Day 20

Awesome morning.   I left the house around 6:45AM and headed to the Atlanta Beltline for my weekly long run.   It was 28 degrees and I was bundled up with my gloves, hat, jacket and had my my water bottle belt.   It was great to see my first 2 splits under 9 minutes.   I felt great and did not feel like was over exerting myself.   On the 2 mile return there is a steady uphill climb and I could not keep the same pace.   I was hoping to run 8 or 9 miles so I knew I needed to find a pace that would allow me to keep going.   I slowed down to a 9:15 pace and felt good over the next 2 miles.   The last 4 miles went very similar to the first 4 miles.  I was able to run a faster pace on the flats but had to slow it down on the inclines.  I ended up completing 8 miles in a 9:04 pace.   This felt like a good accomplishment because I had not done this course at that quick of a pace.   This pace would have also put me under a 2 hour Half Marathon.   I think I need to really start focusing on hill training so I can push through them and not lose a lot of pace.   

I was posed with a tough decision this evening.   My wife and I attended a wedding shower for our neighbors this evening and we would be having dinner at the shower.    They had a nice arugula salad and some homemade chili.   The chili was meat based so I had to make a choice whether I was going to eat dinner or spend the next 4 hours to 6 hours without eating.  It was already 7PM.   I remember reading a passage from the Scott Jurek book Eat And Run where he had to chose whether to eat some refried beans that he knew were made with lard.  Scott is a vegan but he knew if he did not consume some food it was not going to be good for his body.  I knew that eating away from my house was going to be the biggest challenge in trying to change my eating habits.   

To me the choice of eating some ground meat in a chili dish this was not as bad as consuming a 500 or 600 calories dinner at midnight.  You can only control so many things and I feel like I am doing a good job with my choices.

Food And Exercise

Calories