I’m trying really hard to not beat myself up for taking time off from running and eating mindfully in order to focus on a few short term/high stress projects in my life.

Between May 1 and July 15 of this year we renovated our kitchen, staged and sold our house and moved. It goes without saying that not having a working kitchen makes it pretty damn hard to stick to a healthy eating plan. Couple that with the fact that we did a lot of work on it ourselves (I was staining wood most evenings after work) and it just didn’t leave much hope of healthy meals or prepared lunches to bring to work. Our first priority was making sure the kids ate as well as possible, which left us scrounging for what ever we could get…or so it seemed at the time. Luckily, we did eat a lot of salads from a place down the street, so it’s not like we were completely out of control.

On May 1st, we ran a half marathon in Gettysburg, PA. From that day until mid-July I only ran 22 miles. So I didn’t stop completely, but boy did I cut my mileage way back.

As for the damage done? Well, here are the facts:

• I gained 6 pounds
• I added 4 inches to my circumference
  • 1 inch on my waist
  • 1 inch on my hips
  • 1/2 inch on each thigh
  • 1/2 inch on each bicep
• My body fat increased by approximately 1.07%. I say “approximately” because although I have calipers, I struggle with them and am not positive I’m doing it right.  But if I am doing it wrong,  I am at least consistent so the increase is probably spot on.
• My average running speed has decreased by 30 seconds a mile.

I guess it could have been worse. I’m not happy, but I know I can turn this ship around.  I ran twice this weekend, the 8 miler on Friday and then yesterday I ran a 3 mile run that included ten 1 minute sprint intervals in the middle.    Tonight, I went to a boot camp class at the YMCA for a night of cross training.

Saturday is the Beach to Beacon.   This will be a real test to see how much damage I did to my speed and endurance.  My PR for the 10K distance (1:09:02) was set at last year’s Beach to Beacon.    That’s an 11:07 mm pace.  I honestly don’t think I can do that right now.  My average speed for all my runs in the month of July was 13:00 exactly.  Granted, a few of those were longer than 10K, but still…I don’t think 11:07 is in my cards for Saturday.