As far as total milage goes for a year, this is one of, if not, my worst since I started caring at running at such a high level. So I initially planned on calling this my worst year ever when I thought about writing this paper back in April, when I was just starting to scrape some miles together. The goal since college has always been to run 3,000 miles, and last year I was perfectly on pace to achieve the goal, then my tendon decided to ruin it with an extreme bout of tendonitis with two months to go. It was super disappointing, and then as the new year approached, I realized that this problem was going to linger, so 2024 started out rough, and it became quickly apparent that I was not going to be able to hit the goal of 3,000 miles very early on, which was both depressing and a little freeing.
On top of that, I was student teaching, so I left my job for six weeks, and while I was doing that, I had a walking boot for four of them to try to help to cure the tendonitis, which it did not. The teaching was super stressful on top of that, and it all culminated with me being the most depressed I had been since I taught middle school for one year poorly. I always describe stress as a weight within my chest. Almost like my heart literally starts to feel heavy, and with the lack of exercise, that weight was starting to feel real heavy.
Thankfully I found an okay replacer. The gym. I moved last December, and my previous apartment had a gym, but now my condo did not. So I had to find a gym, thankfully a place called SyrFit existed just a couple of miles away. So every morning before student teaching, I would go and do 25 sets of muscle group, and then after I would go back and do another muscle group. (Yes, I even went when I was wearing my walking boot, probably against the doctor’s wishes.)
Going into 2024 I was probably about as skinny as I could be. I did some weights, but as 2023 progressed, I slowly let the weights get lighter and lighter, as I tried to make my body lighter and lighter in a healthy way (I was still eating my normal massive amount). I thought that if I cut some of my unnecessary for running muscle mass, then maybe I could be even faster. No real science based in this other than if you look at the pros they have like no upper body muscles. So I figured might as well give it a try. So I made it down to the low 160s. If you look at my pictures from the Swain Mountain Race in 2023, I have the classic emaciated runner’s arms, they were like twigs. So when the gym became my only source of burning calories, I was starting almost from scratch muscle mass wise, but I grew up in a house where lifting weights was the main form of exercise, and I took a weight training class in college, plus for rowing, we did a large amount of weight training, so I had all the background knowledge I needed.
In January of 2024, I had one run on the very first day of the year, and in February I had zero runs, and in March I finally was told to run a mile, and slowly build up from there, so that was basically three months of 2024 year without really running. As you all probably know, I take exercise very seriously, so if I was going to toil away just lifting weights, I wanted to get something out of it.
I was basically a vegetarian for the two years I lived in Liverpool. I only ate meat on the weekends when I went over to my parents’ house, and when we went out to eat, I typically tried to eat something that did not have meat in it. I had read different books and articles from runners about going plant based for a variety of reasons, and just like trying to lose upper body muscle mass, I figured I could do this too, but when it came to weight lifting, I felt like the best way to increase my muscle mass was by incorporating meat back into my diet. I started eating meat just at dinner, and instead of having oatmeal for breakfast, I switched it to a protein shake. I fill the blender bottle most of the way with milk, add a banana, add a scoop of peanut butter, and add a scoop of protein powder.
Then as the year went along, I started to add even more protein. I used to have a hummus and black bean sandwich for lunch every day, but at some point, I switched it to tuna, and I started to eat the eggs at school for a second breakfast, and I added three eggs to dinner. I even got protein bars, so when I would finish a workout, I could get some protein intake before I went for a run. A key factor that I read about is that the body can only intake about 25 grams of protein at a time, and that lasts for about two hours, thus the spread out and more frequent intake of protein.
At my height of weight in 2024, I reached 180, and then I started running at full strength again, but I did not cut down on the weights, and I did not cut down on the protein. So somehow, I managed to maintain this weight, which I did not think would be possible. Then I went to Berlin, and everything changed. I ran the marathon, and there were no gyms at the hotels, and even if there were I probably would have been too exhausted to even try it. Plus their meal portions were small, so unsurprisingly I lost some weight, like almost 10 pounds, and of course when I came back I was no longer able to lift the same weights that I was able to before.
It took all the way back until Thanksgiving, when I was finally starting to get back to the weights I was at before, and I was up to 178, just a couple of pounds below pre-Berlin, but then I got hit by the stomach bug and went all the way back down to low 170, but after a couple of weeks of focused weight training, I finally was able to hit the 65 dumbbells for the chest press for the first time since Berlin!
As far as running goes, I truly thought the whole year was going to be a wash. It took me until like July/August to start to feel like myself speed wise, and then I immediately got hurt when I tripped running Tinker repeats, so I had to start the process again. I wanted so badly to run a sub 6 average marathon, and I thought it had slipped through my fingers, but apparently it had not, because when I went to Berlin, I pulled it out. I largely think that I can put this success on the number of hills that I run and some on the large amount of tempo miles I run. Those are basically the building blocks of my training, and I think they create physical and mental toughness. I also think the weights played a key role. Normally my hips and lower back will start to cause me problems, but these issues were largely eliminated, and I think this is due to the gym strengthening these areas. I was even able to bag a 10K PR.
So despite thinking that this year was going to be a complete bust, it ended up working out pretty well. The only bad thing is that I did not really do any trail races, despite the majority of my training being on trails, so that was very disappointing, so I am hopeful that next year, I will spend more time on the trails racing, and that I can find something inspiring that catches my eye. Right now, I am thinking about a marathon in Virginia that has almost 5,000 feet of gain, and it is the road marathon in the U.S with the most elevation gain, which is basically perfect for how I train, but when I was talking to Jerry, he told me to stop doing Rinky Dink races, and that I was wasting my talent, but he was just mainly mad that I ran Eastwood and the Burn Run instead of doing cross country. I am fast, but not fast enough for it to really matter, so if I want to waste my time doing Rinky Dink races with stupid amounts of elevation gain, I might as well do what makes me happy right? But my two main goals for next year are to run with more people and to not get hurt!
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