Frosty 5K Pictures

 Strong form, seconds from the end!

Nice picture, good form, good time as well! I was very please with this run. There are some nice pictures on the Round Lake Area Park District Facebook page as well, of all the runners.

Frosty 5K Race Report

So it went well, I was very pleased with the result 38:41 with the mile splits at 11:43, 12:41 and 12:29. I think I went out a bit to fast, but at no point did I feel uncomfortable. The only issue I had was since I was wearing the layer format, I got hot at one point but remembered that heat escapes via the extremities and took off my cap and gloves and felt better within a minute or two.

The temperature was about 30 degrees and it was very sunny. My nephew and daughter ran as well. With Denise winning her age group, and Chris recorded a 29 flat!

Frosty 5K Preview

So its a few days before the Frosty 5K and I am hoping for a time in the 40-45 minute range. I did 6.5 miles yesterday at a nice steady pace on the treadmill at about 15 minute mile pace. I felt comfortable and this week I am allowing myself a "mild" taper with only runs of 40 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday.

My intent is to run the 5K hard (as in hard for me) if I can sustain 13:30 mile times all the way, and get in the 42 minute range I will be very pleased. My training tells me I can do this, as well as my heart rate monitoring which shows my ability to handle faster paces with my heart rate staying in the 120's for a longer time then a month ago.

My daughter and nephew are going to run with me, so I am staring third place in the family straight in the face!

Tracking my Food Intake

I have been wondering about how much I was eating, so I decided to use one of my favorite techniques to monitor my eating habits. Since if I have to think before I stuff that Twizzler in my mouth I know its 150 calories, I usually think twice.

Been using this wonderful app called MyFitnessPal which has some very nice features: You can scan the barcode of anything and enter it, as well as add your workouts so you can see how many calories you have burned (see the picture, this is not me by the by).

There was almost an immediate slowing of my eating habits, I did not set the calorie intake low, but at the appropriate level for my age and weight. You can enter your weight, and a variety of body dimensions as well.

There is an web based interface and of course an app which is super convenient when you are outside and carrying just the phone.

Travel and Running

I have been traveling quite a bit, Washington DC and Seattle Washington, during this running plan and will hit Seattle twice and Austin Texas as well as Springfield in the next few months. So I need to get organized when I am on the road, which oddly enough the first time I was out in Seattle was harder then I thought, because since it was 40 degrees and wet I did not pack the proper "keep warm" wear! So I ended up a $19 retail version of a treadmill in the hotel for an hour.

First Weigh in Day

So in my never ending quest to reduce weight I decided that I would weigh myself and record all my dimensions on the first of every month. So the baseline was established on January 1. So today I hopped on the scale and discovered that I had lost 5 pounds this month. A reasonable total, and since I have quite Diet Coke for a bit now, I can assume it will get better/faster or something like that.

My dimensions have not changed much, in fact hardly at all, the waist is down about half an inch, although my measurements are quite subjective as to location and methodology.

On January 1 I did take a picture of myself front and side view with just a pair of shorts on for a long range before and after. These pictures by the way are locked in a password protected vault in a zip file that is also password protected as well. Needless to say they are eyes only!