My main fitness rule

I ran a 2.49 marathon a couple of months ago but this story, for once, is not a running-bragging story. Well, I do love running! For the last two years, I’ve been running 50–70 miles a week.

I’m not running this week. It finally happened, the inevitable — I’m injured. My foot is hurting. I’m limping. It’s possible it’s a stress fracture though I haven’t yet had an X-ray or MRI. Either way, I know unmistakably I will need many days, likely several weeks, of rest. I’m signed up for a marathon in Chicago in October. It’s just twelve weeks away! I’m guessing now whether I will have enough time to prepare for this marathon. My goal was to improve to under 2.45. Now it’s all uncertain.

But I’m not resting, actually. I’m just not running for several weeks.

Today I biked in the gym for 80 minutes. 10 minutes high resistance, 5 minutes easy, repeated several times. I sweated badly. The machine showed I spent 1,000 calories. I kept biking to reach 1,000 calories. I don’t know how accurate the bike calorie measurement was but it was probably accurate plus-minus 200 calories. I biked yesterday too.

In a couple of days, I will introduce swimming to my routine, like 2,000 yards of swimming.

Not running is painful enough. I’m already missing it badly. I’m also a little paranoid about putting on weight.

So I’m doing other exercises.

1,000 calories per exercise is not a trivial target. That’s how much energy I expend when I run ten miles…