Adjusting

Today as part of my recovery plan I had for breakfast:

Two whole eggs and three egg whites.

A cup of mixed vegetables (Mushrooms, Asparagus, Spinach, Onions and Broccoli, freeze dried)

� table spoon of Virgin Coconut Oil

Cayenne Peeper

� slice of sourdough bread.

That�s how the morning started. I was to due some upper body training later in the day. First I took my ailing mother to the doctor. As it turned out the whole day was spent doing this for her so out went the workout.

Life can change your plans. So I did something relaxing. While waiting (over two hours), I decided to explore the surroundings of the Malibu Nature Preserve.

One of the many photos I took while on the grounds is here. Not quite the upper body workout I had planned, but my blood pressure sure was under control while I was strolling through the grounds. So I missed a workout, but my dear mother was in good spirit. I�m satisfied!

Recovery training for another day.

Eating Habits

There are a combination of things that help recovery for Marathons and in the day to day regime of exercising for your health eating plenty of good foods it's a must. I've looked at dozens of books (actually bought them) for those who care. One thing I've noticed is that you get conflicting information. I mean the exact opposite of what one book said to do from another.

I'll give you an example. Coconut Oil. I first became aware of Coconut Oil in an advertisement on the web. I found a book (The Coconut Diet), this book explains in detail all the bad wrap that Coconuts in general have suffered at the hands of US advertisers primarily. This book advices one to use coconut oil as do other sites, bringing out that Coconut oil can take the heat and does not oxidize as easily as other oils and in this case is better than using Canola Oil or Olive oil which does oxidize at higher temperatures. The Book of Muscle by Men's health tells you to stay away from it, period.

So what to do. Well do your own research. I use Olive oil for salads, dipping bread, etc. I use Coconut Oil anytime it is to be heated or doing stir frying. My fat loss has not been affected. My cholesterol level has not been affected. Over the last four years I've lost 54 lbs of weight. It's very frustrating to have to go through all this yourself, but it sure pays off. I use a couple of e-books on the subject that have helped me a lot and will recommend wholeheartedly.

For now it suffices to say that in addition I eat from 6 to 9 times a day. I still pack the appropriate amount of calories for my desired goal but I'm never hungry. The only problem is when one goes out to eat. It's very hard to know what you're getting. Are they using good oil or not. Are the vegetables steamed and then butter is added? Send it back? takes more time to enjoy your food. But here is the key if you're constantly eating, you'll never be starving when you get to the restaurant so you can wait. If you're not starving, you're in control.

Ultimately that's the goal. Don't let food control you.

So what did I eat today?

I started this morning with this:

Breakfast:
1/2 cup of Oatmeal
1/3 cup of raw milk.
1/2 oz of raw chocolate bits, not sweetened.
1 oz of flaxseed.
25 raw almonds (7 calories per almond).
Dash of Cinnamon powder (not sweetened).
1/3 cup of Freeze Dried black berries.
Oatmeal boiled in green tea (that's how I get my green tea in the morning).

Snack before lunch:
1 Oz of whey
1/2 cup of raw milk
1/2 cup of egg whites
1/2 cup of green tea (yes more green tea)

Lunch:

I have to figure this one out cause I went out to a restaurant and this is probably where I lost it:
1 cup of Sun Dried tomato sup (probably too much sodium)
Chicken Magro (grilled chicken, tomato, spinach), its supposed to have only 5 grams of fat.
Italian bread dipped in Olive Oil
Mineral Water

My snack later on will be:
One medium apple
1 oz of Mozzarella Cheese (part skim milk)
4 oz of green beans lemon and vinegar.

Dinner:
6 oz of chicken
1 Whole pita bread (whole wheat)

And another snack before going to bed.

I'll be running today at some point because I was supposed to go to the Gym but we had a partial farewell lunch for a friend and colleague who's leaving on paternity leave.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Trail Running

Well I'm slowly but surely on my recovery after the LA Marathon. This time around it was such a pleasant experience compared to last year's event. I don't have any soreness whatsoever, my toe nails did not go black this time and had absolutely no blisters. I did learn that I must hydrate more, my 64 oz hydration pack was not enough, I still cramped up at mile 12 but not as bad as last year.

So I want to get back into race walking and running but must control my desire to do too many miles for the next three weeks. Depending on physical conditioning I've read that it can take up to six weeks to fully recover, so I'm being cautious.

What I have taken up is trail running. A kinder and gentler way to accumulate miles. I did my first short bout of about 25 minutes on Sunday, March 26, 2006. It sure was different. What surprised me was the lack of pain on my knees or anywhere else. As my feet hit the ground the softness of the wood chips and dirt were very noticeable as opposed to my perception of asphalt. Must find long trails for later in the season. I'm really jazzed, again, and hope for a long relationship with my new found roads. I hope my friends can join me!

Recovery Smoothie

Weighlifting makes the body beautiful plus it allows the body to burn a few more calories while just sitting. Working out with weights though causes small tears in muscles fibers which is why we hurt later on. Here is one possible remedy. My very own recovery smoothie. Don't drink the whole thing yourself though cause this is energy packed. Good for you and it tastes good :-) Just had one myself.

� cup non-fat Vanilla Yogurt

� cup bluerries

� cup strawberries

1 medium banana

� cup nonfat milk

1 teaspoon cocoa powder (not sweetend)

Vanilla Whey 3 scoops (each may contain up to 24gms of protein)

1 tablespoon of Almond butter.

8-16oz of water

Serves 3 or 4

Thoughts on moments gone by.

I read an article that seemed to imply that Marathons like the LA Marathon are not real races. So say race purists. Apparently finishing the 26.2 miles does not satisfy some folks unless it is done in a certain world class time. I wonder if any of those folks have ever run a Marathon. If they have, where is all this bitterness coming from? A failed attempt, an ufair or unwated result?

For me it is the pinnacle of a yearly cycle on which I have embarked for the last four years. I have gone from 284lbs to my present 227lbs. Still not my ideal weight, a very slow process indeed, but a very rewarding one nevertheless. Besides there are bonds created that contribute to the quality of our lives, this is a bonnus.

Friends and acquaintances have talked about how daunting such an endeavor this is. Some have tried it and found it so taxing that they have never ventured to try it again. I must admit, secretly envy the smoothness of the professional runners. Their gliding, smooth and almost surreal pace (5.x minute miles for over 2 hours) is captivating to watch. This some of us will never be no more than I can all of a sudden train to become 6foot 4inches. But an athlete nevertheless I will be for as long as I keep my pace, be it turtle or a penguin.

The exhilaration that can be felt through proper preparation (both mentally and physically) can not be duplicated. Yes those who finish are winners. Those who dare to try and get to the starting line are winners, having vanquished the fear within. It is perhaps why I was sorry for the whole thing to end so soon. As I ponder over the miles running/walking I see myself there time and again for as long as I can keep my pace, be it turtle or a penguin.

Some folks around you sharing the miles make it especially endearing and enduring what could be an ordeal becomes a wonderful experience. It has made a difference for me, it has improved my pace, be it a turtle or a penguin. Fine tuning personal training will definitely create improvement. The knowledge gained about one self will most assuredly do that as well. So in matters of physical and mental prowess, I do not run like a man running aimlessly (1Cor 9:26). I run at my pace, be it turtle or a penguin.

The (Day lll) After

Three days after the Marathon and I still feel jazzed!

Marathon Afterglow

It’s now Tuesday (03/21/2006) and I’m still elated after this year’s marathon. My experience was just absolutely the greatest. First things first. My youngest sister was apparently cheering me on and I never saw her. Well I thought I saw her a total of three times during the race. This is why I really didn’t pay close attention cause I figured it was someone in the crowd calling out my bib name. Bummer. Sorry sis for not noticing you, but it makes me feel really good that you were there. Now I remember hearing my name being called out at the beginning of the race and see it for what it is. Love you!

I had an extremely large amount of fun. How much fun do you say? How much fun can you have running/walking/crawling for 26.2 miles? After all I experienced a very serious cramp at around mile 12. It really hurt. Here is the thing, I got attention right away. That seems to be an underlying theme in all of this :-) The good news is that I recovered quickly (I wanted to recover quickly). I got back on the saddle and caught this wonderful source of inspiration again. It affected my heart rate in a positive way and made me go on. Twice I had to play catch up but it was so worth it.

There were a few moments of doubt but when trying to reach a goal, power and swiftness come out of nowhere (Powerbars help too, I specially like the peanut butter kind). I ran up to the mile 20 marker, passed that and kept running. I know I was not going that fast (although my GPS unit says I hit 10.3 miles per hour and my heart monitor hit 174), other folks were passing me but when you’re a turtle or a penguin speed is relative. Half way to mile 21 that great feeling came over me again. Boy was I feeling good at that moment, even though my left hamstring was hurting like crazy! I’m so elated that as of today (March 21, 2006), I’ve already signed up for next year’s marathon. Ready to go! Yeah baby! There was singing and dancing and moving to the grove, play that funky music…..oh sorry I was somewhere else for a minute there.

Back to the marathon. So can one have fun doing all this? Yes! I guess it all depends on whether you’re alone and lonely or not. Can you be alone with 25,000 people around you. Yes, lonely it can be, loneliness can lead to bitterness, bitterness leads disappointment, disappointment leads to the dark side :-(, making you very unhappy about your performance. I was neither alone, nor lonely. And my head still spinning as I write this. Must tell the others….

Onlookers smiled, I smiled back, they could see the glow in my eyes and the band played on. Ok, enough of the craziness.

One thing I would like to do is offer my condolences to those who lost their loved ones in the course of the marathon. I’m no stranger to this (see March 5th posting).

More to come….

LA Marathon, March19, 2006


OTTO ASTORGA (MAR) Bib #8909 WHITTIER, CA - USA Age 49 M

START 10K HALF 30K FINISH
8:23:12 AM PST 1:26:20 3:08:00 4:30:19 06:31:40

TIME Chip Time: 06:31:40 Clock: 06:40:07 Pace: 14:56
Placement Overall: 15635 Gender: 10451 Division: 1279

Last minute form check. March 18, 2006

Tree decorations, LA Marathon style. This photo is actually a revelation for me. There is a balloon on the lower left with the number 4:15. After months of training and reliving the last marathon I learned what that number means :-)

First it means that I was standing way too far in front. That balloon, my friends, is the 4:15 mph pace group.

Second, I was race walking, had no business being there with the runners.

When the race started, I went with the pack. Ha, ha! My race walking form was really good, I was passing runners left and right. That lasted for all of 7 miles, that's when I hit the wall (this is not supposed to happen until the 20th mile. First my right leg cramped up. So I decided that moving to the side of the road would be a good idea to work out the kink. Of course my left leg cramped at that very instant. Now I'm just standing in the middle of the road, unable to move for what seemed an eternity.

The pain finally went away and I was on my way again, albeit at a much slower pace. Any time I started feeling like I could faster, my legs reminded me that I was just kidding myself. Do you know what is like to go 19 miles with cramp pains. Not fun. But I must say, I was determined to finish and so I did. I was crying by the end. Guess you could say it was the feminine side coming out :-)

I was done, passed the finish line, get some grub, go home and reminisce. Nope, that's when I got lost, I just could not seem to get to the area where my son was supposed to pick me up. I headed, unknowingly away from the area (a bit disoriented I guess), I finally realized my mistake and walked another mile by the time I was done.

I had so much fun! I'm doing it again this year, although hopefully not quite the same way.

This week I’m taking it easy. I have felt kind of gloomy, all the training and the excitement about the marathon has come to this final week. I have trained alone but I have not been lonely. Many friends around my area would either wave if they saw me doing my long walks or tell me later that they had seen me running. Everyone has been encouraging and I actually see what I have been visualizing for good while now. I say to myself every day “I’m lean, strong, healthy and happy!” In the last year I have been able to gain some lean body mass. I was weighing 255lbs at the beginning of 2005. I’m now at 227lbs. This is a change from 284lbs four years ago to my present weight. It’s been a slow process and it will continue because I feel so much better.

So why do I feel gloomy? It is the realization that not everyone is on the same page. My sons are for sure. They have taken nutrition, exercise, mind and spirit care seriously. I hope this lasts a throughout their lifetime. For those who still see it as just another crazy hobby I’ve picked up, I pray for patience and may they experience what I have experienced in the last four years at some point.

26.2 miles. Hmmm! The Badwater challenge is 133 miles. Just thinking…..

This is what my last training walk before the LA Marathon looked like. My GPS information tells me that I was out and about for 2:13:11. My moving time was 2:05:16 for a 16:14 mph pace. Distance covered was 7.71 miles. Average speed was 3.7, maximum was 5.9. Elevation gained 913 feet. Temperature was 54F average. Wind speed 9.8 mph avg. I did not use my heart rate monitor cause I wanted to take it easy. And I did. This information was obtained form the website www.motionbased.com which is really nice. I did not know I had all these options available to me. Great. Training will be a lot more fun next marathon.

March 10, 2006. Last walk before the Marathon to follow on March 19, 2006. This is the best place to be while on the road I'm told. It's more leveled than either side. So right down the center we'll go. Now for today's workout. Simple, 7 miles at an easy pace. It was good, for the first time since I started training in October of 2005 I was not alone. A friend of mine deciced to join me and we had a good time. We had a good conversation and the walk up and down Colima Rd in Whittier did not seem bad at all. It did get a little cold as the wind started picking up as soon as we hit the crest. But all in all felt really good. All of the following week should be an easy week. My official number is 8909. Some folks have been asking me how long do I think is going to take me. My answer... as long as it takes, and hopefully I'll finish the same day I started. :-)

Today’s workout:
Warm up: Bike for five minutes.
Warm up: Summo Dead lifts: 130lbs for 12 reps.
Dead Lift: 200lbs for 10 reps.
Summo Dead Lift: 200 for 10 reps.
Dead Lift: 130 lbs for 12 reps.
Endurance Squats 70lbs 50 reps.
Leg Press: 310lbs. 10 reps.
Single Leg Press: 150lbs 7 reps.

Average Heart Rate 130bpm.
Max Heart Rate: 172bmp
Total Calories burned: 755
Net Calories burned: 604 (755 – 20%)

March 5, 2006
Today, six years ago, on a Marathon day in LA on a drizzly morning, I lost my younger brother to a brain tumor.

John 5:28-30

This is my connection to the LA Marathon.

My recovery weeks are finally here. After last week's failure to log twenty plus miles, my ten mile walk/run was great. I actually hit race walking speeds over five miles per hour and no painful after effects were felt. I most come to grips with the fact that I have to warm up, otherwise I pay for it dearly. Of course my problem is that five minutes of warm up are not enough. So I have learned that if I walk for about a mile and a half, I can pick up the pace and not suffer any consequences. Any less than that an it's a big gamble. This slows the whole process by about half hour. But I guess that in the overall picture, it helps me stay strong for the duration of the walk.

I'm happy to report that the pain suffered on the last run is gone, so are the new inserts that caused the whole episode in the first place. So I'm ready for next weeks shorter run and one more week of tapering.

Vital statistics.

My heart rate recorded an average of 133 beats per minute. I hit a high at some point, but the darn heart rate monitor gave me a false reading of 240 so I'll never know what the real high rate was for this run. Calories spent according to my hear rate monitor were 3072. I wrote Timex about the numbers I'm getting as far as caloric expenditure and this is what I was told: "...it could vary anywhere from 5% to 25%..." So what I usually do is subtract 20% from my total to come up with a ball park figure. This way I don't go crazy and eat more than I should. Total caloric expenditure comes out to 2457.6. If I do it using the formula found in this runners world article: http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,5033,s6-197-0-0-8402,00.html , my caloric expenditure comes out to 1219 (.53 x 230lbs) * (10 miles). That would be my total count. My net caloric count would be 690 (.30 x 230lbs) * (10 miles). So as you can see, I can not now go and eat a whole pizza :-).

According to my Garmin GPS, I did the ten miles in 2.30hrs. Average moving speed was 4.1 miles, maximum speed was 9.3 miles ( I was running down hill, it felt great).


Photo above depicts my Lewis and Clark pose. Push forward. The show must go on!

Behind the leaves, there is a brighter day!

Well the 24th of February came and went. Was supposed to do a 20 miler plus and I scheduled it on my PDA, I e-mailed myself so I would not forget. I told everyone I was doing it J ….The best of plans can go awry sometimes.

So how many ways can I tell thee, the story of what could not be…!

It’s early morning (Friday 24, February 2006) I prepared my favorite Oat Meal breakfast with Chia Seeds in the mix, almonds, a banana, raw chocolate chips (1/2 oz.) and went out the door. I did not sleep well the night before…oh boy, well I still went out on time, felt pretty good. One shoe was kind of loose so I stopped and tightened it some more. Strolled thorough a small park in the neighborhood and headed on out. Re-laced my shoes again; and that’s when my troubles started. My right foot (the one with the re-laced shoe), began to ache. It was more like a burning sensation on the top of my foot, this is mile 3. I ignored it cause this could not be happening! Mile 4, take off shoe, loosen shoe strings, make circles with foot put shoe back on. Mile 7, the pain is really bad now. Take off shoe again, play around with shoe fit, feels much better, keep going. Mile 11, I can’t take this any more. I call it quits, head back home. I’m only three miles away so I really loosen the shoe and struggle to get back. After 14.1 miles (6 short of my 20), I’m home. I help my wife with dishwashing and a little house cleaning (I’m really disappointed and hurting but I did not let on, she did appreciated the help).

Next.

Panic!

What’s going on? I head for the shoe store to get some advice. Just before getting off the car, I remember what I changed. I tell you after all the training I did. The many articles I read, etc., etc. I did not listen. I bought some new shoe inserts, which is not necessarily a problem. But did not buy the inserts I usually get, I obtained a different shoe insert from a different manufacturer. Bingo! The arch support on this one is much higher. Making my feet ride higher in the shoe, hence when tightening them, it’s not the same thing. This, my friends is a $40.00 lesson.

On race day: don’t try anything new.
On race day: don’t try anything new.
Close to race day: don’t try anything new.
Stay relaxed.
Close to race day: don’t try anything new.