Struggles

So where am I right now?  I'm tired.  Not hugely so, but there is the frequent weight of tiredness on me at the moment.  Really just mental I think.  Though, that is one of the struggles, which is to say trying to determine whether my body is just tired from a lot of miles.  Which becomes a bit mentally tiring trying to figure out if I should be pushing harder or taking it a bit easier.  I do my best to err on the side of safe while still accomplishing my goals.  As far as going the distance this seems to work.  It seems speed goals are where injuries are more likely.

Right now my goal is the Green Monster 50K in October.  Besides being 33 miles long, it's also got almost elevation as the Spartan beast in VT last year.(which was only 16 miles, but had obstacles as well.  That took about 9 hours.)

I also have a bunch of other races before that which will somewhat interrupt training.  As such I'm trying to build my mileage base now, quite a bit ahead of schedule.  I'm trying to follow the 10% rule(as in don't go increase more than that per week), though when your long runs are in the 20's that means I'm adding 2 more miles every week.  On that note, it is nice to see the improvement from last year.  It was largely the 22 mile run(of which I had only done once before during the Wineglass last year) where I found myself going "oh yeah, I had forgotten this overly tired leg feeling..."  Not to say that my feet and legs don't get tired, but not to that level, but they did a lot more with a lot less mileage last year.
Anyway, I'm not going for speed right now, just looking to injury free completion of Wineglass Full and Green Monster 50K a week later.  Although I do want to try to get in a bit more speed work before the Howard 5K in... August I think.

Anyway, this leads us to weight and food.

I guess I'll start with weight.  I'm currently about 195lbs.  And I've been right close to 200lbs for almost a year now.  I believe I just barely nudged into the 180's at my lowest last year.  And part of me feels that I should just be ok with it cause I seem pretty healthy.  Though for that matter, I don't think I was that unhealthy when I was 225lbs or more.  Heck, even when I cleared 250lbs right before I decided I needed to lose weight, it's not like I had any real problems.  But it's not like I wasn't doing anything, I was out walking a decent amount.
Still.  Here I am at 195 and I definitely have a good 30-50lbs of spare tire/muffin top.  I'd really like it to be less.  And of course it would probably help my speed and reduce the load on my joints.  Not that they are showing any serious issues, but occasionally I feel where I've not quite got my form right.

So we come to the losing of weight...  Seems like it ought to just drop right off with all this running, right?  Well, it did when I started a year or so ago...  And I've dropped 5-10lbs in like a week on occasion.  But I'm pretty sure I'm still eating too much.  But it's difficult to tell just how much I should be eating.  Calorie burn estimates on various running apps seem to have humongous differences...  The latest one I've got is from Garmin and other than when I really push it at a race, it generally tells me I'm barely clearing 100 calories per mile.  While other apps tell me it should be almost twice that.  That's a pretty big difference on a 20 mile run...  Did I just burn 2000 calories or 4000?  And is my body really going to be happy if I still try to keep my intake to around 2000?  Or is it going to want more fuel to rebuild those muscles, etc?

Even considering that I should eat less on the really bad calorie intake days, it comes down to my biggest issues:
#1 Emotional eating.  Most of the time, this is stress eating.  I love my girls to no end and they are WONDERFUL lots of the time!  But then they are insane like half the time...  One minute they're hugging and talking to each other, the next they're pushing each other down.  So I find most often it seems to be the nights and weekends where I just find myself stressed and just wanting to eat something whether I'm hungry or not.
#2 is probably my bit of OCD where I don't like to see little bits of food around.  I want to clear them up and feel like it's cleared off/out.  And I don't like to waste food and throw it out.  This is a lot worse with my girls since they always seem to leave several bites of whatever they were eating in a bowl around the house or in the fridge, etc.

So...  We come down to about the only way I've had much luck in trying to control my eating.  Basically I think I try to switch the side of my brain that I use when it comes to food.  I try to take it from "food is enjoyment" to "food is a utility".  Try to switch off the emotional part when it comes to eating.  Not to say that this is easy or just works, but if I can keep focused enough, it kinda works.  That also ties into trying to eat "cleaner".  Cause snacks sound good.  Fruit is just kinda OK, and veggies are acceptable at best, but most of the time a definite negative.  I've gotten to the point where I am a bit more accepting of veggies, but I'm basically trying to ignore what I'm doing while eating them.

Anyway.  just some thoughts that have been hanging on for a while.  On we go!