20 miles

This week I have reached a mile-stone, so to speak, in my 117th attempt at getting in shape. A couple of years ago, after some scary dizzy spells, my cardiovascular system checked out OK, but what with my family history of heart disease and my not so good cholesterol levels, my doctor gave me a 10% chance of a heart attack in the next few years. This was of course a shock. Unfortunately, I have not always been consistent in my project of getting completely healthy. Once in a while, I started running very regularly, only to get injured after several weeks. Getting orthotics helped with that. But still, I remained at the edge of being unhealthy.

Anyway, early this year I started working out almost every day, first in the gym, on the treadmill and on the weights. When the weather got better, I added more and more running to the routine. My first goal was to get up to 20 miles per week. This week I have reached that level (four runs of 5, 3, 9, and 3 miles).

20 miles is a bit of a magic level. I saw a snippet in my favorite journal, Runners World, that said that 20 miles a week is the level of exercise where one actually starts getting rid of abdominal or visceral fat, the most harmful kind of body fat. The source for that claim is this research article.

So, now my plan is to stay at this level for rest of the summer, adding some interval running on one of the short days. Then, in the fall, I’ll finally try to run a half marathon, after two failed attempts at running in races that I signed up for. This should finally get Jason Stanley off my back, who needs to know my half-marathon time (preferably at least twice as long as his, of course — Jason: my pace in today’s 9 mile run was a super-slow 11 minutes per mile).

How do I feel? Like I am slowly but surely getting healthier. I have not lost much weight at all, perhaps 6 pounds or so. But I feel quite a bit trimmer. Next up: my diet — perhaps, some dairy has to go. Also, I need to figure out how to not become a complete couch potato during the World Cup. Perhaps, I’ll need to use some handweights during the games.