It’s been a while since I made a real update here on the blog, so I figured it was about time.

I’ve been kind of laying low, meeting with a nutritionist to see if I can get this last annoying 10 pounds off while I ramp my running back up from the stress fracture. The nutritionist has been a good investment, if for nothing other than feeling like I now have a professional who I can blame for my failures if I stick to the plan and things don’t go as planned. And, you know, for encouragement and whatnot.

I’m on a pretty basic 1500 calories-per-day plan, 45-30-25, carbs, protein, fat. We did some resting metabolic testing, but, of course, in typical Smurf fashion, I got so riled up over needing to be “well rested” on the morning of the testing that I threw myself into a panic attack at 4AM, went in with a heart rate of about 110 BMP and had the test come back at 3,900-something calories per day that I was supposedly burning “at rest.” So, that was a total waste. We are shooting to get my 28% bodyfat down to about 20%, which will be a total of about 14 pounds lost. Considering that the impact on your joints when running is 2-3x, that means I’ll be pounding as much as 42 pounds less into my hips, knees and feet when running, which really adds up.

It’s been slow going so far… really slow going. The biggest challenge is that I can only have about 3 or 4 drinks per week on the plan and, DAMMIT, that’s not how I roll!

Maybe that’s why I haven’t posted about this– I know it is totally antithesis to this blog that I am on a plan that limits things I love to drop a few pounds—but, I am learning that I need to just commit to getting this weight off for a few months and then add those things back in as part of a healthy lifestyle later. Manuel explained to me that I can’t BOTH be trying to lose weight AND be trying to make gains in running. Either you are in “reduction” mode or “building up” mode- your body won’t really do both at the same time. Once I have the weight off and am putting in more training miles, I can easily sustain doing the things I love. Rob might be able to just do P90X and get all sorts of muscle and change his body quite significantly. But, for better or worse, things don’t work the same for me and it’s going to take some sacrifices to be in “loss mode” for a while. It’s tough, though, because I’m not so sure he quite gets it yet– I’m pretty sure he thinks if I just lifted more weights, the fat would just melt away.

As for the running, I’ve been working back up to running some longer speed workouts on a cushy synthetic track on Sundays and some shorter runs in SF on weekdays. For those who don’t know, sidewalks are THE WORST surface to run on, hands down, period, as far as jarring impact and no give, so this, plus being somewhat restricted from doing long runs for sake of getting the weight off and healing the foot, has kept me at about a 4 mile cap for my in-City runs. My foot hasn’t given me so much of a whisper of pain, but my left hip has really been bothering me. Which leads me to…

I met with a for-reals running coach on Wednesday! I wanted to meet with the coach mostly to see if I had any biomechanical issues I needed to work on so that I didn’t train myself into bad habits or another injury.

Matt started me out with an 800M warm-up and he did some videotaping. Talked about my painful hip and he determined it was nearly positively my ITB giving me trouble, so he gave me some stretches and such there and suggested I try ice baths after long runs. Then, he had me run a full-out mile. Which I was a little concerned about because I knew my endurance was crap from the recovery break… But, I set a Personal Best! My previous best was 8:58 and I came in at 8:17. Granted, I’d never done a mile run set apart- the previous time came from me trying to work mile intervals into a run with a few harder miles. My goal is to go sub-8 by the end of the year.

It turns out, my biomechanics are spot-on. Aside from a little side to side motion with the arms that I should work to correct. Nothing in my stride or footstrike was worth correcting. Watching the video was horrible, though. It sure felt like I was running like the wind, but, on video, it looked like I could well have been running the Marina Green with an ice cream cone in one hand and a jogging stroller in the other, wearing a terrycloth golf visor and Juicy sweats.

So, really, not a whole lot of corrections to make, but it’s good to know that I’m not doing anything wrong and can continue on with what I’ve been doing. He also gave me projections based on my mile time for longer runs—He put my 10K at 59:37, which is about where I want to come in for the Nike Human Race 10K that I’m participating in (solo, on my Nike+) this weekend.

Anyhow, in all it was well worth it for the peace of mind of having someone confirm that I’m doing things right, and I definitely will go back to him when I decide what race/distance I really want to excel at.

So, the next few months for me = September: Building back some mileage, but mostly trying to drop some poundage. October: Bridge to Bridge 12K early in the month, adding mileage and accepting that might stall my weight loss. November: US Half Marathon at the beginning of the month, then recovery and focus on weight loss through the end of the year.

Then again, I suppose all that is subject to change… stay tuned.