Pigging Out

This is the most challenging time of the year as the eating and drinking binging begins.  All the chocolates and cookies begin to add up as the weight inches up to that magically line in the sand (10 pounds over race weight) which is where I'm at now.  Friday was my office's pot luck Xmas party where the branch manager's brother makes a killer turkey with equally killer gravy.  Some one else brought sushi which I could easily have eaten by myself.  I brought a 12 pack of Victoria Bitter (Australian finest beer).  Needless to say, I gained two pounds overnight.

Friday night was a downer as we went to a visitation.  Our former neighbour's younger brother passed away several days ago.  On Monday I ran into Joe who I haven't seen in a couple of years and we started chatting about running.  Joe just got into running and ran the Toronto marathon a couple of months ago.  He asked me about triathlon training and we chatted for about 15 minutes.  He changed the subject and asked if I remembered his wife's younger brother Stephen.  I vaguely recalled meeting him a couple of times and remembered he was a pretty big guy.  Joe explained that he had gotten bigger and had a massive heart attack the previous night and died.  I was shocked as he was only 36 years old.  He had put on quite a bit of weight and was around 270 pounds.  It was a very sad night as Joe's wife was absolutely devastated about her younger brother.  Such a waste.  The next day I called a friend who is about the same size and told him about Stephen.  I told my friend I was very worried about him and he needs to start to thinking about his young kids.  He agreed and said he was trying.

I ran Saturday afternoon for only 35 minutes to test the groin injury and it was ok but I only burned 340 calories which I easily consumed Saturday night.  We went to friend's for dinner and I grazed on the appetizers and then attacked a lovely T-bone steak.  It tasted awesome as I have really cut back on eating steak and red meat for that matter.  I think I have steak about three or four times a year when before I used to eat it almost every week.

Unsurprisingly, I gained another 0.2 pounds so rather than take the scheduled rest day, I opted to ride.  I toyed with the idea of riding outside as it was only -6 Celsius but only a slight wind.  The trouble was that while the main roads were dry, my street is constantly ignored by the city plows and sanders and thus there was a nice layer of packed snow.  As much as I hate to ride inside, I decided that was the safer course of action as the last thing I need was to wipe out and damage my bike.

The ride was barely pleasant as I ran thru my prescribed drills but more importantly I burned 643 calories.  Ok so I don't ride as hard as I should.  It must be that lack of mental toughness