You are most welcome! Can't wait to hear how it turns out. We'll be praying for you. Lisa (Mrs. Plainsman) told me to suggest 2800 cal on workout days and 2500 on non workout days. That would be a good place to start and then assess from there. Oh, and you might not want to cut your calories the week of your race, but instead plan on taking in extra carbs within your maintenance calorie budget.

A heart rate monitor is a fantastic tool for training. I gauge most of my workouts by my heart rate zones. Now, you might not want to jump into something like a full blown GPS right away, but we use the Garmin 305 and love them. I have mine paired with a cadence sensor on my bike. For instance, this afternoon I did a brick. I've been under the weather and taking Mucinex which can cause your heart to race, so I was able to monitor that. At the end of the workout, I could not only see the stats for my workout (time, average speed, max HR, average HR, etc) but also how many calories I burned - 1220 for this particular workout. I like the Garmin because it can tell me how fast I'm running at any particular moment, so it's easy to keep a set pace.

You can check out a basic chart for how many calories you burn doing specific activities here:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_burned.htm

Think of those as ballparks.

Keep up the good work!

Mr. Plainsman (but everyone else calls me Tom)