Afterglow

Well, I hit the 17.7 mile mark this past weekend. It actually went better than the 16 miler cause I drank more water. The 10 mile mark was really good so I pushed from then on. My hat goes off to those who run the whole way in a marathon. I have too many issues with my knees and such to be bold enough to do that. So, my walk /run strategy is what I've settled on.

I'm using a heart rate monitor to gauge my effort and this is what I've come up with. I'm 233lbs right now. According to the heart rate monitor I used up 5, 888 calories on my 17.7 mile walk. I subtracted 20% off of that because I wrote Timex about this and they told me that the HRM could be off from 5% to 25%. So I settled on 20% and that's what I take off every time I use it. That is still a whopping 4,710 calories for the trek. I also weighed myself at the beginning before going out to see how much fluid I would loose. The difference was about four pounds. I drank 68 ounces of Gatorade mixed with protein during the walk plus I had a large oatmeal breakfast with Chia seeds in the mix to slow carbohydrate absorption. The Chia seeds sustain me for quite a while but I make sure to drink my fluids so as not to get dehydrated. Like I said this time around the walk was much better, I did not cramp up at any point and was recovered by Saturday morning. So on to the next phase. Next week and 8 miler and then back to 18.7 miles.