Posted by: Brocklanders
Posted by: Fast-Orange
I'm hoping to lose about 30 pounds and increase my core conditioning so I can run downhill for longer without blowing out my knees.
I'm signed up for Whistler Alpine Meadows 110k ultra on Sep 26th.
I'm the heaviest I've ever been. 220 at 6'3'' it's not overly heavy but it's mostly fat. My plan is to actually spend more time picking things up and putting them down again in different ways than doing a high volume running plan.
Next 9 months are gonna be all about the squats, lunges and one legged deadlifts for the most part.
I've changed the way I run for this year too. Spending most of my running time in the aerobic zone. It's a lot slower but apparently this is how you train for ultras.
The problem you are facing is that as an endurance racer it's way easier to pack on weight as soon as you finish racing for the season. If you stop racing/training for an extended period of your body goes into store mode big time. When I was racing I was 185 pounds, I'm just shy of 200 currently and trying to lose 10 pounds has been a super bitch, I don't wanna give up things I enjoy eating, doing a low sugar/carb diet is super boring. Especially cutting out the few beers I have per week, that's the worst, I enjoy that shit. That's the difference between the pros and the age groupers, the pros continue on with the training when they finish a race, the rest of us wanna enjoy life and take a break.
The my fitness pal app works pretty good. It's a pain in the ass but keeps that balance between having enough nutrition in your system so you aren't starving yourself ( no weight loss) and eating too much when trying to lose weight. It does work.
The problem I had was I developed a nasty case of plantar warts after finishing the squamish 50 miler. (I was 185 then). I had one on my left heel and two on my right ball (of my foot in case that requires clarification) and it made running pointless as my gait was all messed up anyways from trying to compensate for the sensitive parts of my feet.
Plantar warts are pretty awful. I saw a podiatrist. Had them painfully removed once, tried to slowly kill them with that wart removing acid but nothing worked they just kept growing back.
A doctor told me that the only thing you can do is wait for your body to brute force the immunity password for lack of a better term and figure out how to kill it. Unfortunately that usually takes about two years as it did with me.
Long story short my feet are better now but I spent two years not running nearly as much as zi would have liked.