My marathon training plan officially started a couple weeks ago and I am starting to see some great results. My average mile pace before I started training was around 11:00-12:00 per mile. Now I am pacing 9:30-10:00 for my 3-5 mile runs. I have to admit that I was quite worried that my speed would not improve before the marathon and that I would be at the back of the pack but it looks like I should be just fine. If I could only get outside more it would be fantastic.

I did start running on Saturdays for my long runs with the Alpine Runners out of Lake Zurich. They start off at the high school at 7am and there are lots of people running different paces and different distances too. There were three people nice enough to let me run along side them and they pulled me along quite well. That in itself helped bring my speed up. Not too many big hills on the run and luckily my forays outside in the neighborhood prepared me for them. Our neighborhood has a 200+ft elevation change that can really kick your ass on a bad day.

Last week I started on the Paleo Diet to get past this plateau I had reached in my weight loss. For the life of me I couldn’t budge lower than 205. I am seeing some good signs from it now as the scale is starting to edge downward. I will wait until I see some major changes before I really start advocating it. I do notice quite an energy change from when I tried to go vegan and then vegetarian. That just didn’t work for me. Tried it for over a month and I didn’t lose a pound and I felt drained all the time. Ate plenty of vegetables and took plenty of vitamin supplements but it just was never enough. Something about this anti-grain/gluten thing has me optimistic that I may have finally found the right direction for myself.

I do need to get a shout out to Scott Iott for the great advice he has given me over the last few months. He turned me on to the Paleo Diet for Athletes book and that has really helped educate me on some things I was missing. He also kept me from over training myself as I was looking at trying to add speed to my runs by doing drills along with my normal distance runs but he assured me that I need to concentrate on just getting the miles in. The speed has taken care of itself.

As for my swim and bike training, well that has definitely dropped off. Especially the bike. I can’t make my normal spin class on Sat mornings with Multisport Madness now that I have to get my long runs in on Sat. I am going to see if I can’t get into a spin class earlier in the week that isn’t packed with people. The one drawback now that I work at Health Bridge is that I can’t attend a class that is full. I need to give up my spot to a member. Which is fine but leaves me looking for more opportunities to get on the bike. Again, being able to ride outside would be fantastic but today it dropped to -12. No fricking way I am getting on a bike today let alone run out in this.