Saturday, August 1, 2020

Finished July Challenge and Starting August

I finished 1500 minutes of workouts for July.  I finished on the last day with a 60 minute workout of course.

I plan on doing the same thing in August.  It was enough time that I had to keep up with working out pretty regularly to meet the goal.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

July Challenge

For July the goal is to get 1500 minutes of exercise total.  So far I have only done about 400 and the month is almost half over.  I have done some running, but mostly elliptical and weights.  We have a hike planned for the weekend, so hopefully that will be several hours.  I should have 750 minutes done by now so I need some long workouts to get caught up.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

June Running Challenge Complete and What's Next

I finished my June running challenge.  That last 2 days of the month were rainy and I needed 4 more miles.  I ended up running 2 miles in the rain each of the last 2 days to get the whole 50 miles.  This challenge worked really well to keep me motivated.

For July we are doing an active minutes challenge.  We will be doing 1500 minutes of some kind of exercise.  We are going to do half of that, 750 minutes, as running.  This should keep us running quite a bit, but allow for some other things like strength training or using our elliptical machine on rainy days.


Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Morning Run

I tried to get up early to run today.  I made it out of bed at about 6:50 AM which doesn't really give me enough time, but I decided to go anyway.  It has been a long time, probably many years, since I have run in the morning.  I got up and started only a few minutes later.  It was rough at first, but once I got going it felt pretty good.  It was about 50 degrees and the sun was starting to shine, so the weather wan't too bad.



My average pace was about normal for me.  I've been trying to get under 10 min. / mile.  I was quick on my last mile.  Just over 9 min.  It took me a while to wake up and get going, so I had some reserves left at the end I guess.


Monday, June 15, 2020

June Running Challenge Half Way Done

We have been a 50 mile running challenge this June, like I mentioned in my previous post.  We are half way through the month now and I have completed about 18 miles.  I'm going to have to pick up the pace a bit if I plan on finishing on time.  I ran 5 miles a couple days ago and I felt pretty good.  I'm hoping to do 6 miles in a few days.  I'll try to do a few shorter ones in the mean time.  Hopefully if I can keep up the shorter ones and work in a few longer runs I can easily get the miles in before the end of the month.

I still haven't been doing much other exercise.  My shoulder was hurting for a few weeks so I have been trying to take it easy.  In the last couple days I have been trying to start some light exercise.  I've done some pull-ups and push-ups and things seem to be feeling better with my shoulder.

That's all I have for now.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

June Running Challenge

For the month of June my wife and some friends and I are doing a running challenge since all the races have been canceled.  For this month we will just be running/walking 50 miles total, so an average of a little over 1.5 miles per day.  It shouldn't be too hard to keep up that pace.  We all needed something to get us motivated again.  If it goes well we may increase the total next month.  Either way we will do another challenge next month.

Other than this I haven't been exercising in any other way recently.  I hoping to get back to working out a little this month also.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Training Set Backs

My Spartan and marathon training haven't been going well.  It looks like the Spartan race is at least postponed, and probably cancelled due to Covid-19.  I haven't heard anything about the marathon yet.  We have continued to do some workouts (mostly Beach Body and elliptical), but I haven't been outside running for over a week.  I'm going to try to get back into everything.  Even if the races aren't on I would still like to continue the training.  Hopefully things will get back to normal eventually and we can sign up for some kind of race.

I don't have much else to say.  Everything kind of got off track because of the shutdowns and depressing news.  Hopefully I can snap out of it soon.

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Spartan Training

I haven't been working out nearly as much I should be.  Last week my wife and I took our kids and ran/walked down to the kid's school.  They have a pretty nice set of monkey bars, some rings, and some other equipment to climb on.  We stayed for a while and played on those and let the kids play on the slides and swings.

Today we road our bikes to the school and did some of the same exercises.  They also have some tires buried half in the ground.  We climbed on and over those a for a while for wall climbing practice.  The monkey bars are about seven feet tall.  I have been trying to jump up from the side and climb over, but I can't quite do it.  I can get my elbows up on the top, but I can't lift myself from there.  I'm going to practice some more on the wall that we have at home (I put in a 4 ft and a 7ft wall to practice on).  On the wall I can do it, but with nothing to push my legs against I can't quite get up there.  I'll keep trying.

In between these two workouts I have only been doing a few pushups, pullups, and situps here and there.  I need to get started working out daily again.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

The Marathon Book and Eating

As I mention previously I have been reading this book (Marathon You Can Do It! by Jeff Galloway) https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B004I6D6WG&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_LyVuEb2THE86S

In the early parts of the book he mentions food a few times, mostly just to say that you could run into problems if you blood sugar gets too low when you are eating.  Later in the book he has several chapters on eating.  The advice he gives is almost the opposite of the way I have been eating.  Not that it is his fault, the advice he gives was and maybe still is the advice given by doctors and many other people.  He advises eating a low fat low sugar diet, but at the same time most of the foods he recommends have large quantities of sugar.

I will be continuing to eat the way I have been eating.  This includes lots of fat and very little sugar and carbs.  This has been working very well for me.  I started eating this way after reading Deep Nutrition https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Nutrition-Your-Genes-Traditional/dp/1250113849.  In that book she advises avoiding sugar and vegetable oil as much as possible.  Sugar I already knew caused a lot of issues, but most of what she said about vegetable oil was new to me.  I feel much better and have less health issues for sure though since changing my diet.

I eat more fish than I used to.  I tried sardines recently for the first time.  I have been using bone broth and sometimes just drinking it.  Beef broth is pretty good just warmed up with some salt and pepper.  For chicken broth I add some coconut milk, or recently I found that it is very good with some butter melted into it.  I have also been making my own sauerkraut.  Sauerkraut is a very good probiotic if you make your own, or buy fresh sauerkraut that is refrigerated.

That's all for now.  My plan is to keep posting mostly about the training as I am able to run further and faster.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Marathon Training and Eating

As I posted yesterday we are training for a marathon in June.  We are following a training schedule from the Marathon book that we are reading.  My wife has already read the book and I am about half way through currently.  The schedule includes several running days each week and some days for other cross training.  On the cross training days we have been doing some Beach Body workouts, mostly 21 Day fix so far, and some other made up upper body and ab workouts.  Mostly we try not to work out legs on those days to give them time to recover.

Something else that I think is helping my training a lot is the way we have been eating.  I recently read a couple of books about diet.  One was called Deep Nutrition https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Nutrition-Your-Genes-Traditional/dp/1250113849.  The other one is called Eat Fat To Get Thin https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Fat-Get-Thin-Sustained/dp/0316338834.  I may write some more about those books at some point, but one of the main ideas from both of them is to cut out almost all sugar and simple carbohydrates from your diet.

We have been eating this way for several weeks now.  I think it helps very much with my soreness and recovery time from these runs and workouts.  Eating more healthy fat also keeps me from getting hungry on long runs.  The longest I've done so far has been 7 miles, so we will see if that continues to be true, but it seems better than before already.  I will go more into what I have been eating in some future posts.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Marathon Training

My wife and I are planning to run a marathon in Havre, MT on June, 6th 2020.  It will be my first marathon and my wife's second marathon.  She ran the Missoula marathon several years ago.

We started training about 2-3 weeks ago.  I have done several runs, today being the longest at 7 miles.  My knees hurt a bit, but I think it was because of all the sugar I ate the day before.  It was my son's birthday party.

I believe this 7 mile run was my longest run ever, so far.  I averaged about 11 min/mile.  I think on a day when my knees are feeling better I could get closer to a 10 min/mile average.  With more training I could even do better at that distance.  At full marathon distance I will probably keep the speed slow to avoid injury.  We are following a training plan from this book (Marathon You Can Do It! by Jeff Galloway) https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B004I6D6WG&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_LyVuEb2THE86S.

I'm going to try to document the process here on my blog as much as I can.

We are also going to be running a Spartan race in Bigfork, MT in May of 2020.  We are doing some additional training for the obstacles.  This will be my third Spartan race.  The first 2 my wife and I did last year in Arizona, and Bigfork.  They were both Sprints, which are about 3 miles.  The race this year will be about 7-8 miles I think.  I'm going to try to post more about the training for that also.