Tracking progress

One of the things that helped keep me motivated while I was running and dieting was setting up a tracking system. To track my progress with running, I was lucky enough to have the Garmin software (included with the watch) so that all I had to do was plug the watch into my USB port and it would upload into it's software. I could view daily or weekly rollups of my total mileage and pace, or lap mileage and pace. I also built an Excel spreadsheet in which I kept track of my total weekly mileage, long run mileage and total weekly pace. This allowed me to watch the increase and see when I set new records for myself. My spreadsheets are on my other computer, but I will post these when I have transferred them over.
In parallel with the running improvements, I was losing weight at the rate of about two pounds a week. I would weigh in each morning (sometimes every other morning), and record the weight in my spreadsheet. I even graphed a trendline so that I could see the slope of the weightloss...it was about 0.24 pounds per day, or just a little under 2 lbs a week. The great thing about this spreadsheet was that I could see when I was falling behind my trend, and that would motivate me to be more disciplined about what I ate. Now it's two years later and there are at least a couple "facebook apps" which will keep track of your weight if you enter it, along with exercise history. I am using one of these today to track my weight loss. It's called Weight Graph and is integrated with a site called Fridge Graph. You can put in a target weight and end date, and it will graph your actuals versus the projected burn rate.

The next few weeks

Alex and I started running on a pretty regular basis. He was a tough coach, but it was fun. We did about 3.2 miles a day, 3 weekdays a week and did a little more on Sundays -- around 5 miles. After several weeks of this, we decided that we should do a half marathon. I went to Google and did a search for a training plan. We found one at Hal Higdon's site. The link I put in here is actually to his Novice marathon training plan, but we started with the half. Pretty simple, just run 3-4 miles a day, three days a week, and then slowly increase the mileage of the long run on Sundays. We started the long run at 5 miles, and increased a mile each week, while falling back every third week. In Hal's plan, he gives details of what you should be doing each week. But all in all the most important thing is to get your shoes on and run a little, consistently.

How it all started

Two years ago, I was flying back from a business trip in London.

Let me give you a little background. I'm 5'5" tall (well, some would say 5'4") and I had recently broken through the 200 lb mark on the scale. I was wearing 36 waste jeans and feeling uncomfortable in them. Anyway, back to the flight home. We had just spent the last week doing software training during the day and drinking warm beer and eating English (fried) food every night. We were all hung over, jet lagged and feeling generally crappy. I got on the plane and immediately unbuttoned the button of my jeans. We had a layover in Canada and all of my buddies had a beer, and I just drank water. I got home after a week away, and my wife wanted me to play with our two year old, Toby, who I hadn't seen in a week. All I wanted to do was go into my dark bedroom and sleep. That was the beginning of my 2006 weight loss program. Anyone who has had a similar experience -- feeling crappy, jeans not fitting, and lack of energy: read on.

After laying in bed "recovering" for a day and a half, I finally got off my ass and went for a "run." I put the word run in quotation marks, because I only was able to complete about 1.9 miles, at a pace of 13:30/mile. It was 80 degrees out, which is blistering for Seattle, and my face was completely red by the time I finished. It took me over an hour to cool down.

Over the next week, I went "running" several more times. I worked myself up to 2.5 miles, and brought my pace down under 13 minutes/mile. In the first week, I put in around 7 miles.

The next week I did several smart things...I combined my running with a low carb diet. Lots of folks are against this, but for the state I was in, and the pace I was running, I didn't need a lot of carbs. Over that week I stocked up at Amazon.com with a book about the Atkins diet, some new running shoes, an iPod Shuffle, and my wife's Garmin Forerunner.

The second smart thing I did was I started telling people at work that I was running. It turns out that one of the guys I worked with lived 8 blocks away, and was also fat and wanted to run. He had previously run two marathons (which was good for me), and was very out of shape (which was good for me). The next week we started running together. We would meet in the morning before work usually over at Greenlake, which is a lake with a three mile trail around its circumference. By week 3, with him pushing me, and us pushing each other to actually continue the running, we were running 11 minute miles for 3.2 miles around the lake.