! If you consider that I needed to eat about 2,600 calories a day just to maintain my weight it means I was eating over 3,300 calories a day while on vacation. Knowing what I did I find it not at all surprising that I have gained all that weight and ate all that much food while I was there. All inclusive, all you can eat and drink, resorts are bad for the waistline.

Once I came back from my trip I have been trying to maintain my weight with more or less success. I’m currently sitting on a 168.7 lbs (76.5 kg) rolling average which is still 4 lbs higher than my all time low of 164.6 that I reached at the end of July. I don’t think I’m on a runaway train by any means but I know that I will have to make a more diligent effort at keeping my food intake in check and keeping my calorie intake in line with my caloric expenditure.

In August I ran a total of 202.5 miles which is the most I have ran in a single month so far. This is my biggest milestone and achievement for the month, just the sheer amount of miles I ran. It took me a total of 26 hours and 59 seconds to cover the distance in 27 running sessions for an average pace of 7 minutes 42 seconds per mile. I have burned 20,055 calories, which means if I didn’t run at all in August I’d be almost 6 lbs heavier than I am.

Another big milestone I have achieved in August was that I ran over 50 miles in a single week. From August 16th through August 22nd I ran a total of 50.1 miles which is the most I have done in a single week so far. It was week 11 in my 18 week long marathon training plan.

The biggest contributor to my 50 mile running week was my longest run so far which was a 20 mile run that was quickly followed by a 10 mile run the next day. Since then I ran another 20 mile run and I have one more planned before I can say I’m ready for my marathon on 10/10/10.

August was also the month when I finally left Texas and ran abroad. We traveled to Hungary and Mallorca, Spain where I logged a total of 111 miles including a 17 and a 19 mile long run. I also carried my Android phone on these runs and recorded some video footage that I should be posting on the blog eventually as time permits.

All in all August was an awesome month in terms of running. I ran a lot and I ran strong. So how did I do in terms of Diet? Well let’s just say that weight management and all inclusive resorts with all you can eat buffets don’t mix too well and I think I’ll need to write another blog post about that one…

Eating healthy and making good choices became second nature to me by now. Just because I quit counting the calories it did not mean I quit watching what I’ve been putting in my mouth. I’m still eating the same foods in the same amounts as I have been in the past I just do it without the help of my kitchen scale and without jotting down everything into my food diary. I still keep a mental diary of my daily intake and I’m still counting calories in my head. But it’s a lot more manageable than running to the computer after each meal to make sure the calories are still in order.

I’m also allowing myself small indulgences and I no longer feel utter remorse if I eat a cookie or devour a piece of cake every now and again. They fit into my lifestyle and they fit into my caloric budget as you can tell from my weight chart for the past month.

As you can see my weight has been fluctuating a bit over the past month with two notable spikes. The first one happened on the weekend of my half marathon and I think it had to do with hydration more than anything. I lost a lot of water during the race and I probably drank more than my fair share of water after the race to replenish. I also carb loaded for the race which meant more pasta than I would usually eat. The second surge in weigh was on 4th of July weekend. That weekend involved some festive eating with salty snacks at a friend’s place which also lends itself to excess water intake. But that very same weekend I also ran a total of 20 miles in two runs burning over 2,000 calories so everything went back to normal after that.

If you look at the overall trend of the red line it’s still downward. I’m happy about that even though my wife is not. She thinks I’m about 10 lbs too light at the moment and I should not only quit “dieting” I should start eating more to gain 10 lbs back. Needless to say I have no intentions of quitting my “diet” and I will not gain any weight back. My averaged weight on 6/17/10 was 166.6 lbs (75.6 kg) and today it’s 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg). I have lost 1.8 lbs (0.8 kg) in a month without even trying and without counting calories or measuring food with a scale. I’m officially under my initial target weight that I set when I started my transformation which was 165 lbs (74.8 kg). Having reached this goal now I’m onto the next one which is single digit body fat. I have checked my fat percentage with a 3 point caliper measurement and I’m at 11.8% at the moment. I know I’ll get there and I’m in no real hurry to achieve it.

If I look at my progress for the past 7 months I can safely say that a large portion of my success can be attributed to my very diligent calorie tracking and sticking with the plan without deviation. Every week my weight loss matched my expected loss based on the amount of calories I took in and the amount of calories I burned via exercise. Everything worked like clockwork. But I had to ask myself this question: “Do I want to count every single calorie for the rest of my life to maintain my healthy physique?” And the andwer to this question is “No, I don’t!”

So this week I have decided to ditch the kitchen scale and Cron-o-Meter and start winging it. I can’t be sure just yet how well this new approach is going to work for me but I sure hope it’ll be a success as I want to live my life as a normal person not someone with a severe OCD who needs to write down every single calorie. This week might not have been the perfect week to go without my trusty measuring system as my mileage will be pretty low this week due to taking two rest days for pre-race taper but if I can’t do it now then I need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate just what it is that I’m doing wrong.

So far I have confidence in myself, I’m not doing anything unusual or out of the ordinary and I’m still counting calories in my mind and I’m still trying to maintain my 2,300 calorie diet in my head. Whether I’m succeeding or failing at it will be revealed in a couple of weeks.

My mom and sister

Growing up I was never fat. I was actually downright skinny when I was a young boy. My sister on the other hand was always the “chubby one”. I grew up in a very nice family with loving parents and a great younger sister. We sure had our fights and I was usually the one who got punished for them as I was the older one, but all in all I had a really nice childhood. My sister wasn’t the only one who suffered with their weight in my family. My mom has always been on the heavy side and she blamed it on her upbringing. Her grandmother and single parent mom always kept encouraging her to be plump “just in case you catch a disease you’ll have plenty of reserves”. This was their mentality and it certainly had shown on my mom. She definitely had been obese for as long as I could remember.

Me and my sister

As I was growing up I have witnessed my mom’s struggle with weight and her constant goal of trying to get slimmer and lose it all. She even went to “fat camp” where they put her on a zero calorie diet for several weeks to try to get her to lose her weight. And she did lose some, as to be expected, but she gained it all back once she came back home. It was a constant, never ending battle for her. I have also witnessed my sister’s struggles with her weight and the constant nagging and denial of sweets and snacks from my parents that came with her being overweight. I was clearly the lucky one. I inherited my dad’s “skinny genes” while my poor sister was stuck with my mom’s “fat genes”. But not only I inherited the “skinny genes” I also got a good dose of my dad’s running genes.

My dad was a runner. He went to college to earn his degree in cartography and civil engineering which naturally lent itself to be on the college team of foot orienteering. If you don’t know what foot orienteering is, don’t worry, I actually had to look up the English term myself as me being born and raised in Hungary it’s not a term I have actually learned or used in English, ever. Think of it as cross country running and map reading at the same time. You have to navigate and visit several points through terrain with nothing but a topography map and a compass. First to visit all points wins the race. The sport started in Norway and it is apparently a lot more popular in Europe than in the US but I just checked and there are several local orienteering events even where I live. Having said all this, my dad did compete at college level and he did OK.

Mom pinning the bib on my friend

For me, running started when I was 10 years old. I had a friend who was training at a sport school three times a week. I was never really good at any of the team sports at school and I thought I would go with him to training and see how I liked running. It turned out that I actually enjoyed running very much. I liked it enough that what started out as a Monday, Wednesday, Friday activity in the afternoons has turned into a five times a week training within a year.

On my way to victory

By the third year into my running career I was one of the top runners in the group and I have moved from my regular junior high school to a special magnet school for athletic talent. I was swimming three times a week before school and ran on the track four to five times while ran cross country in the woods once a week. I was clearly on my way to becoming an elite athlete. I won numerous track meets and cross country events on the regional level and I was national age group champion in 4,500 meter cross country amongst 13-14 year old boys in Hungary. I have clocked 9:26 on track for 3,000 meters (5:04/mile pace for 1.86 miles) and my personal best in 10,000 meter road racing was 35:14 at age 13.

So what happened? I got tired. I burned out. By the time I entered high school I felt like I was done with running. School was taking a toll on me, I went to another magnet school, a bilingual high school where I had to learn English and my classes were taught in both English and Hungarian. I just couldn’t take running any more so I quit. And I never ran another mile unless my life depended on it for almost 20 years. The one thing that I never changed though were my eating habits.

I thought I was still growing and burning calories just like I did when I was running. I was going through chocolate and pizza like it was nobody’s business. I slowly but surely started to gain weight. Before I knew it I was getting chubby. My classmates started to make fun of me even though I wasn’t that fat. I was overweight from my lean mean running machine look but by today’s standards I was barely overweight on the BMI scale. But when you come from 140 lbs, 175 lbs starts to look pretty hefty. The last time I wore size 31″ waist pants, the size I’m currently wearing, were freshman year of high school.

If I was on The Biggest Loser Jillian would have a field day with the fact that my mom passed away when I turned 15. She would blame my obesity and overeating on the fact that my mom died. Mom mom had breast cancer and she passed away at age 39. I really don’t think her passing had anything to do with my obesity. I simply stopped exercising and kept eating the same way I used to. But my mom’s death had a lot to do with the fact that I finally turned my life around. The closer I was getting to age 39 the more I started thinking about how short life is and how much more I wanted to do in life and how living the unhealthy way in an obese body would not let it happen. So while I wouldn’t attribute my obesity to “fat genes” inherited from my mom I certainly credit her death as partially the reason why I started my transformation. As for my sister, she has turned her life around about 14 years ago when she finally became fit and she has been the skinny one ever since while I became the family fatty.

But things are turning around once again. I’m on my way to regaining, hopefully, most of my genetic given speed and running ability while losing all the excess weight while my sister is getting bigger and bigger by the minute. I expect that by the time I visit her in August she’ll be bigger than me. You might wonder why would anyone say such a cruel thing about their sister. But this time it’s a good thing as she’s pregnant and expecting a baby at the end of September .

So there you have it, my secret running past. While I certainly have lived the life of a couch potato for the past 19 years I certainly was blessed with some great running genes that are hopefully helping my new, leaner, fitter me to try to achieve my goal of running a Boston Qualifying marathon time in October.

I did manage to lift weights twice this week which is a first in a really long time. I felt fine with the weights but I definitely need to get back into the rhythm and keep going on a regular basis.

My running was great this week. I clocked 34.6 miles (55.6 km) this week which is not as much as I have been running lately but it was the first week of my marathon training plan so it was supposed to be easy. I’m actually looking forward ramping up the mileage a bit, the week just seemed pretty easy.

All in all it was a solid week with a bit of wondering off the right path in the eating department but it wasn’t anything that I can’t fix.

My first and original goal, in terms of running, was to finish a 10K race. But I didn’t just want to finish it, I wanted to be in the best possible shape I possibly could by then. Considering how difficult it felt to even run three two plus one miles on my first run the best possible shape wasn’t going to be something all that stellar. But I set out to run the Cowtown Marathon’s 10K race. I made that goal so it would give me a reason to run and a reason to train. This goal also required me to follow a plan.

Thanks to my co-worker, an avid runer, marathoner and fellow weight loser, I found Hal Higdon’s website. Hal’s an older guy in his late 70s who has completed over 110 marathons in his lifetime and authored several books on the subject of running and marathons. His website provides an abundance of information and a multitude of free training plans from 5K races all the way to marathons for runners at all abilities and fitness levels. I decided to go with his Intermediate 10K training plan and started it on Week 2.

By Week 4 I ran my very first race, a 5K that the plan has called for. Shortly after the race I got injured due to a bum knee that I should have let to heal but I overcompensated and developed tendinitis of my right foot instead. It forced me to quit running for a week and only left me with two more weeks before the big 10K race.

8 Week 10K Intermediate + 12 Week Spring Advanced weekly summary

After my first 10K race I needed a new goal and a new plan. I needed a goal to keep me motivated and I need a new plan to keep me on track. So I have decided that I will run a marathon. Running a marathon and finishing a marathon are two different things. Some people just want to finish one, get across the finish line, get the beer and the finisher’s medal so they can say they have done it. If you have been following me for a while you would know that this is not me. I don’t like to do things half assed. I like to do them right. This meant I couldn’t just point at the calendar and pick a marathon in the next couple of weeks and make a run for it. No sir! I knew that I would have to train and be in top shape to be able to run it in a way that I would want to run it.

Most marathon plans are 16-20 weeks long. So it’s not only the 26.2 miles that’s a marathon, the length of training that gets you to the start line is a marathon of a training session itself. You can’t just wake up one morning, roll out of bed and walk up to the start line and expect to perform well. Sure, some might pride themselves in doing a “no training marathon” but I wanted to do it the right way. It meant that I would have to look at marathons in the June/July time frame. Let me remind you that I live in Texas. There just aren’t a whole lot of races let alone marathons in June/July in Texas. And while I was committed to the plan of running a marathon I was not committed enough to travel out of state for one. So that left me with no option but to look for a fall marathon.

I found one in Tyler, Texas, the Tyler Rose Marathon on 10/10/10, the same day there is a small race in Chicago known as the Bank Of America Chicago Marathon. So I have decided that while I would not travel to Chicago, I would most certainly drive 3 hours to get to Tyler Texas for a small and cozy inaugural marathon. But since the Tyler marathon is not until October it left me with 30 weeks of training left. What was I supposed to do with all that time, the marathon training was only going to take 18 weeks?

Lucky for me, Hal Higdon also has a 12 week plan that he calls the 12 week advanced spring training plan. This plan called for numerous 5K and 10K races along the way and this is what I had been following for the past 12 weeks more or less. I have ran three 5K and three 10K races that were on the plan and I have reported from every single one of them. The end of the plan got kind of messed up for me due to race scheduling and timing so i kind of finished the plan a week early which left me with nothing but relaxing easy runs for the last week. Ironically I have logged the most miles in a week last week on this easy week.

So now that I have finished my spring training, I have started working on my marathon plan this week. I will be following Hal Higdon’s Advanced II marathon plan for the next 18 weeks and I should be in top shape by the time I’m going to toe the line in Tyler, Texas on a hopefully cold fall morning in October.

If you have read this far I will also tell you that my goal is not only to run a marathon. My goal is to run a marathon and finish it with a Boston Qualifying time of 3:10:59 or less. So there you have it. My new plan is to follow the 18 week marathon plan and finish with a sub 3 hour 10 minute marathon in October. I have started my fat to fit transformation on 10/25/09 and I’m planning to BQ (Boston Qualify) on 10/10/10. I call this my C2BQ plan. Why C2BQ? There is a plan called C25K which means “Couch to 5K” and it’s supposed to help people to get up and start running and it gets them from being a couch potato to running a 5K in 9 weeks. My plan is the Couch to Boston Qualify in a year plan. I’m 7 months into it and I have another 18 weeks to go.

Since I will be concentrating on my running throughout the summer and my weight is sitting at a comfortable 165 lbs I will probably not worry so much about shedding the last few pounds but I’m sure losing them will be a side effect of my vigorous running regime.

1) I am no longer going to track waist size. My waist hasn’t changed a bit in the last 3 weeks. I’m still measuring 33″ (84 cm) around the navel and I’m wearing size 31 waist pants that are now getting a bit lose. But I think my waist size is stabilizing so there is really no point in charting it any more.

2) I am no longer going to track body fat percentage and lean body mass. Unfortunately my trusty scale that I had been using all along is now giving me grief. It actually has been giving me grief for the past two weeks where it puts up “Err.” instead of giving me an estimated body fat percentage. It is still accurately measures my body weight but I just can’t rely on the body fat percentage numbers any more. This morning it told me I’m 23% body fat which is clearly ridiculous. If I’m over 13% I’d be very surprised. Since I no longer have an accurate, not that it has been all that accurate lately, method to measure body fat I will no longer measure it or post the data as it would be mostly wrong. I know where I’m heading and I know that I’ll see it when I get there. Until then there is really no need to measure it with an estimate that is not right.

3) The daily calorie chart might show blanks. As you can see there is no chart for last Monday in the calorie chart. The reason being is that I simply stopped counting calories for the bigger part of the day. I ate pretty good but I just couldn’t get myself to log everything and measure every single potato chip that I consumed by the poolside on Memorial Day. So there might be days from now on when calories won’t get counted nor posted. I still feel like I need to track my calories if I want to shed the last couple of pounds but if I skip for a day it’s not like I would gain it all back so I will allow myself cheat days or days where I just don’t track.

With all these changes in effect my week still wrapped up nicely. I have lost 1lbs (0.4 kg) on the rolling average scale which I’m happy about. Average caloric intake was significantly higher this week than any other previous weeks. Not including Monday, I have averaged 2,644 calories per day with 141 grams of protein. The interesting thing about these two numbers is that 2,644 calories sounds like a ton of food but when you put it in perspective with respect to the amount of exercising I have done it’s not bad. The other interesting thing is that while i used to eat 40 grams of protein supplements daily before to achieve 140 grams of daily protein at the beginning of my diet, now I’m struggling to keep it under 140 grams without eating anything but whole foods. I love meat and I have no problem with keeping protein at a high level. It’s actually a bit too high for me with all the running, I should be eating a bit more carbohydrates instead. Regardless, it was a good week in terms of eating. It’s quite amazing that I had 800 calories more per day this week than I had when I was in the beginning phase of my transformation and ate 1,800 calories a day.

I don’t feel like talking about strength training this week as it has been non-existent. I really need to quit socializing at lunch and head for the gym instead. I’m also thinking about buying a pull-up bar for home so I can just crank out my upper body workout at home without the gym if I need it.

I have been concentrating on my running exclusively this week. I have broke 600 miles ran for the year and I also broke 45 miles ran for the week, the most I’ve done in a single week. I actually ran 45.3 miles (73 km) this week and I feel fantastic about it. I have also started tracking my mileage and workouts on dailymile.com. It’s another venue for me to find active runners in my community and for others to keep tabs on my workouts. I still have the lot more technical runs.gregstransformation.com database running which not only lists my runs but it shows my logged data for every run. I also had my first group run this week which was great! I really enjoyed running with the pack on the weekend and I will do a lot more of that in the future.

I’m very pleased with the way my week turned out, a couple more of these and I’m right where I want to be!