Weigh-in Wednesday: 1-7-15

Two weeks ago, I had an encouraging weigh-in.  I was 118.6 pounds.  Last Wednesday, I didn’t weigh myself, because I was out of town.  I was also running all day and night on the day I usually weigh myself.  Today, I weighed in at 120.6.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs over the past two weeks.  Unfortunately, one of the things that was down was my daily activity level.  One of the things that was up was the amount of food I ate.  Another, not surprisingly, was my weight.

Two weeks ago, it was Christmas Eve.  It was also six days before a big race, and I was grudgingly accepting that I needed to rest, so some slightly inflamed muscles in my left leg could heal.  In the next six days, I ate three Christmas dinners, but ran a grand total of only one mile.  That’s not a formula for weight loss.

I expected to burn far more calories than I could eat during my 48-hour race.  For the first nine hours, I’m sure I did.  Then my pace slowed, but I kept up the same food intake.  I ran for 16 more hours before stopping.  During those hours, I wasn’t burning as many calories per hour, so I was able to eat enough to keep up.  I would estimate that I burned about 9,500 calories during the race.  That includes the 1,500 calories I normally burn at rest in a day, plus the 8,000 calories I burned by running just over 100 miles.  If you include my pre-race breakfast and the huge lunch I ate after the race, I probably ate pretty close to that.

Since the race, my activity level has still been lower than normal.  I took a few days off to recover from the race.  Since then, I’ve had to train cautiously.  My left leg is still a concern.  I also have a cold.

There’s some good news on the diet front.  The start of a new year means the start of a new spreadsheet for tracking what I eat.  That’s helped me renew my enthusiasm for eating healthy.  Maybe I’m just weird, but I’m motivated by spreadsheets.

Overall, maintaining my weight will be an uphill battle until my training gets back to normal.  My leg is forcing me to run about two minutes per mile slower than my usual training pace.  My cold is causing me to tire quickly, even at that pace.  I’m compensating by doing two short workouts per day instead of one long workout.  I may stick with that, even when I’m healthy again.