recovery

my rest from my 15k trail run turned into a week long convalescence as I hardly got out of bed all of last week due to a rather fatiguing cold. I feel nearly human again and am looking to April as a good month to get back to regular physical activity.

survival

despite being overweight and under-trained and despite coming down with a nasty head cold the night before, I survived the 9.3 mile trail run last Saturday. Four days later the muscle soreness is gone and I'm left with the same cold and some bruising here and there (slight sprained ankle and couple other falls). When they say unimproved trail they really mean unimproved trail.

on second thought

maybe trying to regroup while I'm PMSing just isn't a good idea.

fallout

so the realization of my actual weight hit me hard mentally. Up until the past year, my highest weight ever in my life has been right around 150. As I began putting on more weight this fall and was struggling dealing with life in general and eating out of stress, I knew I had solidly surpassed 150, but decided that 160 would be my limit. So as I saw myself arriving awfully close to that 160, I was capable of making efforts to stop the increase and I hovered near that number for a few months, before deciding to dig down and get serious about losing some weight. Imagine how defeated I felt as I began to lose weight and then find out that when I had solidly surpassed 150, I had actually surpassed 160. And when I was awfully close to 160, I had actually been close to 170. I believe the miscalculation culprit is a throw rug that I put down in my bathroom and then put the scale on top of that. Previously the scale had sat firmly on the tile floor. I know between September and November I wasn't paying much attention to my weight and I think that's the same time period when I added the throw rug. For the past couple weeks, I've abandoned dieting completely and sulked in frustration, convinced that had I known I was going beyond 160 at the time, I would have curbed eating habits right then and there. There's just something psychologically, back-breaking to me about being beyond 160. And thinking about the amount of extra work involved in losing that additional 9lbs is just discouraging.

time to regroup

I believe I've come to terms with my weight and am ready to forge ahead with the dieting plan. I don't know how much damage I've done the past 10 or so days with my self-medicating, stress eating and I don't plan on paying much attention to the scale for the next couple weeks. Just gonna concentrate on the food intake and exercise - and hope April is a better month. I did get out on saturday and ran/walked 7 miles and am feeling comfortable of participating in the 9 mile trail race I've signed up for next saturday. The marathon the following month is a completely different story.

March Assessment^

weight: 164*
waist: didn't care to know
diet: mixed
push-ups: 18
running: well, I can cover 7 miles at a very slow pace. My "easy" mile pace now seems to be at 13 minutes. Maybe, I should just start walking.

^assessment made on the 4th of March 2008.
*weight increase reflects a 9lb correction in previously incorrect scale readings from Nov., Dec., Jan., & Feb.