One of my favorite activities is starving, so along with my marathon training I’ve been following a restrictive diet.

I joined a medical study on the effects of hot pepper on resting metobolic rate. The great thing about the study is I get two dexa scans, one at the beginning and one 12 weeks later. This gives an accurate reading of bone mass, muscle mass, and fat composition. The study is 12 weeks long and I’m right in the middle. I set an aggressive goal for my body fat composition so I can’t wait to see if I’ve done it. In addition, I meet weekly with a nutritionist and I get to ask her all the questions I want and she tells me how many calories I get to eat. I’ve lost 12 lbs so far. I can probably lose about 5 more lbs but last week someone called me a lollypop head so I know I need to consider stopping.

Only a few more days until my first marathon of the year. I can’t wait to see how my training pays off.

I started marathon training in January. I still have 22 states to finish and I had hoped to do them all last year. I’ve been following the Runners World advanced marathon training plan. It’s not that advanced if you’ve done any running before. It’s been a rough winter but somehow I’ve managed to get most of the runs in and I even had a beautiful run Friday night after it had snowed 16″.  I’ve even been able to stand running on the treadmill since I care so much about getting my mileage in.

Yesterday there was a 4 mile race in Prospect Park. I looked forward to finishing it because I thought I would be at under an 8 minute/mile pace by this point in my training, but I finished a disappointing 32:02, so right at 8 mins. My finish time was partially due to a slow first mile (9 mins+) because there were something like 5,000 runners on the course, but if only I had been a few seconds faster…

My first marathon in over a year is just a couple weeks away! At this point it’s actually difficult for me to find races that will fit with my schedule, since a lot of the states I need to do are in the fall. I still haven’t gotten my drivers license so I have to stick with urban marathons in general to make transportation easier. Hopefully all my training pays off and I have a quick marathon this month.