Calories In, Calories Out

I often tell the story of how quickly my weight of 205 pounds dropped once I started running more than four years ago.  

It was impressive I have to admit.  During the story I'll often gloat over how the pounds "just flew off" once I put my body into motion every day.  I forget to add the rest of the story.  And not that I mean to neglect the whole truth or to be willfully evasive, but I have subconsciously suppressed the pain and the bent-over-at-the-waist, red-faced gasping-for-air torture I put myself through to gain my fitness and lose all those pounds.  Runners pain is like that a woman experiences during childbirth, the mind somehow blocks it out so that she can do it all again later.  

But I did go through all those stages that a lump of goo must ascend on the road to fitness and health.  In addition to the trauma out on the road and track, I also spent my evenings shuffling, hunched over like an old man and embracing all the pains and debilitations as my body became that of a runner.  

There were countless nights, after a particularly grueling effort earlier in the day, when I could barely move across the floor.  Mornings were no better as I would wake so tight and "stove up", as my dad would say, that I had trouble walking to the next room just to brush my teeth.  

But becoming a runner was a beautiful thing and the pounds did come off.  I had dropped to about 182 pounds in two months.  Sometimes during my daily weigh ins, usually during marathon training, I would even lower into the upper 170's.  Many people told me NOT to lose any more weight.  But the non-runners just didn't understand.  I wasn't trying to lose weight.  I was either training for a race or I was base building and the weight just did it's own thing.  But I had to be careful how I talked to these friends.  Telling them that you I could eat as much as I liked just sounded cocky.

I wont take it granted ever again.  For reasons I explain in an earlier post titled simply "2008",  I stopped running and my weight went right back up to 205 pounds.  Pants that I had bought during the last few years had to be worn with the top button lose.  Driving in a car was disgusting as the lap belt accentuated my protruding belly bulge and felt awful.  When I was out of shape before my mass was more evenly distributed, but now it was all concentrated in one inconvenient location--my gut.

So when I got back out onto the road I expected the same result, lots of effort and miles would certainly be rewarded with rapid weight loss and a quick return to my lean and agile self. Just like before.  Unt!  Did not happen!  Take a look at the picture above, taken today, and after a full month of due diligence: 27 workouts and 132 miles later and I have lost only 5 freaking pounds!

But I'm not even close to being worried.  I'm just going to keep running and the I know the numbers will come down to my old racing weight. It's just calories in and calories out.  I just thought it would once again "fly off" and that hasn't happened.  But runners always have lots of stories and this time I'll have a different one to tell.

Dressing Down

I think I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln insisted that every Union soldier wear a union  uniform.  If my memory is right he thought the use of a common look would help solidify his army. But more importantly he knew it would change the man inside the clothes.  The man would no longer be what what he had been; a farrier,  a professor or a wainwright. Now he was a soldier.  The clothes truly made the man and Lincoln knew it. 

It is an idea that is quite old; put someone into different clothes and much like wearing a mask, they transform into someone new, morph into someone that they were not. 

I do the same thing when I go out for a run.  There is something transforming about gathering my running gear and putting on the clothes of a runner.  Suddenly I feel totally different, almost dare I say, athletic.  Suddenly I feel lighter and eager to attack the road.

The most transforming of running paraphernalia are running shoes, currently my third pair of Nike Vomero's.    They have black and red and look fleet.   Just the act of getting them out, giving them a quick look top and bottom and then meticulously fitting them onto my feet, remakes me. Having them on makes me want to run.  My feet practically beg me to take them outside.  Wearing running shoes inside the house is simply wrong and they scream at me like a pair of ugly step-sisters, PLEASE TAKE US OUT!  

The only other transforming piece of the ensemble are my running shorts.  It could be that because the 1970's were my impressionable years,  I am comfortable in shorts of that particular brevity.  It's not a body image thing, that I see my legs as the only part of my body that isn't totally disgusting and so don't mind showing them.  But wearing the short shorts does make me feel more conscious of the running half of my body. For the moment my upper half is less interesting.   Suddenly I am all legs and sporty shoes.  And I've got to get them outside for a run, usually regardless of the weather. It has to be darn cool, near freezing or colder, before I'll go for the long pants.  And running tights?   That wont happen.

Now this isn't to say that I'm not fond of some of my other running accoutrement; gadgets, hydration belts,  gels and goos and of course techy souvenir shirts from past road races.  I love all my running stuff and have even exalted them by cleaning out a dresser drawer so that they has their own special place.  

But my shoes and shorts are what take me to that other place, that place where I win or lose the battles of the road.  They make me feel like a runner.  

2008 (one year, one post)

If I held my arms more upright than usual, and made an effort to keep my hips running out in front of my chest, I could find a neutral place where there was no pain at all.  I had to discover this position after starting the Eugene Marathon because prior to the race my back had not felt well enough  to even attempt a trial run.  

The night before I had sat in the dark on the foot of my bed  at the Eugene Hilton clutching a muscle relaxant in my hand and wondering if taking it would have an adverse reaction during the race, such as an increased likelihood of cramping .  I decided it was a risk I would take, walked around the corner to the sink and popped it down.  

The race ended up being a success really. The top picture was taken near the finish.   I set a PR and posted a time that I will forever cherish for all the hard work and life embracing moments that it represents.  Had I not been hurt before and during the race and had I been able to finish the last two weeks of my training as planned--who knows?  But life happens.  Which is the point of this essay.

2008 was such a year of two seasons for me.  My training cycle for Eugene really started about Christmas 2007 when I ran 34 miles that week.  Then 40 plus miles was the norm and by the time March and April came along I was during over 50 each week.  

Unexpectedly, Randy, whom I met when he coached my sons baseball team, was my near constant running companion on the road and around the track.  Our  condition and pace needs were so remarkably identical that he started using the same weekly running plan that I was getting by email from John Ellis.  We planned most of our runs together and I can't explain what a good time we had on all these adventures.  No matter how tough the speedwork or how far the long run, we hit our prescribed pace and did everything that was called for on that day.  We just pushed each other and we had a great time.

Of course not everything always went as we envisioned when we started out on a workout.  Once, we somehow started a 15 miler on a warm day and for some reason neither one of remembered to bring water.  We must have thought that we could get it at the park which was to be our turnaround point.  But the water fountains were shut off and we ended up begging the kid at  a concession stand for a cup of water despite his reluctance. His boss had told him not to give away what they could sell.  Another time on a long run the weather turned bitter cold and poured down rain while we were still many miles out.  We got tough and trudged home through the misery wondering aloud why we hadn't taken up golf instead. You know,  the sport where you get to drive those little carts around between holes.  And then there was the time time we ran through a swarm of angry bees and took seven painful stings between the two of us.  

During these little mishaps I would stop and and do my best Oliver Hardy imitation:  "this is another fine mess you've gotten us into!  Hmmmph!"  

But another thing happened with all of our time together and outstanding coaching.  We got into REALLY good shape.  There was never any doubt if we were going to get a particular workout done, it was just a matter of how bad it was going to hurt.  But we would do it.  We kept each other going and it was tremendous.  I felt like I could push myself to do anything.  John Ellis said that if I had a perfect day and that I ran a smart race, a BQ in Eugene (under 3h30m) was long shot, but possible.  It was only two weeks away.  

But I an not just a runner.  I'm also a father, a husband, a coworker, and  a son among other things.  And two weeks before the race my dad called to say that my mom was in the hospital.  The second season of 2008 was about to change everything.

This is the real challenge of being an amateur runner.  My boys need me to be there for them, and I love being  out on the grass helping shag balls during there baseball practices.  No matter what else happens, they are my priority.  Lynda works hard and together we keep our insane schedule on track and juggle all of our activities. I can't wait to get to work each shift to be with my work family as we spend 24 hour shifts scooting around in a fire engine trying to help folks who are often having one of the worst days of their lives.  And when dad called I knew I had to pack a bag and make the four hour drive over to the Bend, Oregon hospital where my mom had already spent the last couple of days.

A smoker all of her adult life, mom was going to go on hospice care for her advanced staged COPD.  She was expected to live another few months but was going to require 24 hour care.  Taking care of her and helping my dad became a part of my life.  I was lucky enough to find a wonderful assisted living apartment just two miles from their home.  My brother who also lives near Portland and my sister who lives in Tennessee, converged in La Pine and we worked together to get mom set up.

It was emotional time for everyone.  The wonderful people who work for the hospice company made sure that my mom knew what was happening.  When the nurse asked her what hospice meant she uttered the words "I'm going to die" and tears welled up in her eyes.  

In addition to setting up the apartment for mom, we also set up an area in it's living room for my dad; a recliner, a table and a lamp.  He would spend all day with her and only go home to sleep at night.  We kids would drive over on our days off and spend as much time with them as we could.

When she left her home of the last 33 years to go to the apartment mom was too weak to walk on her own, so my brother and I picked her up to move her to the car. I was in an awkward position and felt a sharp pain in my lower back.  We got mom into the car but my back was strained pretty bad.

The next few days were awful.  The pain was so gripping that I could barely sleep at night.  Rolling over in bed was a nightmare as my back would seize up and what felt like a bolt of lightning would shoot through my body.  For three days I could barely get around and trying to get out of bed in the morning was a such a painful ordeal it took over a half hour.  

When I got back home I went to the doctor and he prescribed the muscle relaxants and rest.  A week away from the marathon and willing to try anything, Randy recommended a local acupuncturist and I paid her visit.  I'm not sure that the single visit did any good.   It wasn't looking good for the marathon.  There just wasn't going to be enough time to get fully healed.  And in the mean time, I wasn't able to put the finishing touches on my training taper.  

The day before the race I decided to go for it try the race anyway.  If I needed to bail out, I would.  I'd carry out the race strategy the best that I could.  I had invested too much into it to not at least try.  So I did, which may be the subject of a future post.  Randy and I ran the first half of the race together, but after a pit stop, I lost him and never saw him again.  He was to finish in 3h 33m, taking 20 minutes off his best time and because he is just over 50 years old QUALIFIED FOR BOSTON!!  I would have been so close.  But again, that's life.  

Running the race had some long term impacts;  I had left heal pain and right knee pain after the race and neither wanted to go away.  

Back in La Pine I indeed did spend my days off staying with my mom.  We talked a lot and watched movies.  I set up a bird feeder and got permission to plant a tree outside her bedroom window.  We reminisced about the old days.  And I pretended that the doctors were all wrong and that she would just stay here a long time.  

But of course they were right and by June she was getting worse.  I alerted the extended family and my uncles, her brothers,  came up from Sacramento to see her.  Finally I called my sister in Tennessee and told her that she needed to come back out.  Mom was slipping away.  

The morning she died, we three kids sat around her in the dark talking quietly to her. The only real noise in the room was the droning and cycling "woosh" of her oxygen concentrator.  When we saw a change in her breathing we called dad, who had gone home to get some sleep, and told him that he should join us now.  He was there in a few minutes and we moved another chair close to her bed.  And then just before the first light of what was to become a cloudless day, she took her last breath and left us.  We wept and said goodbye and just  sat there quietly loving her. Eventually someone got up and turned her machine off.  And the world suddenly got very quiet.  I walked outside and stared out onto the meadow which she had seen from her window.  It's morning mist was burning away and I stood there and took in the day that was dawning, the clear air and the Three Sisters mountains. It was obvious why she loved living here so much.   As she would have said, it was another beautiful day in central Oregon.  She was just 68 years old.

My dad made it clear that he did not want to continue living in their house.  Instead he wanted move over near us and spend the rest of his time near his family and grand kids.  And the sooner the better in his opinion.  I spent the next two weeks making the arrangements, opening and closing accounts, finding an apartment just one mile from our house and helping pack his belongings.  I did little thinking of running during this time and when I did my injuries, particularly my heel which had been diagnosed as plantar fasciitis, kept me from hitting the road.  

We moved dad over and he loved his apartment, his neighbors and our small town.  We met a new doctor (a women! which was a requirement!)  and for a very short time we all enjoyed the promise of having our dad, and grandpa, so close to love on.  But he immediately started having breathing problems and was unusually tired all the time.  We made a half dozen trips to see the doctor over the next two weeks, running tests and changing medications in an effort to find the solution.  But he just kept getting worse.  Finally an MRI found a growth on his liver which was causing it to fail.  Unbelievably, they told us he only a few more days to live.   I called my sister and told her she had to make yet another trip back to Oregon. 

We took dad back to his apartment and made him comfortable.  Hospice was again involved, but now unfortunately,  we were experts on what was about to happen and they could offer little that we did not already know.  Again the extended family gathered to say goodbye and again we placed small chairs around a hospital bed that had been placed in the middle of his living room.  The fading of his life was eerily a mirror of mom's. Three days later, dad, and his great brain, were gone.  It was exactly a month from the day that mom had passed.  

His passing was more of shock.  Only two weeks earlier we had been furnishing and decorating his apartment.  We had been making plans of all the things we wanted to do together.  He had been playing with the idea of buying a small motor home to do some traveling.  But now it was all over.  His mail had not even caught up to his new address.  

The photo at the top of this post shows one of the few things he actually got to do while living near us in Sherwood.  We took him to a baseball game in Forest Grove where he was able to watch my son Matthew play baseball for his High School team.  In the picture we are sitting on the far right, behind the screen, while Matthew gets a great hit at the plate.  We sat on the opposing teams side of the field because dad could not walk any further.  He passed away just ten days later.

I didn't do much running after all of this.  Yes, I still had the annoying injuries but I could have dealt with those.  Instead it was my heart.  I just didn't have the heart to do something that takes so much of it.  I thought about it every day.  But I just couldn't get it started.  My Buckeye log shows no activity. I would receive Runners World in the mail and not even open it and worse than anything, I stopped listening to Fdip.  

Phedippidations is more than just a radio show to me. I was involved in the community of it.  I couldn't wait for each weekly episode-- and now I  didn't even bother to download it.  Everything that I had done to be a runner was gone.  For the time being it just didn't matter.  Someday it would again, but not now.  Not running creates  other problems that eventually need to be dealt with.  My weight slowly crept up.  By late summer I was up from my running norm of 182 pounds to the mid 190's and by the end of the year I had regained all the weight I had lost due to running and was over 200 pounds.  So not only was I less fit but now when I did run I was doing so essentially carrying two large bags of potatoes strapped to my gut.  You talk about feeling like a blob.  

Enough was enough.  I was ready to get back at it.  

I used the oldest trick in the book to get back on track (pun intended). I made a New Years resolution.  What the hell.  I started doing all the things I had done before.  I using a log book, entering my data on Buckeye Outdoors, using my iPod to log miles onto the Nike+ website, planned a weeks worth of workouts with mileage goals, started listening to Fdip, bugged Randy to go for runs together and made dates (I feel like his fat girlfriend), and mostly just got my butt out the door every day to go running.  No slacking.  Pure dedication.  And now I am soooo back!!

So here's to 2009 and whatever bumps in the road in throws in front of me.  Runners know more about adapting and overcoming than anyone.  Arms up, hips thrust forward and find that spot where it doesn't hurt quite so much.  And just take it one step at a time.