It’s (obviously) been a while since I’ve posted here, so I’ve got a lot to cover. Let’s get to it.
I hated June. It’s not really June’s fault, but the weather around here was tough to run though. Many, many hot and humid days and I’m sure I’m not alone in saying it’s very difficult to breathe in those conditions. Lots of rain, too, just to keep things interesting. I know that this is good for me to tackle, but I’ve got to say that I found it much easier to run through the winter than I am finding it running through this heat and humidity.
Shoes. After having finally found shoes that I love, the Pearl iZUMi SyncroFloat III, I was told that they are discontinuing the model in preference to the SyncroFuel model. I tried the SyncroFuel for a few runs but didn’t like them at all, so, I hopped on Zappos (a site I love) and ordered 2 pairs of SyncroFloats to at least get me through the Chicago Marathon.
Back in February, I wrote about my penchant for killing iPods. I can only assume that my brain must be fuzzy due to lack of oxygen at the end of a run. I killed another iPod this past week. I’m worried because I had ordered 4 refurbished Shuffles from Apple and I’m now down to only one! I like the previous generation Shuffle much better than the recent one, so they’re no longer making them. Panic will set in sooner or later.
After having a few too many runs where I found myself getting light-headed, I decided to seek some help from a nutritionist. I was a bit floored by the results. I got an analysis of my metabolism, my body composition and my caloric needs.
- My body composition was measured (three times) at 7% body fat and 93% lean weight. Which means of the 172 pounds I weigh, 12 lbs is fat, 160 lbs is lean. While I shouldn’t lose more weight, I can up my lean body weight.
- My resting metabolic rate is about 2300 kcal/day. This means if I did nothing else but lay in bed all day, I’d burn about 2300 kcal per day.
- If you average in typical daily activities, I’m currently burning about 700 kcal per day.
- My workouts have me burning about 650 kcal per day (when averaged across the week). That will increase as the marathon training progresses into more weekly miles.
- When you add that up, I am burning roughly 3650 kcal per day.
- Here’s the bad part: I am only eating about 1800-2000 kcal per day.
So, it should be no surprise that I have been getting lightheaded occasionally. I’ve been under fueling by nearly half of what I need for quite a while. So, I am beginning a whole new dietary plan that will not only get me how much I need, but what I need, when I need it. I’ll report back once I see how this new eating program progresses.
Something else I’ve begun to work on is mental toughness. Pushing through the times where my body is telling me to stop.
Finally, a couple of suggestions:
- Follow Sara Santiago on Twitter. (@sarasantiago). Absolutely brilliant and just hilarious.
- Read Runnrgrrl’s blog. Great stuff. Always opinionated. Always tells it like it is. A must read.
