Running and Pounds

All settled in again at home, and it's been a really great week.

Helen is back at music, and I at Jiu-Jitsu. She's had friends over several times, and we've even gone to a dance.

I shall list as two of my favourites this week to be related strictly to me.

The first is I have been on 3 runs. These are my first in a long time. I didn't do any when we were down in LA for the months of January and February, and my knee got hurt shortly after our return in March. I've been off of running ever since.

Now I'm back. I've stuck mostly to trails to limit repetitive heavy impact on the joints, and that is going really well. I started with 3.2km, and then have taken it up to the 8km range. The knee has had absolutely not issues. My quads have been a different story. They've totally forgotten that we do this kind of thing.

The other big, cool thing has been weight loss. I didn't weigh myself until we were home from vacation for a couple of days. When I did, it showed 190 pounds. That's up ten pounds. This would be bad enough, but my mass was already up five pounds above my ideal weight when the holiday started. That had me needing to strip off 15 bloody pounds.

Been controlling my diet severely, as well as running, and being back at Jiu-Jitsu full speed. I use an app to track my calorie and exercise balances, and then enter the results into a big spreadsheet on my laptop. I use a heart rate monitor when rolling or running to get an accurate picture of how much I burn.

Anyhow, started at 190, and ten days later weighed in at 182. Won't be long.

It's cool that the running is helping the weight loss, and that the weight loss also helps me to run. The danger to the run is the impact involved. The lighter I get, the lower the stress on my knee becomes. I've already reduce it by 4%, and will have brought it down by a total of 8% if I make my 175 pound goal.

Think of it this way. If I run up right now, at 182 pounds, each knee supports 91 pounds. A week ago that would have been 95 pounds. Less stress, but big deal. Pretty much any adult knee can handle 95 pounds, or 91.

I stand on one leg. That knee now supports 182 pounds instead of 190. That matters more, but standing still still isn't any kind of an issue at either weight. Now, what if I start jumping up and down on one leg....and landing mostly on my heal. That's what running is like. They say it magnifies the force on a knee by up to four times. If so, that's a pretty hefty impact. Any kind of force reduction, be it 4% or 8%, is a huge deal.

So anyhow, I'm getting lighter, and running, and home, and loving it all.