training

Weight: 199.0lbs post walk

Diet: Chicken, asparagus, rice and soup for dinner and 1bagel and honey for breakfast

According to the trail, the milage was just shy of 5 miles but the watch said somewhat less. My gut and my sore feet said it was close to 5 miles, so I’ll go with that. I went a little further than anticipated but I wanted to see what was ahead of my usual turnaround point. When I used to run the trail years ago, I would go quite a bit further than my walks have taken me, but when I got just past the 2.2 marker the trail ended with a gate across the trail. Distance-wise, that was probably enough for one day. I really liked the time splits because my 4th mile pace was almost as fast as the first mile pace. That tells me that I hit the runners high after a couple miles which is typical for a distance runner. I think I’ll work with the distance I’m going now and work on increasing the speed a bit. The way I always increased my speed as a distance runner was to work on my gate, do some intervals (fartlek training) and the dreaded hill work. One way I can accomplish this is to do some up and downs on my steps going down to the boat dock and back. That will work on the hammies, as well as strengthening the muscles around the knees. It will also work the ligaments around the knees in prep for some soft runs later on.

I did a little bit of soft running this week and it was brutal on the knees. Just when the knees settled into a soft running pace, I went back to walking and I could feel the knee confusion. A lot of that was due to weight so I need to work on that a little more. I’m probably going to do another fast next week. My last fast was very successful, and I went a total of 60-65 hours with a water fast.

One thing I know about my body is that it is very smart. After a few weeks of walking, my body thinks this walking thing is the new norm, so the metabolism freakout is over and it starts to slow again. That would explain the slow-down in weight loss over the past week. I always need to combat the metabolism slow-down with new surprises. I may need to incorporate some light sculpting weight training or maybe hit my elliptical for a few hours a week. The elliptical machine is a great way to combat a metabolic slow-down but it has its dangers too. If you’re not careful you can overdo it and hurt yourself when introducing new stuff to confuse the body and tap into a few new muscle groups. I need to take it slow and trust the process.

Tomorrow is the last day to hit the trail this week unless we do something with the twins on Saturday. We’re baby-sitting the twin 2-year-old grands Saturday afternoon and evening, so I’ll get a pretty good mental and physical workout from that. They are like half spider monkey, half octopus, all jacked up on expresso with at least eight grabby hands, but best of all, there are 2 of them to chase around. In all honesty, I wouldn’t trade any of my grands for the world. I’ve been blessed and looking forward to tomorrow.

Song of the day.

6/17/2025

Weight: 199.2lbs post walk

Diet: 1/2 chicken breast, cottage cheese and pineapple squares

I had to split my walk today because I accidently reset my watch when I turned around to head back to the trail head where I started, so I have 2 different recordings today. The second half was a little less because it took a few steps before I realized what I had done. This fitness watch does a pretty good job though. I wish I would have had something like this 30 years ago. I knew I was going to be close to breaking 200lbs this morning, so I pushed just a little bit more and it paid off. I dug through my closet this morning and found a pair of unused New Balance 613 cross trainers that I had rat holed a few years back. New Balance shoes have always been the Cadillac of running shoes for me but the 613 isn’t really ideal for distance running. No further than I was going walking today, it wasn’t a big deal and the shoe is definitely lighter weight than those Asics I’ve been using. Feet are just about always an issue for distance runners. I can’t ever remember training for and running a marathon without a few blisters on my feet and dropping a few toenails along the way. It’s just part of the deal and pain tolerance is very important because you will experience pain if you’re going to train for marathon distance. I wrapped my big toe with the giant blister this morning, but little did I know that the big Band-Aid I used was rough and rubbed a blister on the toe next to it, so I wound up with another bloody sock today.

I gotta say that those blisters were all worth it when I weighed myself and saw that 199.2 on the scale so I decided to celebrate with a slice of my homemade crawfish pie for dinner this evening. Great morning out there on the trail this morning and I even stopped to have a quick chat with momma deer. She stayed around while I chatted with her for a little while and she said that she liked my shirt, before trotting off.

Just pulled the crawfish pie out of the oven and it will still be warm for dinner! It’s awesome with a dab of sour cream on top. If you’re interested in making a crawfish pie, my recipe is in the recipe section of this blog.