Exercise Goals for 2008

I grabbed a beginner marathon plan off of runnersworld.com. You pretty much complete 1 long run each weekend, starting at a 6 miles and training up to a 20 mile a few weeks before the race. You run 3 other times each week, a couple of easy jogs for 3-7 miles, and then a medium length jog from 3-10 miles.

It's a 16 week progressive plan plan:
First week you jog 15 miles, progressing to the
4th week you jog 19 miles, ""
8th week you jog 26 miles, ""
12th week you jog 35 miles, ""
16th week you jog 40 miles, ""



These first 4 weeks I'm also going to eat a restricted calorie diet (approx 2000 cal/day). I'm 190lbs and would like to get down to about 170-175 before the marathon.

I'd keep my current diet and wait to see whether the increased running
by itself starts to bring my weight down.

ditto.

Expect to lose up to 10 pounds in the first month.

Did four in the drizzle. I decided to make it a fartlek session (did I
mention how much I love to say "fartlek"?) by cranking it up on the
uphills. Woof! Good workout.

[Crossed the state line into Noo Yawk]

is that like jet propulsion?

Fit into a coat I haven't worn since 2 jobs ago. That is, a job I left in mid-October.

Of 2000.

{calorie-burning happy dance}

Yay Jes!

Hooray Jes! that is exciting - a whole new wardrobe to consider.

Good going, Jes.

Next step: give the bigger clothes to charity. You're never going to use them again.

I've already donated some. I'm kinda holding on until the weather gets warmer, then I can really send 'em packing. Right now I'd like to avoid buying warmer transitional clothes unless they're a few sizes smaller than where I currently am. So essentially, no matter how much swimming I do in my clothing, I'll hold out until late April or so, when the weather is a lot closer to guaranteeing warmth or at least not an Arctic blast every week, and then start to really shed.

My folks are coming up for the first weekend in May and I will definitely have done a lot of donating by then. They, of course, know what is going on, but I still think they'll be surprised at my appearance.

I mean, I have biceps 'n stuff.

PS Thank you all for your support. It means a great deal to me.

PPS How's everyone else doing? What the heck is a fartlek? Do tell!

Jes--

A thrifty distain about investing in short-lived transition clothes for a fixed transitional season is sign of an excellent mental set.

I'm not looking forward to getting out my spring wardrobe and discarding half of it. Even though I've found a gal who can use the hand-me-downs my frugal streak insists that those clothes have a lot of good wearing left in them.

Fartlek is a training method for long distance runners invented by Emil Zatopek.
Before Zatopek, runners trained jogging long distances at a relatively mild pace.
Fartlek consists in running short distances at near full speed and then jogging slowly another short distance, and then repeating the sprint... and then the jog, and so on.
When Zatopek was training he was told: "Emil, you're a fool! You are training like a sprinter!"
After he won his first European Championship, they told him: "Emil, you're a genius!"
Zatopek, the Czech Locomotive, won a gold medal and a silver medal in the London Olympics, 1948; but in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics he was absolutely impressive: in one single week he won the gold for the 5,000 meters, the gold for the 10,000 meters and the gold for the Marathon race, the first marathon he ever competed on.
On that race, Zatopek was running with the leading group and, at about kilometer 15, he said to his rivals: "Gentlemen, don't you think we are running a bit slow?", and left them behind.
A survivor of Nazi concentration camps, Zatopek supported Dubcek and "The Prague Spring", the idea of "socialism with a human face". When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, he was asked to retract, he answered: "All my life I've fought against Fascism and dictatorships, now it's too late for me to retire". He was expelled from the Communist Party and had to work as a garbage collector. Two years later, they let him have a job as a physical education teacher. When the regime collapsed, he was rehabilitated and his glory was recognized.

All this said, what I can tell you is that fartlek is exhausting. At least for me (I do it once a week, but often walking and not jogging after the sprints). And that George is doing great.

The world is full of ex-clusive in-groups.

eeyep. one of the most impressive sportsmen of czechoslovakia.

i, on the other hand, currently am not one. the procedure on my wrist did not work out, so i'll have to either get it done again, or get a surgery done to get rid of it (cyst, not the wrist) permanently. ether way, frustrating.

Dag--

You don't deserve a cyst. You really don't.

What would surgery involve?

opening up the wrist, removing the cyst cavity entirely (for now they just drain it with a needle), then at least a month of healing time. enough to frown about, but at least it would be done away with for good...if they just drain it, it tends to come back. meh.

Dag--

I can't imagine you having a schedule that would allow for a convenient one-wrist month.

Oh man that stinks (the wrist-cyst thing {hey, that rhymes}, not Zapotek and the fartlek).

Four hundred plus reps with snow shovel. My returning neighbor, played the "elderly senior citizen" card.

Good for you!
How's the back feel?