I weighed 241 pounds on the first of March. Pretty good number. My weight loss has slowed down, but that is to be expected. This week I will do a weigh in at the gym where they have one of those scales that does body fat measurements. I did this about six weeks ago and my body fat at 249 pounds was the same as the standard BMI for a person who weighs 203 pounds. I am not sure how to interpret this data, but I found it interesting.
One side note is that if I tried to loss the same amount of body fat without increasing muscle mass (working out), I would have had to lose more than 100 pounds. As is, I still lost alot, more than 6o pounds. But, the working out adds a healthy dimension to the equation.
Another big step was that I jogged 10 miles. This took me two hours. I was pretty happy with the event over all. I was pretty worn out, but not exhausted. I did my regular day of life & work afterward.
Right now, I do interval training, which means I jog and then walk. I normally do this in the spurts of between 10 to 20 minutes of jogging to one minute of walking. If I jog for 30 to 40 minutes, I normally will not walk at all.
I also vary my distances. Every other week I do a long run as I build distance. Last week I did about 42km (around 26 miles) with a long run of 18k (around 11 miles). This week is an "off" week, so my total mileage will be about 35k (around 21 miles). I am slowly working up to 65k (about 40 miles) per week. I should hit this mark in four to six months.
Seven months ago I jogged for the first time. In that first week of August, I jogged for 30 minutes and walked for 2 hours. That was about good for 12k (8 miles) of training. I have come a long way since then.
So, here is a typical training week:
Monday - 40 minutes (6k)
Tuesday - 80 minutes (12k)
Wednesday - 40 minutes (6k)
Thursday - off
Friday - 40 minutes (6k)
Saturday - long or 80 minutes (18k or 12k)
Sunday - off
A couple of other notes are that once a week I will run hills or do speed type work. This is normally on Wednesdays. There are lots of hills around and speed work consists of going faster than normal.
The variety of distances and types of workouts has kept it interesting and challenging. I now look forward to running and feel odd if I miss a day. I am thankful that my joints have held up pretty well. I have not had any significant injuries during this time. That is mostly due to the long, gradual build up in mileage that I am focusing on.
I still include two other elements in my workouts. Weight training and floor exercises. But I will delve into that subject on another day:)
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