Sweet Sixteen

BAM!  How about that?

When did 16 miles cease to be this insurmountable, incomprehensible distance and become something that little ‘ol me could take on with not just a smile, but a full on sprint at the end?  This is madness I tell you.  Pure madness.

Count It Up!

You may or may not have noticed that I don’t count calories.  My relationship with food is just on the healthy side of normal and I know that if I were to scrutinize every morsel that passed my lips beyond its overall nutritional value, the scales would tip and the result would be poor.  That said, I do believe that it’s important for me to step back and evaluate my eating habits every so often.  As I up my weekly mileage for marathon training, the need to be ultra-aware of my caloric intake becomes less of a an unhealthy preoccupation and more of a necessity.  At this point in the game calorie counting isn’t obsessive it’s responsible.  I need ensure that I’m taking in enough calories to balance out my activity levels so that I don’t pass out on a run, or worse, eat my own arm in a hunger induced frenzy. 

Since I really don’t like the idea of calorie counting, I’m lucky that I’m a creature of habit and tend to eat more or less the same things on a day to day basis.  This is a good thing because it means that every so often, I can count up my calories for the day (note: I do this for one day, not every day) and get a pretty good idea of the amount of calories I’m taking in on a daily basis.  I might do this two or three times a year just to make sure I’m on track.

A female of my hight and weight should be consuming roughly 1400 calories a day to maintain their weight.  At 5’5″ and 135lbs I burn about 100 calories per mile that I run and, according to Shape Magazine’s August issue “How Many Calories Do You Really Need?”, it’s recommended that I replenish half of that deficit.  If my average daily run is 6 miles, that’s 300 calories, so  1400 + 300 = 1700.  This is the total number of calories I should be aiming for each day.  On long run days where I’m burning 1500-2000 calories in a single morning, I should be upping the ante to about 2100-2400 calories.   (I do not have a medical degree, this is simply what works for me.  Click the embedded links above to learn more and calculate your own recommended intake)

Let’s see how I’m doing: 

Breakfast:

(Note: my less than stellar camera is one of the many reasons I’m not a food blogger)

Oatmeal
1 cup of rolled oats – 300 calories
8 almonds, chopped – 34 calories
1 tsp milled flax seed – 10 calories
1 cup almond milk, vanilla – 40 calories
1/2 medium banana -  60 calories
1 tsp cottage cheese - 22 calories
1/4 blueberries and strawberries - 20 calories

Total for breakfast : 486

Lunch:

Salad – 290
3 cups spinach (loosely packed) -  20 calories
1/8 cup raisins – 40 calories
20 peanuts – 85 calories
1/2 tsp milled flax seed – 5 calories
1/2 tsp Ken’s Light Raspberry Walnut dressing – 30 calories
1/2 cup chopped, grilled chicken breast – 110 calories

 

Mixed Fruit – 85
3 prunes – 25 calories
1/3 cup of strawberries – 20 calories
1/3 cup of blueberries – 20 calories
1/3 cup of raspberries – 20 calories

Total for lunch: 375

Snacks:

(1 eaten around 11am, another with lunch and the last two around 3pm)

1/2 banana (the other half from the morning’s oats) – 60 calories
1 Gala apple – 75 calories
1 Chobani greek yogurt cup (peach) – 140 calories
1 Kashi granola bar – 140 calories

Total snacks: 415

Dinner:

Grilled Veggie Wrap:

2 cups veggies (spinach, red bell pepper, mushrooms, onion, zucchini, squash) – 200 calories
1 tbsp Roasted Garlic Hummus – 30 calories
1/4 cup black beans – 50 calories
1/8 cup reduced fat feta cheese, crumbled – 35 calories
1 tortilla wrap – 60 calories

Total dinner: 375

Total: 1,651 calories for the day

Not bad, not bad. I’m about 50 calories shy for the day … I guess I get a cookie tonight!  A trick that I use to guesstimate more effectively is to aim for a number 200-300 below what I really need.  Why do I do this?  Because underestimating portion sizes and calorie content is a favorite American pastime!  It may sound counterproductive, but since my intake today was right on target, it looks like it’s working for me.

Do you count calories?  If not, how do you ensure you’re eating a diet of healthy proportions?  I try and base my meals on my hunger level.  If I’m hungry, I eat a small meal.  Still hungry?  Drink a glass of water and make sure I’m not just dehydrated.  Water didn’t cut it?  Back to the fridge I go….

Xtreme Torture

I try and get out of the gym as often as possible for cross-training days.   I’ll take a bike ride, or a yoga class, or go on a hike if it fits my schedule.  But let’s face it, sometimes it’s just easier to hit the gym.  There are days when I feel guilty about that, but at the same time I want to get to the weight room at the gym at least twice a week.  I know that strength training is important to keeping me injury free and besides, lifting weights makes me feel bad-ass.

I’ve made it part of my routine to do my cross-training at the gym on Wednesdays.  My training plan declares Wednesdays “Rest/XT” days, but for some reason I’ve begun to treat that XT as Xtreme Torture rather than simply Cross-Training.  Forget that rest stuff – rest is for the weak!  … just kidding, I just usually take my rest days on Friday’s.  

I started this routine about a month ago, on a day when my attention span was about that of the fruit flies that have invaded my kitchen (they’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!).  For whatever reason I couldn’t bear the thought of spending any length of time on any one machine at the gym that day.  I made  a deal with myself that I could break my workout up over multiple pieces of cardio equipment as long as I hit a minimum of 30 minutes.  I ended up doing this:

StairMaster: 10 minutes
Arc Trainer: 10 minutes
Stationary bike: 10 minutes
Weight circuit: 20 minutes

Holy hell.  I was a sweaty beast by the end!  I really wasn’t expecting the workout to be so challenging given my slacker attitude going into it, but holy cow -  I kicked my own ass that day.   I think I burned something like 650 calories.

Four weeks later I’m sticking to that same routine, but I’m mixing it up a bit too.  I’m playing with the resistance levels, doing speed intervals, and lengthening the durations a bit.   Last week I lifted the heaviest weights I could and could barely walk the next day, but it felt awesome.  Today, I played games with the RPMs on the bike and the Arc Trainer.  I found a difficult pace and then vowed to not let myself drop below that number of revolutions per minute.  To make it more challenging, for 30-45 seconds I would either increase the resistance or add 40 RPMs, and then allow myself to drop down the the initial pace for a 1 minute recovery before repeating.  Let’s just say that not only was I wiping off the equipment when I was done, but I was also mopping up the embarrassingly massive puddles I’d left on the floor.   Oops!

What do you do on your cross-training days?  Do you have a favorite piece of equipment at the gym?  Treadmills don’t count!

I Feel The Need…

…the need for speed.

Gotta love old school Tom, you know, before he went crazy.

As bloggers around the world prepare for their fall marathons I began fearing more and more that my training plan just wasn’t going to cut it.  From the newbies to the pros, everyone is touting the fact that you need to have a tempo run and a speedwork session each week if you’re going to hack the 26.2 with any credibility.   I was left feeling that after all my careful considerations, my original schedule was only setting me up to fail. 

I went back and forth between training plans for months until I found the SmartCoach Training Program on the Runner’s World website.  When I selected this plan there were several things I liked about it:

• It was built especially for me based on my recent race times
• It provided a time/pace goal for race day  
• There were multiple training runs over 20 miles (necessary even if the mere thought gives me the willies!)
• There were three flexible cross-training/rest days
• It included both tempo and speed workouts

What I didn’t take into consideration was the frequency of said tempo and speed workouts.  When I started hearing all this buzz about speed workouts I realized I hadn’t been to the track in a while.  I pulled out my trusty training plan and saw that my next speed session wasn’t for 17 more days! And the one after that? Another FOUR WEEKS!  I don’t know what that’s about but it’s certainly not going to cut it.

Today I attacked my training plan and did something that’s always intimidated me.  I customized it.  In addition to my 2-3 cross-training/rest days, I aimed for one speed session, one tempo run, one easy run and one long run per week.  Hopefully I didn’t make it too difficult (swapping easy runs for speedwork ups the ante more than a little), but if I find myself struggling or feeling like I’m over training I figure I can just tweak it some more.

My new plan can be found here, or under the “Training” tab at the top of the site.

Do you create your own training plans or do you use pre-made schedules?  If you don’t make your own do you spend the money for proven and accalimed programs or do you scour the internet for the freebies like me?