After two weeks where I was either puking or shivering, I finally felt better. Just in time for me to do my two week hard segment.

I suppose that’s good.

The thing about the two week hard segment is that it’s like climbing a mountain. When you look at the schedule you feel you are at the bottom of this massive mountain, you look at the exercise, you look at the hours and you wonder: What the f* am I doing here?

By the end of the first week, you’re thinking: I can so totally do this, I rule.

Then you get to the middle of the second week, and you have your long bike and long run and long swim ahead of you and all you can think is: What the f*…

Actually you don’t have enough energy to formulate a coherent thought. Every last ounce of energy is consumed to just keep you alive.

And then it ends, and you look behind you and you think: That wasn’t so bad…

And especially with that down week looking sooooo appetizing.

It’s an amazing cycle this training cycle.

And now for my weight update: 

The sudden spike in weight that you see on the graph above pissed me off.

I was so frustrated with the sudden spike in weight that I did some research on weight loss and ironman training and found this article that said this:

Athletes who complain they “eat like a bird” but fail to lose body fat may simply be under-reporting their food intake. A survey of female marathoners indicated the fatter runners under-reported their food intake more than the leaner ones. Were they oblivious to how much they actually consumed? (2) Or were they too sedentary in the non-exercise hours of their day?

Because I remember eating like a bird, a small tiny bird, I was convinced that my weight loss was due to poor metabolism … But the article suggested that perhaps the issue was my food intake…

So let’s see… There was the pizza for Friday dinner, the chili and the quesadilla for lunch on Saturday, the burger and fries for dinner on Saturday, the amazing brunch my friends prepared on Sunday – scones, cheese, two kinds of vegetable and egg dishes and desert, and the large bucket of popcorn I ate at the movies followed by a nice light salad for dinner.

Erm. Maybe the intake was the issue. Maybe I was eating like a hippo, not a bird..

You know, it turns out that the amount you can burn per week is limited, but the amount you can eat seems unlimited … Even while training for an ultra endurance event, it would appear that proper dieting is essential if I want to lose weight…

Damn.

The last week was a bit of mess. This is me today, and I don’t look so good…

Last weekend I got sick. And although I thought I had recovered, the reality was that my calorie deprivation let me a mess. My brain was functioning at about 20% efficiency, and my body was about 30%.

As someone whose job it is to think, watching your brain just shut down because of a shortage of calories is disturbing.

By Wednesday I was fine, my brain was back to normal, my fitness was normal, just in time for me to get a cold. On Thursday, I tried really really hard to fight the cold and did my workout. But Friday I had to admit defeat. On Saturday, I was so defeated that I took some DayQuil.

Today I am feeling good. Not good enough to train, but good enough to think that tomorrow I can start training.

And now for my weekly weight update:

The good new is that we are still on track. The goal was to lose about a pound a week, and we’re still doing that. Last week I was at 215ish pounds, this week I am at 214ish pounds. At the current rate I should get to 195 before my half-ironman…

This week was rough.

We got a new puppy, the exercise regime got ramped, I had an offsite and I almost got sick.

The puppy is a cut 8 week old labrador named Kipling (after the author). He’s black and he’s a darling. I am soooo in love.

Unfortunately, the puppy his first night at my house decided to whine all night long. As a result I got a very poor night sleep. Slather poor sleep, extra workout and not eating enough and you have illness.

The illness didn’t stop me from trying to do my workout but … Man almost puking in the pool wasn’t fun.

Fortunately, I got over my illness pretty quickly. A lot of sleep was the key. And I mean a lot.

The crescendo of misery ended this weekend with the Superbowl. Watching Seattle destroy the Broncos was frustrating. I know the 49ers could have beaten Peyton. Sigh.

Like every good triathlete, after drinking some beer and some booze, eating my wife’s amazing food I went for a swim.

Turns out that a swim on booze and food is slower than when you don’t imbibe booze… Funny that. Last week same workout took 40 minutes, this week 45…

The week’s over. No more illness. No more binge eating. Only 9 workouts.

What? 9 workouts? This is insane…

Here’s the weight data:

Good news is that week over week we lost a pound, and over the last four weeks we’ve dropped four pounds. Progress!!!!!

The downside is that we still have moments of overeating. I really need to get a handle on the binge food eating. It’s killing my weight loss program.