You may (or may not) have noticed that my Scale Tales have been getting later in the week.  The first time this happened, I was making room for my 3 Peaks post, but this week, I did a little experiment…

Despite eating and drinking the same each day, I’ve found that my weight hardly goes down after a long walk.  But, if I go for a long run, it falls markedly (almost in proportion to the distance run).  This happened last week and again this week, when my weight fell to 73.2 kg (= 161 lb or 11st 7lb).

I’ve recreated my graph and, since it looks unlikely now that I’ll achieve my ‘ideal’ target, I’ve added my minimum target, of losing 0.1kg per day, as expressed in my initial post on this topic.  Now, although amber colours are not strictly allowed in my (ex-)corporate world, Jamesie, at 50in50marathonquest, uses them in his.  So I’ve coloured anything in between the two targets in amber and it’s now a very colourful chart – though it only has one green bar. 😦

As many of you will know, you can prove almost anything with numbers, so here is another chart showing the amount lost per week.  It has 3 green bars and one amber, so it looks much better from my point of view. 🙂

Clearly visits to the UK do nothing for my weight (I wonder why…? 🍺🍺🍺) but overall, I’m pleased with my progress and it has certainly helped me with my running… (which, after all, was the main reason for losing the weight)…

As for my training, last week was a very mixed bag…  Yes, I did manage to ‘run’ 27k or 17 miles, which is good, but it was at a very slow and laboured pace.  I struggled to go through 21.1k/13.1 miles at my marathon pace and had to stop twice to rest and refuel before I finished.  Equally my 7k / 4mile ‘recovery run’ at the weekend was equally difficult and I have to put this down to my ribs not being fully healed.  Breathing, without some sort of pain or discomfort, has certainly been an issue for the past 3 weeks.  I’ve been feeling pretty down about this and have been considering changing my 4 hour target to a true ‘get round at all costs’ schedule.

That is until yesterday, when I went for a 10 miler along my usual route along the Rhone river.  I’d hoped, even expected, to do it in 88 minutes, which would represent 5m 30s per km, or 8.8 mins per mile.  However I reached the half way in a little under 42.5 minutes and kept that pace going to the finish.  I incorrectly stopped at 16.2 km, when it should have been 16.1 km, so my time for the 10 miles would have been around 84m 30s.  This represents 5m 15s per km, or 8m 30s per mile.  (4 hour marathon pace is 5m 40s per km or just under 9m 10s per mile).  So I’m now a lot happier with my pace (and breathing) and therefore slightly more confident going into the race – which is now only 10 days away.