The Chances

How a 250+ Pound Couch Potato Got Healthy

Saturday, November 01, 2008

This morning was my weekly long run. It was raining, but not too badly so I decided to go out anyway. I wore my running shoes, running socks, running shorts, and a long-sleeve compression shirt with my lightweight waterproof REI jacket.

The jacket ended up making me way too hot. It's not designed for warmth, but mainly as a rain shell, and insulates better than you would think. At 2 miles in, I stopped to unzip the pits, but by 4 miles I was just drenched.

This would continue to be the case and feel worse as time went on. With the hood on my head, it reminded me of pulling the covers over your head in bed, which then makes your head a toaster oven.

As a result, I slowed way down, and ended up on my feet a lot longer than I would have been normally. In fact at quite a few places, I ended up walking. Also, at my turnaround point I had to use the restroom and had to find one, made a loop around Northgate and down Live Oak Highway to a mini market that ended up not having the facilities. The next one down did, and the person working there was nice enough to let me use it. By routing around this way, I ended up adding mileage so by the end, it was 14.09 miles total. It's the farthest I've ever run, but at least a mile of it was walking. I burned about 1700 calories. Also, my average heart rate was down due to the walking, at 132bpm.

Here are the splits:

Mile 1: 9:53.92
Mile 2: 9:21.45
Mile 3: 10:38.83
Mile 4: 11:05.96
Mile 5: 14:47.23
Mile 6: 9:40.42
Mile 7: 11:00.69
Mile 8: 16:09.46
Mile 9: 10:36.87
Mile 10: 11:53.30
Mile 11: 13:31.46
Mile 12: 17:45.64
Mile 13: 15:58.90
Mile 14: 15:56.20
Mile 15: 10:03 (partial .07 mile)



After entering my run into Trihard, I found out that I ran 30.3 miles this week, making this my highest-mileage week I've ever done. With the M-F 5-milers and Saturday long runs, I can see this becoming my average.