SparkPoint

Well, I did my first endurance event a couple of weekends ago - the Dick Brown 1/2 Marathon. And I’m still paying for it - if you ever do one of these things, you definitely want to make sure you have properly-fitting shoes. Mine were evidently a tad too short so I now have 3 black toenails (almost lost my right big toenail - still might), and scads of blisters. ;-) The event went well for the first 3 miles, but then my shoes and sickness started catching up with me. I had been sick the two days prior with a stomach virus that was fairly manageable as such things go. Evidently I was still going through the tail-end of it since I had stomach cramps throughout the whole 13.1 mile course. Both of these things tended to slow me down, but I had a blast and learned a lot. I think I could knock off 30 mins or so if I were to do it again. My ending time was 2:47:55 and I only had to take a few extra walks between miles 10 and 12. Since I’m a powerlifter and not a runner, I was pretty happy just to finish the thing! LOL There were a total of around 80 participants. I ended up finishing somewhere in the top half even with my limitations, amazingly enough. Results should eventually be posted at the sponsoring site: Louisiana School of Math, Science, and the Arts.

OK, so I had a little extra fat around the old waist, at about 192 at 5′9″. Since I powerlift, that’s not too unusual, but I wasn’t too happy with wearing size 36 pants all of a sudden. Ack! Luckily, a triathlon was coming up that I thought might be a nifty challenge, and I could use training for that to help me get back some of my cardiovascular fitness. I set about training for this a mere 3x per week - 1 day elliptical for 30 mins, another stationary bike for 30 mins, and another jogging for 30+ minutes. Slowly I started losing weight, without losing my strength. Good stuff! Over 2 months I lost 10 lbs pretty painlessly. I didn’t change my eating particularly - still tried to get lots of protein and veggies.

The next month was something different altogether… Hurricane Rita hit, leaving us without power for 8 days and without water for 2 of those (see earlier posts). But the kicker was getting a stomach virus during the first two days of all that as well! So I lost another 10 lbs in a week. And it stayed off since I was still training for the triathlon and since I had missed a couple of days of powerlifting in the gym (everything was shut down for several days, what with the debris, lack of power, and gas shortage). And this time I did lose lots of strength, unfortunately. I’ve been struggling to retain what I can of it, while still training my cardio and it’s been rough.

Currently, I’m something like 40 lbs behind on my bench press, which is Not Good ™. But I’m sure it’ll come back reasonably. And if I can keep some of this fat off and keep my cardio going, I should be in good shape. Pun intended.