Rambling Thoughts

Nice and easy were the words of the day for my run this morning. I got up at my normal early morning time and out the door I went for an easy 2 mile run. It's funny that not too long ago, my long runs weren't much farther than that. Now, I almost feel like I haven't done anything when I run that distance.

Before April of this year, I was following Body for Life (BFL) which called for interval aerobic sessions that lasted about 20 minutes each and lifting sessions that lasted 45 - 60 minutes each. Don't get me wrong, I still think it is a decent program. But, since finding The Leanness Lifestyle (LL), I must admit that I have found a few things that were causing me to stumble. I still follow many of the basic principles from BFL but LL has given me so much more. My nutrition is much better because I limit myself to 1-2 splurge meals per week instead of an entire day of eating anything and everything I can get my hands on. Now I know why I wasn't losing much weight - duh! I also do so much more exercising now and love every single minute of it. Hence the above paragraph - I used to cover a little over 2 miles during the 20 minute aerobic sessions and now I'm running 7 miles in one outing. I feel awesome, healthy and strong!

My current dilemma is trying to balance my race training and my weight lose. I've noticed that over the past week, my total exercise minutes have decreased. This is due to the fact that I've cut out my afternoon stationary bike rides. I've not been doing the extra bike sessions because I've been afraid that it would effect my runs the next morning. Because of this drop in exercise, I've been finding it very hard to drop those last few pounds that I want to lose. I've been talking to David Greenwalt and I'm hoping to be able to figure out a compromise - increasing the exercise without overtraining or messing up my run training. I also need to tighten up on the nutrition especially if my exercise minutes are less than they used to be. Any little slip in my nutrition is really going to make a big difference. As David said, nutrition is 70% of the battle and I should treat it that way.

I should be able to find a way to balance all this out! The men and women who run the ultra distances as well as triathletes do multiple sessions each day and do just fine. As I write this, I feel silly that I haven't kept up with the extra sessions. I think I just figured out what I'm going to do. I'm adding the bike rides back in, at least on the days that I don't do RT. That will give me double sessions each training day. If I feel tired, I'll not do the 2nd session.

Work hard, eat right and reach for your goals!