February Wrap Up

Well, today was my last run of February, so time for an update.

For the week I did just over 20 miles. It was supposed to be a cut back week for me after doing 21 and 23 the two weeks before. I guess I didn’t cut back as much as I intended, but it was OK.

For February, I wound up with just under 75 miles. A bit short of my target, due to A. it being a short month, and B. an short 11 mile week the week of my 5K race. I ran 16 out of 28 days this month and spent 12 hours and 45 minutes pounding the pavement.

For 2010 so far, I’m up to about 153 miles done, 34 days running, and 26:41 hours, mostly in the dark and cold. As for my 1000 mile target, I’m just over 15% there. If you figure it all out mathematically, I should ideally be sitting at about 159 miles at this point, so I’m about 6 miles behind. That’s not bad at all. One run could take care of that. But looking at my half marathon training plan, which starts in 9 days, and calculating my projected miles for the next few weeks, I should be on or ahead of target by the end of March.

Most importantly though, this marks the end my sixth month of running seriously. I went out for day 1, week 1 of the Couch to 5K program on August 31, 2009. I think I mentioned that the night before that fateful run I could not find my “sneakers”. I can’t even call them running shoes because I never ran in them. I found one and searched the entire house for the other. It still hasn’t shown up. Anyway, I ran that first day in a pair of casual shoes, sweat pants, and a regular cotton tshirt. Granted, it was one minute running interspersed with 90 seconds walking, and I did it on a trail where nobody could see me anyway. I bought some real running shoes on the way home that day.

Since that day, I’ve logged almost 320 miles in 87 runs and spent over 58 hours doing it. But more than numbers and miles can possibly show, this has been one of the most amazing periods of my life. I’ve gone from stumbling breathless though those first one minute intervals, to being able to run 9 miles without a pause or any real struggle, from just over 6 miles a week those first few weeks, to over 20 miles a week now, from barely being able to hit a 10:00 minute pace, much less hold it for a few minutes, to being able to run a quarter mile at 7:30 today, not to mention finishing a 5K race in the top 25% with a pace of 8:14. I say all this not to brag, but to explain how massively things have changed for me personally. At any rate, none of these statistics are particularly bragworthy except as seen in relation to where I started. I imagine (hope) that in six months from now, I’ll be looking back at these numbers proclaiming similar improvements over them.

I started running for health reasons. To lose weight, sure, but not just from a vanity perspective. My blood pressure was borderline high – over 130/80. Blood sugar was also borderline high and I was diagnosed with impaired glucose tolerance, aka “pre-diabetes”. And my liver was infiltrated with fat to the point where it was causing damage, as seen by enzymes in blood tests. Cholesterol levels were also borderline bad. All of this was largely weight related (not sure about the cholesterol on that). I wasn’t morbidly obese or anything, but apparently my body just can’t tolerate the extra weight. At any rate, it was time to get a handle on things. Dieting was just resulting in a continuous rollercoaster. My doctor was urging me to get some regular exercise. Finally I decided to listen to him. Here’s what my weight looks like from the day I started C25K to today:

I hope to break the mystical 200 mark this week. I saw my doc in October, just a few weeks into C25K (and had gained a few pounds after a week and a half of English pubs and English breakfasts) so I don’t have updates on any improvements to blood sugar or liver enzymes. But I have been taking my blood pressure regularly at home, and am happy to report that it’s now down in just about perfect range. Last measurement was around 121/73, which is about average for the last few weeks. This gives me hope that my other stats are approaching normal ranges again. I think I’m due for another check up in the beginning of April. Looking forward to it.

One more indicator of how my health has changed in this past year is incidence of sickness and colds. In short, I have not been sick or had a cold at all since I started running. Nothing. As a comparison, in the 2-3 months just before I started running, I had been home sick or worked at home due to sickness so often that my employers (also good friends) had come to me concerned and begged me to take some time off and get some rest. The fact that I’ve made it through the most of the winter / cold / flu season completely unscathed is quite something.

At any rate, onto another week, another month, another six months and my first year as a runner…