Thoughts for post-race

I know i just posted the other information but I wanted this to be separate.

Some of your goals for this may have to get in shape and I think that you've done that. Some of you may have wanted to lose some weight and I can't say whether you've done that or not. I think that what you have accomplished is built a good base for continuing running and for moving on to longer distances or faster paces.

People have written that sometimes runners feel depressed after a big race is over that they've trained for. One way to combat that is to pick a new goal and work towards it. Maybe its speed you want or maybe you want to go longer distances. What you can do is look forward several months and pick a race to train for. Set a goal that is currently unreachable and train for it. Runners world has a training coach that can build a training program for any race distance based on your current mileage. You can use that to build your own programs to work for any race.

If you were looking for weight loss you've built a good base and can now do more than 6 miles. One of the easiest ways to boost weight loss is to run long distances. Go out at an easy pace and run for a long time. Just take it slow and easy and increase your distance by a .5 mile every weekend until you get to 10 miles or so, then you can start increasing it by a mile. Every 4th week you should take it easy and drop the miles back to 6 or so to give you a break. If you can push yourself out to 10 miles, you will be burning more than a 1000 calories in one day, over what you burn normally. It doesn't take too long for the weight to start coming off. All you have to do is keep doing what you are already doing. Just as an example, when I ran the 14 miles the other day, my GPS thing said that according to its calculations I should have burned more than 2000 calories on that run. That's more than 1 lb. of fat (1600 cal = 1 lb fat I think). And by running at an easy pace you are forcing yourself to remain running aerobically (burning fat for energy).

I haven't heard you guys complaining about either of these but I have seen other peoples posts and some emails from other groups that mentioned that they were still waiting for weight loss. It's not a fast process but if you can change your habits and do it slowly you will have a greater chance of success.