Making Weight

I weighed in at my goal race weight today!

It's the highlight of my week. It's been a tough 2 weeks. I plan to post the training updates after my run tomorrow but it's just been hard. My goal was to lose 10 pounds since, theoretically, that's suppose to take 15 minutes off your marathon time with no change in your level of fitness. Obviously I've been working on improving my level of fitness too but making goal marathon weight is huge for me.

Ten pounds. It doesn't sound that hard. But for someone like me, it's incredibly hard. I started out at 134 lbs. To lose 10 lbs, I had to lose 7.5% of my body weight. It took me two and a half months. You see shows like The Biggest Loser where people lose double digit pounds every week. Let's say someone starts out at 300 lbs. They just have to lose 3% of their weight to lose 10 lbs. Plus, besides running, my other hobbies include baking/cooking and grocery shopping... really not the past times you want when you are trying to lose weight. I can bake up a 1000 calorie dessert in no time flat... and oh the deals! Kroger had their Mega sale going on the last two weeks so I've been grocery shopping almost every day. I seriously would have gone every day if I had a bigger freezer. My hollow legged children have been loving it.

It's funny what will motivate people to lose weight. I didn't try to lose weight for my wedding. I don't go on diets for Spring Break. I have in my life watched what I ate when my clothes started fitting a bit snug since I hate shopping for new clothes but I'm not one to religiously step on a scale. I think that these last couple months have been the first time in a looooong time that I actually consciously made an effort to lose weight... all for a better marathon time.

I felt like a high school wrestler trying to make weight. Now that I have, I just have to keep it off for another 3 weeks. I have done a long run of 20 miles or more once a week for 5 of the last 6 weeks. This week was my last 20 miler. The mileage will go down after that so I'll really have to be careful... but for today, I'm HERE.