Digital Alterity

I get asked a lot about whether running will help a person lose weight. Let me throw data out to confirm it.

Since the date I started running with no walking interspersed (2006-09-25), I have run a distance of 217.507 km (over 135 miles). My average weight over that period is 100.6 (about 222 pounds). Using my handy running calorie estimator, this means that I have burned roughly 21 881.204 kcal. Since we know that there are 9 000 kcal to a kilogram of fat, we can safely say that I have lost 2.43 kg (about 5.35 pounds) just due to the running around I’ve done in a little over two months.

Over that same period of time, I have lost 6.6 kg (about 14.5 pounds). This means that running constitutes 36.8% of my overall weight loss. You bet it helps.

A person with a weight of 70 kg (about 154 pounds) running a modest 30 km/week (18.6 miles/week) can expect to burn 2100 kcal every week. That’s 109 200 kcal/year! With no dietary changes, this person can expect to lose a little over 12 kg/year (26.5 pounds). If, like most Americans (including your humble correspondent), you weigh significantly more than average, then you can expect to lose even more.

So, yes, running will help you lose weight. Running paired with a good diet will do even more for you.

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss, Running, Calories

A lot of running happened while I was in the cocoon. As some of you may remember, back in October, I changed my running program to more closely match the distance rules outlined in Daniels’ Running Formula. I’m currently running 27.5 km/week with a long run of 8.5 km(1), and next week I’ll go up to 35 km/week with a long run of 10.5 km(2). Just today, I planned my distance increases up through the end of Feburary, and it’s amazing to see that, barring injury or unforeseen circumstance, I’ll be running 57.5 km/week in February with a long run of 17 km(3).

I’m feeling great. I’ve had no serious injuries, and most of the soreness I felt back when I first started has completely gone away. The extra time spent at a distance gives me a feeling of adapting to the distance before I raise the amount again, and the long runs really give me a feeling of accomplishment. Most important, though, are the results that I’m getting.

I managed to finish the St. Petersburg Times Wingding 5K in 29:04. Now, to put this in proper perspective, over 15,000 showed up on race day. The race never really seemed to clear out. I was constantly zig-zagging, dodging, and recovering from being bumped. Even with all that, I knocked two minutes off my PR and finished a sub-thirty-minute 5 K. I think I could have knocked two minutes off that time on a less crowded course. Nonetheless, I know that I gave right up to the limit of my best effort because I was toasted at the end of the race. I had absolutely no kick left in my legs for the last 100 m.

I don’t have any races penciled in on my calendar at the moment, but I know that Allyson is looking to run a less crowded 5K somewhere in the next couple of months. I’d also like to start working my way into the 10K range in February or March.

Just as a reminder, interested parties can keep track of my running by checking out the Running page over at Digital Alterity Wiki. From there, you can link to my daily running log and my current training plan.

Footnotes

1. 17 miles/week with a long run of 5.28 miles for you non-metric types.
2. 21.75 miles/week with a long run of 6.5 miles.
3. 35.7 miles/week with a long run of 10.5 miles.

Technorati Tags: Accomplishments, Running, 5K, Achievements

I’ve been reading through Daniels’ Running Formula in an attempt to design the best possible running program for me. Since outgrowing the Cool Running Couch-to-5K program, I haven’t found a running plan online that met my needs. Most running programs are either training plans for really fit competitive athletes or fitness plans for the casual runner/jogger. I tend to think of myself as somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I have clear running goals in mind, and I want to steadily improve until I find a limit to my genetic potential. Daniels’ program provided me with the formulas and calculations I needed to really “roll my own” training program.

Starting this week, I’m following a new program that I designed based on my immediate goal of building up base fitness and weekly distance in preparation for including some more formal speed or quality work around the first of next year. The biggest change in my program is that I will start including a weekly long run on Saturdays that includes 30% of my weekly distance. This means that I’ll have a 6 km run on Saturday and four shorter 3.5 km runs during the week. My current (self-designed) training plan switched to five days starting this week with Friday and Sunday off on most weeks. I’ll be holding this weekly distance of 20 km for three weeks without an increase to allow my body adequate time to adapt to the new level of stress, a training principle that I intend to include henceforth if I’m satisfied withe results. When increases are due, I’ll be increasing 7.5 km/week, 1.5 km for every training session.

I need to work on my pacing to be more consistent with Daniels’ suggestions. Right now, I tend to run almost exclusively at what he defines as my marathon (M) pace with dips into my threshold (T) pace and only occasional true easy (E) recovery runs. This is extremely difficult when your E pace is a tortoise-inspiring 7:52 km. I’m hoping that the long runs will enforce this slowdown somewhat. Though I must admit that the ease at which I run T pace makes me wonder if my VDOT value is actually higher than my recent 5K result would indicate. Or maybe my pain threshold is just too high.

The advantage to designing my own training program is that my regimen evolves and adapts with my increasing fitness and my immediate running goals. Running as a pasttime is working out very well for me. I’m consistently losing body fat (0.7 kg/week) and increasing aerobic fitness above even the levels I enjoyed in high school. I want to ensure that I’m choosing the best possible program for me and my running goals. For me, that involves a bit or research and a lot of tinkering.

Technorati Tags: Running

On Saturday, I ran my first 5K. Going into the race, I was hoping to break 34 minutes. I had managed 0:34:55 in afternoon training runs for the 5000 m distance, and I was relying on the cool morning weather to knock a minute off of my time. My predicted VO2 Max from the two mile race I had run just a weekend prior suggested that I could finish this race in 0:33:06 if I pushed as hard as possible.

When I started out, I was running six-and-a-half-minute kilometers, and I stayed above that level for the whole race. At the halfway point, I was only fifteen minutes in, and I saw that I was on track for something far more than expected if I could just hold on. After cresting the last hill of the course at 4.5 km, I saw no more reason to hold out. I pushed down the hill. I kept pushing as it leveled. I sprinted the last hundred or so meters.

I finished in 0:30:50. I was so excited that I forgot to stop my watch. I had averaged 6:10 kilometers (9:55 miles). I had an average speed of 9.7 km/h—over 6 MPH.

I never felt tired or sore afterwards, just a little hungry. It was in all respects a moment of pure breakthrough.

Now if I can just break thirty on the Wingding 5K next month…

Technorati Tags: Accomplishments, Running, Trick or Trot, 5K, Gainesville

This year’s Gator Gallop was my first road race since we had field day in elementary school, and I managed a respectable (for me at least) 0:20:51 for two miles. I’ve been training in earnest to become a lifelong runner, and I’ve already made it up to a weekly distance of 14 km (about 8.7 miles). My friend and co-worker Dave convinced me to run the Gallop, which kicks off the Homecoming parade for the University of Florida, and he was on hand to jabber with me before the gun went off.

I was amazed by the human congestion. I didn’t start my watch until I crossed the start line (so if you want my official race time that no one kept track of you can add 8-10 seconds), and I didn’t average above 7.5 km/hour until we made it onto University Avenue and the bodies naturally spread out. Up until we made it to Library West, I was constantly dodging walkers and stationary folks as they stepped into my path or stopped suddenly in front of me to wave at spectators.

I did my best to approach the race with some degree of earnestness precisely because it was my first race. I broke the race into kilometer splits and ran each split faster than the last. I held well over 9 km/hour for the entire last kilometer and even full on sprinted the last 100 m to the finish.

I forgot my adhesive strips though, so I’ve got a mild (non-bloody) case of runner’s nipple that will take a couple of days to fix itself.

Ways I Could Improve My Result For Next Year

1. Increase my weekly distance. Aerobic fitness leads to better results. By this time next year, barring unforeseen catastrophic injury, I’ll hopefully be preparing for a spring marathon or half marathon.
2. Lose more mass. 104 kg takes a heck of a lot of effort to move around. If I keep up with my current rate of loss (0.7 kg/week), I can expect to be around my goal weight of 65-70 kg.
3. Start nearer to the front. I’m not an elite athlete. I don’t want to be an elite athlete, but I’d like to dodge fewer strollers next time. I need to be up around the people with dogs next year because the dogs are ready to haul ass right from the start.
4. Wear adhesive strips. I became aware of my chafed nipples right around the turn into the last kilometer, and it took a few seconds off of my time. I think my final sprint would have been more impressive if every step wasn’t nipple torture.

Technorati Tags: Running, Gator Gallop, Homecoming

Nine weeks ago, I didn’t run. In fact, I tried to move as little as possible. Inexplicably, one of my random urges caused me to look up information about running. I wanted the efficiency that running would bring my weight loss plan. As I read more about training programs and the proper way to start running, I felt drawn to the process itself. I settled on this Couch-to-5K program as someone in for the weight loss and cardio benefits, and somewhere in the process I became a runner. Or, perhaps more accurately, I discovered that in some unspeakably bizarre fashion I always have been a runner.

Today was the last day of my initial training program. I managed to cover about 4.3 km in thirty minutes of running. I didn’t feel a rush of accomplishment today. I finished my run this evening, and it felt just like the end to nearly every one of the other twenty-six runs. When I started the program, I thought of the nine-week end as a finish line that I would cross with an internal sense of triumphal victory, but somewhere in the whole process I’ve seen that the start line and the finish line are and have always been in myself. I don’t want to stop running. In fact, I’ve already started planning my training for the next couple of weeks. I have races to schedule around and plan for, so the end feels even less like an end.

The accomplishment has been consistently putting one foot in front of the other day after day, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Technorati Tags: Accomplishments, Running, C25K

I was very proud of my running form today. I had the endurance runner shuffle going in full effect, and I kept my head up and shoulders back.

My efficient form apparently paid off. I managed to run exactly 4 km in 28 minutes today—an average speed of 8.6 km/h (5.3 MPH)! That’s almost an eleven minute mile.

Now I know that this is nothing compared with all you real runners out there, but in my frame of reference, this just feels like absolute victory. A little over two months ago, I didn’t run anywhere. I didn’t do any kind of exercise. I sat in front of my computer all day at work and then came home to do more of the same. I’m running infinitely more than I did nine weeks ago.

I run for me. I run for my health and well-being. I run to discover my inner buddha/christ nature. I run to push myself beyond my limits. Dammit, I’m a runner today—an honest to God real runner. The start and the finish line are both within myself. I won. I may have said rash things to my boss today. I may have showed less compassion toward the person parked beside our car than a more centered person would have. I may have forgot my lunch at home for the umpteenth time. But I still managed to win in just twenty-eight minutes of pounding pavement.

That’s why I run.

Technorati Tags: Running, Motivation

Not long after I started running, I used some of my spending money to buy a Timex Speed+Distance watch that includes a GPS armband that constantly relays information about your speed, distance traveled, and pace to the accompanying watch on your wrist. I don’t hesitate to say that for me this watch has been the single best purchase for motivating me to get out and run and keep running even on days when I’d much rather sit at home playing Neverwinter Nights or World of Warcraft. So what makes this watch so important to my training? Why is this watch even more important than my (more expensive) running shoes and oh-so-comfortable Coolmax running outfit? Let me count the ways.

First and foremost, the watch appeals to my love of gadgets. I’m a geek. From time immemorial, I’ve been the child who would rather play with a computer or typewriter than interact with my peers. Where some runners are motivated by the social aspects of conversing with a running partner or competing in a friendly manner with fellow athletes, I’m far more motivated by technology. In short, activities that let me play with new and exciting technology are activities that I’m far more likely to enjoy.

Tying in with this, the watch lets me have data to munge. This gives me quantifiable results that I can chart, tabulate, and calculate. I just plain like playing around with data and calculations. I accept that this makes me strange when compared with other human beings, but it’s the honest truth. On my rest days, I’ve been known to just open up my spreadsheet running log to try and invent new figures to calculate and track. Beyond all that, being able to view my performance in more objective terms enables me to look at my improvements in a neutral way. I might end a run feeling absolutely chewed up and defeated, but a quick post-run glance at my watch tells me that I just improved my average speed. Or maintained my average speed on a hot and humid Florida summer days. Or that I increased my distance by ten percent over the same day last week. Having data to play with enables me to shut off even the beginnings of that little defeatist voice in my head that says I would be better served sitting on my ass sipping a soy vanilla latte. In high school, I ran purely for time without any notion of how far I ran. Fitness meant being able to run for 20-30 minutes three times per week, and I hated every single step. In contrast, with information available to quantify my performance, I actually look forward to my running days, and I actually can’t wait until I build up enough fitness to run more than three days per week.

The watch frees me from set running paths and the boredom of the mundane. When I walked before and when I started running a couple of months ago, I felt constrained to always run in the same places. If I got to run on the track, I was thrilled. If I didn’t I spent most of my run stressed out about how I had no idea how far or fast I was running. Since getting the GPS watch, I have a profound sense of freedom. I can decide to suddenly go off in a new direction without worrying about driving the course in my car first. I never have to sacrifice the information I desire for motivation in order to try something new and exciting. I don’t worry about Allyson wanting to take a vacation or visit family because I’m content in the knowledge that I can now run anywhere in the world without sacrificing the performance information I crave.

The real-time estimates of my speed tell me when I’m not pushing hard enough. I’m still too erratic to use the zone alarm features, but I do use the current speed readout to let me know when I’ve pushed too hard on a hill or started out too fast. You see, I’m not in touch with my body. Trained athletes can feel their pace as they run, but years spent in front of a computer have turned my body into some kind of strange apparatus that I only barely know how to operate. Slowly but surely, my digital readouts are helping me learn to listen to my body in an effective manner.

The accurate estimates of my distance make estimating my calories expended a convenient and easy process. Having discovered this helpful calorie-burning rule of thumb, the distance measurements are all I need to factor my training regiment into my weight loss program.

In the end, I can’t say whether my Timex Speed+Distance watch would be helpful to anyone else, and I certainly can’t compare it to other GPS watches like the Garmin Forerunner series because, honestly, this is the only such watch I’ve ever used. Nonetheless, I can tell you from personal experience that this watch has been the single best motivator for my determination to keep running on a regular basis and is therefore also the best boon for my personal fitness that I have ever acquired. If it broke tomorrow, I would order a new one by the end of the day without any hesitation.

Technorati Tags: Geek, Running, Timex, GPS, Motivation

My Timex Speed+Distance GPS watch seems pretty damn accurate for distance. A lot of reviewers have noticed this too. It’s also extremely consistent with itself by distance. My laps measure the same distance every day. This all makes sense because the GPS satellites it uses are accurate to thousandths of a mile.

I have punched numbers into my handy Excel running log thingy however and found that it consistently underestimates my speed by about 0.1 km/h. I think this is because of the algorithm it uses to compute my speed. I don’t think that it’s averaging all the readings in total because it doesn’t have the memory for that. I bet it’s doing some sort of moving averages calculation.

My name is Rusty, and I’m an unapologetic geek that somehow started running. May God have mercy on all of you.

Technorati Tags: Geek, Running, Timex, GPS

I’ve heard on numerous web sites that the speed you run has less to do with calories burned than distance travelled since time spent running tends to balance out the higher burn from faster rates of travel. I decided to get really friendly with the table of calorie coefficients and some Excel formulas to get something approaching a rough answer to the question.

Methodology

From the calorie coefficients, I calculated the calorie expenditure for a set distance of 1 mile for a person weighing 106.3 kg (my current weight, 235 pounds), 90 kg (200 pounds), 80 kg (175 pounds), 70 kg (155 pounds), and 60 kg (132 pounds) for each of the speeds listed in the above link. Why did I choose a mile as my set distance? In the table provided, they include convenient estimated pace per mile for each calorie coeffecient in the running category. Knowing this time made it absurdly simple to calculate out a mile for each speed.

Once I obtained these values, I averaged all the resulting calorie values for each weight per mile run. Then, I converted this value to a per kilometer value by multiplying the result by 0.62137119 (miles per kilometer).

Results

A rule of thumb that you see quite often is that you burn 100 calories for every mile that you run, and this turns out by my calculations to be true…if you weigh about 60 kg (132 pounds).

Average Calories expended per mile:

• 60 kg: 99 kcal/mile
• 70 kg: 115 kcal/mile
• 80 kg: 132 kcal/mile
• 90 kg: 148 kcal/mile
• 106.3 kg: 175 kcal/mile

Now this is all well and good, but it doesn’t work very well for calculations during your long runs. But wait until you see what happens when we convert this value to metric.

Average Calories expended per kilometer:

• 60 kg: 61 kcal/km
• 70 kg: 72 kcal/km
• 80 kg: 82 kcal/km
• 90 kg: 92 kcal/km
• 106.3 kg: 109 kcal/km

That’s right. As a convenient rule of thumb, you burn about 1 calorie per kilogram of your body weight for every kilometer you run. If you run a 5K race, you will burn an amount of calories roughly equal to five times your body weight measured in kilograms.

Keep in mind this is only a convenient rough estimate. But really, isn’t that all you need?

Attention, Geeks!

Tables of my calculations can be found on the Running Calorie Data entry on Digital Alterity Wiki, my personal wiki/homepage.

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss, Geek, Running, Calories