Light is right

Booyakasha! One month out from the marathon and as of this morning, I'm exactly one pound away from making my race weight goal of 130 lbs. At 12.9% body fat, I've got a ways to go before I dip into the single digit territory, which probably won't happen in a month unless I get to work on turning fat into muscle. Here's a little confession– other than push-ups and core exercises, I haven't done any strength training in over 2 months. I've pretty much just put all my faith in the strength training I did the rest of the year to keep me injury-free throughout marathon training and so far it's done its job.

For the record, this is the leanest and lightest I have ever been in over 10 years and as cliche as it sounds, it all came down to changes in my diet. I normally don't go on any restricted diet (much less use the word diet because it implies a short-term fix), but when I set out a goal to drop down to 130lbs. at the start of marathon training, I knew something had to give. I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post that the first thing I did to clean up my diet was make a Costco run and stock up on 5 lb. bags of frozen fruits and vegetables. This strategy has more or less kept me in check whenever I felt the need to go astray. Craving for a late night snack....how about some fruit or vegetable? Catch my drift? But yeah, in addition to having healthy options available at all times in my fridge, I've also been very mindful of my meal/snack portions making sure they're just enough to support the workout load for the day. Nothing crazy like counting calories or anything like that, it's all based on estimation.

So why the drastic weight drop? I wish I had a better scientific explanation other than, light feels right. But, perhaps you can humor me with some figures I came up with. Most runners know that an efficient running cadence is around 90 RPMs (repetitions per minute), which means that for every minute that you're running, each leg strikes the ground 45 times. So let's just say, to keep things simple, I'm able to hold the ideal 90 RPM running cadence from start to finish during the marathon–

Marathon goal time: 3 hours and 3 minutes = 183 minutes
90 RPMs X 183 minutes = 16,470 foot strikes

I don't know about you, but that sounds like an insane amount of pounding over the course of 26.2 miles. Just how much?

Weight at the start of marathon training (8/24): 146 lbs.
146 lbs. X 16,470 foot strikes = 2,404,620 lbs.

So here's where I think I'll reap the greatest benefits from my reduced weight–

Weight one month out from the marathon (11/10): 131 lbs.
131 lbs. X 16,470 foot strikes = 2,157,570 lbs.

Net reduction in applied ground force: @146 lbs./2,404,620 – @131 lbs./2,157,570 = 247,050 lbs.
Net energy savings: 247,050/2,157,570 = 11.4%

The figures are pretty staggering right? But like I said, just humor me with my simplistic view. For all I know, the weight reduction could come back and haunt me. But for now, I'm sticking with it and hoping for the best. All I know is, I have never felt more comfortable running long distances and I think this has been the key all along. It all goes back to feeling strong, not fast.