I’m sorta-training for a trail half-marathon that I haven’t signed up for. I figure I need the race on a calendar to make myself train, and I need to train to stop my slow weight gain. (I’ve put on almost ten pounds in the last three months. I worked way too hard to lose that weight, and I’m not going to let it come back without a fight!) The race is the first weekend in November, and I’m delaying signing up because I want to see how my body – my left knee, more specifically – responds to training. But I’ve drawn up a training schedule.

Today’s workout was a time trial – warm up for a mile, run two miles “fast but not all out,” cool down for half a mile. I woke about a half-hour early this morning and decided to do the run then.

I surprised myself! I did the two miles at an average pace of 11:41/mile – far faster than I thought I’d be able to maintain – and I only took a couple of short (10-seconds-ish) breaks. It felt pretty darn good.

Yesterday, I went back to a daily calorie goal of 1500 kCal + exercise, and I actually made that goal. (YAY!) I find I do best when I log proposed meals for the day, as it helps be keep dinner down the calories I’ve assigned for that meal. The past two days I’ve managed to not snack in the morning — I decided I really wasn’t hungry — and I wasn’t hungry enough for the dinner I’d planned, either. It’s the little victories like this that keep me going. It may seem silly, but I’m fine with doing a happy dance over a calorie deficit of 67 kCal.