The Bet -- Day 3

Talk about some ups and downs--this definitely isn't going to be easy. But I've been telling more and more people about it. The more people that know, the more motivated I become. Why? Because people will start to ask me how things are going and I want to have a good answer to give them.

General lifestyle still seems to be an issue, and I don't have a good solution yet. I played soccer last night (we won 2-1), and with about 5 minutes left in the game, my calf on my right leg got tweaked. My guess? General muscle fatigue. I haven't used my legs this much in a while. Basketball season was intense, but running seems to have shocked my legs--and soccer is a lot more running than basketball. Still, I left feeling pretty good. Not only did I have a good run yesterday morning, but I also played a full game of soccer.

I think I can handle soccer and my new running schedule--just make sure that I have recover days after my games. But I still need to work on the whole sleep thing. Playing video games until midnight and then doing laundry until 1 AM is NOT going to help. I've got to get more sleep than that.

This morning, my run started pretty good--a 1.5 mile run at 7 mph, followed by my 10 mph/8 mph laps. However, about halfway through my 10/8 laps, I started to get really fatigued. I had to change to a 10/7, and then fell short of my goal by 2 laps. I had to jog the last two. Talk about disappointing! My spirits were definitely down--how am I going to make it to running a 5-minute mile if I can't even handle the training? Then I realized how stupid I was--the treadmill was set at an incline and I hadn't even noticed. That makes me feel a little better, but not much.

I had planned on just lifting weights afterwards, but a game of full-court basketball started, and I decided to give it a run. What does this exactly mean? Soccer last night for 40 minutes, 3 miles this morning, and then 3 games of basketball. The result? Yup--my body broke down on me. Both my calves got tweaked and it sent me down to the ground. That's the first time I realized that getting an injury would really suck. I'm sure there's a better word for the situation, but that's all I could think as I was laying on the pinewood--this sucks.

What was the smart thing to do in this situation? Leave. Me? I decided I was still good to go and would just play at 80%, which basically means 50% unless I have the ball then I'm back at 100%. It was stupid to keep playing, but I was just having too much fun.

Overall, I feel great. I'm down to 184 lbs (both scales agreed with each other this morning), which is the slimmest I've been in almost two years. I was thinking about running on Saturday to get a jump start on the training, but I definitely need to the day off, especially after what happened to my calves. I'll still run on Sunday, which is going to be tough--I'm in Gainesville for my MBA and have my first class at 7:30 AM. That's going to be an early morning to get in 5 miles!

I'll update again after the weekend, and I'll give some insight into my diet. I might also start "spamming" this blog out to some other sights this weekend. I'd like to get some comments and responses from people that have done this before. It'd be nice to have more than 2 other people read this.