This is just a quick post because I’ve hit 3 milestones today. The 1st is that I’ve been officially training for 50 days. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long. I kind of feel like I should be further along with my preparations by now, but this winter has just been so snowy and cold (the snowiest on record in Nebraska) that I haven’t been able to get outside for what I need to do. I’ll have to do some catching up when the warmer weather comes and the flooding we’re experiencing now ebbs.

The 2nd milestone is that I’ve lost 10 pounds finally. Again, I feel like I should be further along than that. I’ve been building the muscles in my legs pretty heavily so I know that affects things, but I hoped it would be closer to 15 lbs. by now. I am eating much healthier, but still consuming about 300 calories too much each day. I’m going to try to do more meal planning to help reduce random snack attacks, especially at night.

The 3rd is that I’ve gotten myself back up to running 3 miles non-stop. My mile pace is still kind of slow at an average 9:45, but at least I’ve gotten my endurance up. 2 years ago when I was running 5 days a week, the longest I ever ran was 3.1 miles. I did it a lot faster back then, averaging 8:30, but never made it further than that. I feel like I could have gone further than 3 miles today so that means my leg training is paying off.

Yesterday I started doing work outs again with a weighted backpack. I did my normal Stair Stepper workout wearing a 23 lb backpack. I adjusted the weight accordingly on the machine so my legs didn’t feel the difference much, but I noticed my feet had to work much harder to keep myself balanced. It’ll be good to keep doing a backpack work out each week to get used to it.

To conclude this post with some humor, when I was running today, it started raining. My shirt was clingy and you know what that means, chafing nipples! I’m pretty sure I rubbed off the top layer of skin. It’s Neosporin and a shirtless night for me.