Wellness Screening 2014

Yesterday I got something awesome in the mail.

Those right there are the results of my most recent wellness screening. My employer and our insurance company are good people and offer the service for free annually. In the six years that I've been with my current employer I had only taken advantage of the opportunity one other time. Truth be told, at the time I wasn't focused on my health so I only did it for the Target gift card giveaway. All that I remember is that the results were good.

This time, I destroyed it. Also, a woman destroyed my arm.

That's my arm a day after the screening. I don't think it's supposed to look like that just from having a little blood sucked. I can only make out two in the photo, but there were actually three wounds. I don't claim to know anything about drawing blood, but given that I've got an awesome vein that you can see on the left, I question why the woman had to tear up my arm. Tidbit: When I had blood drawn back in high school, the woman who did it told me that I've got great veins for shooting up. Only in Lorain. Almost two weeks later I'm still bruised.

Anywho, I screwed up the morning of the screening. On my way to school I stopped at Starbucks for a nonfat latte. I arrived at work, did my regular morning stuff, and at 8:00 plopped myself into my office chair. I opened my Franklin Covey Planner to February 28th, took my first swig of latte, and scanned through my tasks.

A1: Wellness screening @ 7:50

Balls!

Two strikes against me (10 minutes late AND I broke my fast that I didn't know I was doing when I took that sip of latte), I hustled down to the wellness screening site. My late arrival was no big deal but the dude who checked me in said that my results might be inaccurate because of the milk in my latte. If anything, I supposed some stuff would be a little elevated.

Here are the highlights:

Blood pressure: 121/85 (Pre-hypertension, eek)

Total cholesterol: 156 (Ideal = less than 200)

LDL: 91 (Ideal = less than 100)

HDL: 58 (Desirable = 40-59)

Triglycerides: 36 (Ideal = less than 150)

Glucose: 92 (Normal = less than 100)

BMI: 21.6 (Normal = 18.5-24.9)

Percent body fat: 23.4

I'm going to work on decreasing my blood pressure. For a couple of years it was actually interfering with my ability to function at work. A handful of times I ended up light-headed and with tunnel vision in the nurse's office, but it hasn't happened this school year. Admittedly, I can get pretty high strung. Seriously, this weekend I had a meltdown because the house wasn't spotless.

I'm pumped about the cholesterol stuff. Joe and I put a lot of effort into eating good food in terms of flavor and nutrition. Of course we induldge a couple of times per week, but we can do that because of the quality of most of our meals. We're good at portion control, we avoid processed foods, and we eat a lot of good produce. Take a peek at our snack stash and ignore the Gu and Clif bars, the latter of which I've replaced with Kind bars before long runs.

Full disclosure: I ate fish and chips and had a beer at trivia last night. BUT! I only did that because 1.) I ran 6.5 miles (of speed work) in the afternoon, 2.) I had lots of granola and Greek yogurt throughout the day, and 3.) I ate less than half of the meal and brought the rest home.

I'm cool with my BMI but I don't care about it too much because it doesn't account for muscle. I'm also good on my percentage of body fat, but it wouldn't upset me if I were to see that number drop. Joe tries to encourage me all the time to do strength training with him in order to tighten up but I just don't feel a passion for it. Maybe one day I'll get an itch just like what happened with running. Or maybe my bout with P90X turned me off. I could be proactive and make it a goal between spring and fall marathons. Hmm...

And that's that; my 2014 wellness screening. I'm feeling good. It's time to work on better results for next year!

It's still winter.

Yep, March is here. It's been a month since I've blogged. We've been crazy busy--weddings, running, mini-road-tripping. And you know what? It ain't over. You know what also ain't over? Winter.

It's still cold as a mofo here. The snow has tapered off, but it's still on the ground and falling now and then. I can't wait to have our entire driveway back. Since the first snowmageddon at the beginning of January, so much snow has accumulated from the sky, shoveling, and the plows on Joe's side of the end of our driveway that there's just enough room for one car to get through. It sucks on trash day.

The weather is reflecting in my running stats. I've been way more disciplined about getting the miles in than I was at the end of 2013. Last week was my first week over forty miles since Chicago Marathon training last summer and fall. But my pace, it's been strugglin'. This year I'm averaging a sad 6.4 miles per hour. For 2012 and 2013 I maintained a 6.8 average. It's no small task to establish a good pace in ankle-deep snow week after week. I guess that I'm at least getting outside; that's a good thing. Also, apparently Garmin Connect doesn't account for treadmill pace when it's calculating average pace. Although we don't have a treadmill I've managed to do way more treadmill runs in two months than I had done in two years.

To-do list: Buy a house that has a basement so that we can buy a treadmill.

That's reasonable. Right? I've got priorities, man.

I've been killing it on our long runs. The last two weeks we had 17 and 18 miles. The snow sorta helped because it forced me to run slowly, which has gotten me to finally do those real LSD runs. After both of them I felt like a beast and I wasn't sore at all. Okay, that's a lie. I was sore after the 17-miler, but that was because I fell. On ice. Yep, right onto my butt. To boot, there was a Gu packet in my butt pocket, which I had forgotten until mile 14 when we stopped for a Gu break. I reached into my pocket and only pulled out a hand covered in Jet Blackberry. I was mildly upset that I had no fuel, but I think my emotions pushed me through the rest of the run to get home. Note: I've still got a sore wrist from when I broke my fall.

Yes, a Gu exploded in my butt.

I've stuck to my speed work on Tuesdays. I destroyed nine solid half-mile repeats last week. This week I only did five, the last of which was at an incline of two. That was kinda rough at 8.4 miles per hour. But I did it!

Thirteen miles tomorrow. I'll run two marathons in a little over a month. It's slightly-nervous-time.

Speed work: I did it!

Last week I promised myself that I would begin doing speed work this week on Tuesday. We got more crazy snowfall over the weekend which made me worry that it wouldn't happen. Then, during the Super Bowl, a friend revealed that she's got a treadmill in her basement and that I'm welcome to use it any time. Boo-yah!

And so it was: Yesterday evening, before trivia, I squeezed in a visit to said friend's house and hopped onto the treadmill. I planned to do four half-mile repeats.

Warm-up: 1 mile @ 6.5 mph

6x 1/2 mile @ 8 mph

1/4 mile @ 6 mph recovery between repeats (5x)

Cool down: 3/4 mile @ 6 mph

Yep, I manned up and threw in two more repeats. During the fourth I was feeling good. Also, I decided mid-run that I wanted to do six miles instead of five. I wasn't sure exactly what my pace was, but I thought 8-miles per hour was a good place to start. Next week I'm going to instead go for negative splits on the repeats, considering that I know I can go harder. Also, I'm going to aim for eight repeats.

This can only improve my speed and endurance, right? We'll find out on April 19th. Or maybe on April 27th. I should probably figure out which marathon in that 8-day span will be my PR attempt. Or, dare I say it, my Boston qualifying attempt...