I did it!

...in which I am proud of myself.

Yesterday (April 19th 2015) was the Greater Manchester Marathon, which I signed up to run in last September. I've been training for 6.5 months, 3 runs a week without fail (except for one period where I had a dodgy knee), plus at least 1 (and usually 2 or 3) visits to the gym a week.

Here's me before the race:

And here I am after with my daughter:

(Nobody ever calls me Christopher except my mother, but that's what they'd printed on the bib).

I completed the marathon in 3 hours, 46 minutes and 13 seconds; I had to take 2 loo breaks, so without those I would probably have been close to my target time of 3:30. I'm still really happy with my time - to get under 4 hours in a first marathon is a huge achievement (in fact just to finish a marathon is a huge achievement), and for someone that took nearly 3 hours to run a half marathon 4 years ago it shows a massive improvement in fitness.

I'll almost certainly sign up for next year's event too, to see if I can improve my time - the event was well organised (although they could definitely have done with more loos at the start!) and the support around the course was tremendous.

Lots of people have told me I should be proud of myself, and I am - I worked really hard with my training, and I feel like it really paid off. 

But it wasn't all about me - the main point of this (apart from letting me show off a bit) was to raise money for the Isabelle Lottie foundation, which provides help and support for children and young people diagnosed with brain tumours. If you'd like to donate, please head over to my BT MyDonate page:

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/chrisnmanchestermarathon

Thank you!

Chris.

Carb load mode

...in which I (almost) bite off more than I can chew

I love food, as anybody that's ever had the misfortune to sit with me as I masticate my way through a meal can tell you. It's one of the reasons I chose Slimming World when I decided to lose weight; any diet that tries to severely restrict what I eat would be doomed to failure.

So the "carb loading" phase of marathon training, in which you load the body with carbs for 2 - 3 days in order to ensure you have the fuel reserves to run 26 miles, ought to be easy. I mean, it's just eating, right? How hard can it be?

In fact I'm finding it heavy going; 90 - 95% of the calories I need to eat for these 3 days apparently need to come from carbs, and I need to eat around 570g of carbs per day (based on 8g of carbs per kg bodyweight). That doesn't sound like a lot, until you start looking at how many carbs are actually in food; a tin of baked beans has about 52g, a baked potato has about 50, a banana has 30.

100g of cooked pasta has around 75g of carbs in, but even I would struggle to eat enough pasta (about 750g) in a day to get up to the required carbs, so a lot of stuff that I don't usually eat at all has been consumed in the last 2 days.

I actually sat down and worked out how many carbs I needed, and did a plan for 3 days. (I think I may have too much time on my hands). It basically consists of 3 carb-heavy meals and 3 snacks per day, and by the afternoon snack I am already feeling quite full; by the evening snack (2 bagels with jam) I'm generally so stuffed that it's a major effort to finish it. (That said, my previous life as a human eating machine has stood me in good stead).

Anyway, that's obviously a bit of a first world problem. I'm not really whining (or at least not trying to!) but it's interesting that a bit of the training that you'd expect to be pleasurable (or at least more fun than running 20+ miles) is actually a lot harder than it sounds.

Oh yes, here's the marathon countdown. Now that's a scary picture...

The Final Countdown...

...da-da daa-daa, da-da da-da daaaa etc.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist. Actually, not sorry at all).

The countdown that Runkeeper has for the time to the marathon currently looks like this at the time of writing:

This is somewhere between exciting and scary. In some ways, I'm really looking forward to it; the atmosphere at these events is usually really positive and exciting, and this time I know I've done pretty much everything I can to prepare properly so I'm hoping for a decent time (for a first-time marathon runner).

In other ways, I'm a bit apprehensive; however prepared you are, running 26.2 miles is hard. It's 4 miles further than I've ever run before, and after 22 I was utterly exhausted.  

With that said, I didn't eat enough beforehand for the 22 miles and the weather was hellish; the weather for Sunday is looking a lot better, which I'm very relieved about (10mph wind, overcast but not raining). 

I've already done my meal plan for the next 3 days; it has to be said it's not particularly Slimming World friendly, but then the goal is to store as much energy (as glycogen) in my body as possible, which means eating carbs and lots of them. Apparently I should expect to put 3 - 4lb on over the next 3 days and then burn it all off during the race.

I'm still (slightly) above my target range, but I will get back there sooner or later. At the moment I know I'm drinking too much wine and still having too many snacks; it would be great if I was back at target at Monday's weigh-in, but realistically that probably won't happen.

Back to basics

...in which I aim to behave (or at least not misbehave too much).

As I said in my last post I'm currently a couple of pounds over my target weight range. I have been for the last 2 months, and I'm not really that worried about it; a couple of lb over my target is no big deal, and it's not like I'm in an upward spiral or anything. I'm staying reasonably steady between 11st 8lb and 11st 11 - my target is 11st 4, so target range is 11st 1 - 11st 7.

I think this is partly because one of the things that exercising regularly does is build muscle, which is denser than fat, and I exercise 6 out of 7 days per week - 3 gym visits and 3 runs. However, the other reason is that there's temptation to eat based on the amount of exercise you're doing ("I'm running 22 miles tomorrow, another couple of glasses of wine won't matter").

I've fallen into this trap quite a lot recently; although all of our meals are still SW friendly, there's been a lot of "extras"....crispbread with cheese has become a regular evening snack, and I've been having crisps way too often again. I'm still not too worried since I'm not exactly a couch potato any more.

However, there is the small matter of having to run 26.2 miles in two weeks. To do that, my body needs to be properly fuelled, and that means eating cleanly and not putting too much junk into it. Fortunately that lines up pretty well with Slimming World's plan; lean meat for protein, plenty of carbs (pasta/rice/potatoes are all unlimited on SW's Extra Easy plan) and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.

There's also the matter of money...I have to pay for Slimming World while out of target range, and although I have plenty of work at the moment our finances are still recovering from the months when I didn't have much (this is one of the things you have to live with when you're a freelancer).

It's a good job that carb-heavy food is unlimited as I need to "carb load" for a few days before the marathon to make sure my body has the fuel needed to make it around the whole 26 miles at the required pace. I've been up to 22 so far, although it was hellish weather and I was utterly knackered by the end of it (but I did it, and I'm really proud of that - although I could have done without the bloke telling me "you're going to kill yourself mate" at 18 miles in - apparently I didn't look all that great by that point)!

So for the next 2 weeks (after today...it's a bank holiday tomorrow after all ;)) I'll be aiming to follow the plan much more strictly than I have been. I'll attempt to go back to doing my online food diaries like when I first started blogging about Slimming World, although I'm a bit shorter on time now what with all the work....