catherine's running efforts

Remember how I was all sorts of on track toward a 20-mile week last week? Big fail at the end. 

So I'm trying to front-load this week a little bit so that I don't end up missing the chance and thus screwing up my week on Saturday again (poor planning). Tonight's was a good run, and it made me look forward to when 5-6 miles every day will be no big deal.

A long time ago I had a coworker who had played football in college. He was pretty strong, but also pretty soft. Now and again he'd talk to me about weight lifting and such, and I remember that he would do only 15 minutes of cardio three times a week because he was afraid of getting too small. This is what I think about when I see the big guys at the gym. 

It was a pretty good run tonight. I'm very grateful for our gym membership in the winter.

As part of my free fitness assessment thing at the gym last week the guy had me do one of those hand-held body fat testers. It came up as 17%. I told him I thought it was closer to 25% because I had done the bod pod before I got pregnant when I was in a lot better shape and it was 22% (ish, I think). He said that it was +/- 3% and so I could be 20%, but not more than that. I still thought he was wrong, so today I did a bod pod test at BYU. And oh my gosh it was 28%. 

I realize that 28% is in a normal, acceptable, average, whatever range. It's nothing to freak out about. Also, I'm still pumping for Elliott, so I'm sure I've got some fat stores or something going on with that. But first of all, what's up with the big difference between the two types of measurement? If I would have believed the gym guy, I'd be skipping around all happy as a bunny with my cookies/pop-tarts/diet soda diet thinking that I'm one of the lucky ones with a crazy metabolism. Second, what the heck? This is what's wrong with thinking that BMI is a good indicator of health. I wrote a few weeks ago about having to dress heavy for our health insurance physicals so that my BMI would be in the normal range. But I'm about 3 pounds (of fat) away from the "excess fat" category. That doesn't seem to match up with being "underweight." Third, say I have a goal of 20-22% fat (according to the chart I saw today, this would put me in the "lean" (but not the "extra lean") category). And say I get there by mostly losing fat (and not so much by gaining muscle). Seriously I'd have to weigh less than 100 pounds? That doesn't seem right. Finally, back to the idea that 28% is average and stuff, who wants to be "average"? Probably no one on this blog. By the way, did you know that (according to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5431a5.htm)) between 1960 and 2002 the average weight for people in the US increased by 24 pounds?

Anyway, after the test I was pretty bummed so I pigged out on some yummy bread from Kneaders (makes sense, right?). Then I did a mile at the gym because I'm coming off of two 6-hour nights in a row and that's how I roll.

Three miles before a meeting and 2.6 after (was supposed to only be 2 after, but Pretty Woman was on and I like that movie (maybe because I wasn't allowed to watch it when I was younger?)). 

The second time I went to the gym there was a guy I recognized as a runner - he didn't look super boundy like a lot of people do, he was very lean, and he was wearing shorter shorts. I thought to myself, "Self, someday you should look like a runner." Then I went to the store where I usually see this checker who always asks me about my runs (I often stop by the store on the way home from the gym) and tells me about how he's planning on running the Salt Lake Marathon. He doesn't run very far or often, though. And I realized that he probably sees me as a runner in a similar way that I saw the gym guy as a runner. But maybe not; I've never done a marathon, and to a lot of people that's what runners do.

I was disappointed about how today went, but I guess this is the kind of thing I was planning ahead for earlier in the week. I thought I'd leave campus to come home at around 4 or 5, but I was being a tiny bit more productive than normal so I left at around 7:30 instead. By the time I was ready to go to the gym after taking care of Elliott it was only about 15 minutes until closing time, so I ran down the block a bit so that I wouldn't have to have a completely zero day.

Five in the late morning, 3.3 just before the gym closed. I was going to do 3.3 in the late morning so that I'd hit my 20 for the week and then go back later if I had time, but once I was there I figured I should run as much as I felt like running. I started to feel a little bit tired as I was nearing 5, so I quit while I was still having fun. After that I was pretty close to 25, though, so I went back in the last half hour that the gym was open to get the rest.

See Elliott's teeth? :)