Greg's Running Blog

Week 21 has came to an end but my transformation is nowhere near done. I still have so much more to go it’s not even funny. But let’s recap where I stand and how the last week went.

Caloric intake wise it went great. I have averaged 1,803 calories for the week which is exactly where I want to be. I had 152 grams of protein a day on average, again, another excellent value that is hard to beat. I even went to a party this weekend and since I’m not big on drinking I stuck with water and luckily the catered food was barbecue which is great even if I had to eat some barbecue beans and bread instead of steamed veggies and rice. I skipped dessert but I did collect two fantastic recipes to make them once I can start eating like a madman when I’m going to weight maintenance mode and running. I will try to reduce protein to the 140g range and increase my carbs a bit due to all the running I have been doing.

Speaking of running, this week I ran a whopping 34.1 miles (50.5 km)! 19 of it was easy running the other 15 was part of some kind of speed or tempo run. Spring training is not about mileage it’s about building up mileage and speed. I have also managed to burn over 4,300 calories last week with running, averaging out just shy of 620 calories a day.

The scale says (rolling average) I have dropped 2.1 lbs (1 kg) this week. That’s 7,350 caloric deficit, 1,050 calories a day. Given my intake of 1,803 and running of 618 calories a day it gives me 2,235 calories as my basal metabolic rate. That seems to be right in the same ballpark that I had been calculating for the past three weeks. The biggest milestone had been the fact that I’m actually under 180 lbs (81.6 kg) this week. I have been under that magic 180 lbs mark for the past 5 days and I see no way of climbing over it ever again short of falling off the wagon. But this train is steamrolling forward at full speed and there is no way for me to fall off as I’m holding on super tight!

So what lacked this week? It has to be the gym and strength training again. Mondays and Fridays are my strength days and I did do strength training on Monday but Friday it didn’t work out (no pun intended). I was going to go with a co-worker to his gym at lunch but things came up for the personal trainer we were going to visit so we had to cancel and I went out for lunch instead. And since my son had soccer practice right after work that left me no time to to lift weights after work. I really need to do a better time with the weight training scheduling, this is just not working when I skip 50% of the gym days. Again, I won’t beat myself up over it, I still think my muscles know I need them and hopefully tomorrow I’ll remind them again.

Overall I think it was another awesome week. 11 more of these and I’ll be in the home stretch!