I knew it was going to be bad...

I was doing well on the weight loss front recently. My recent blogs told a bit of a story line where my weight has been going down, perhaps not as steady as some linear algebra formulas, but trending down nicely.

Then came Christmas. For many people, Christmas gives an unwanted gift of a few pounds. For me this gift was 5.6 pounds. I guess Santa was upset I was eating too many of his cookies or some rock star was overly naughty.

In addition to the cookies, I ate too many chips and large celebration dinners with desert chasers. Although I had a few hard training days, I took off both Wednesday AND Thursday. I could have bailed on going to Weight Watchers and faced the scale next week but I chose to face the music like a true headliner.

I'm hoping these pounds aren't sticky. What I gained in one week I could lose in one week, at least that's the plan.

10 Down and 20 to Go (or 18 Down and 34 to Go)

It seems like forever when I started with the "body composition" focus and one of the first things I did was join Weight Watchers. For those of you not familiar, when you join Weight Watchers they give you three choices on how to pay:

• An unlimited monthly


• A 10 pack of coupons to use once a week. If you miss a week you are supposed to pay anyway.


• Pay week to week.

Of course, the unlimited monthly is the cheapest option as I guess they have a fair share that keep on paying even when they "drop out". I decided to go the 10 pack route. The guilt looking at the coupons helps keep me going.

This is my 10th week and I'm out of coupons. I need to buy the next pack and realized that I have two 10 packs to go before I take a little weight loss break to focus on my race day performance. This is where the 10 down and 20 to go came from.

Today was also a weigh in day. Today's result showed down 0.8 lbs for a 10 week total of down 18.0 lbs. The only disappointment was that most of the weight loss happened in two weeks. Out of the 10 weeks, I had 2 weeks were I was down a lot (-9.2 [week 1] and -4.2 [week 9]), 6 weeks where I was down a little bit and 2 weeks where my weight actually went up (boo, hiss). In order to hit my race day target, I need to lose 34.2 more lbs in the next 20 weeks (or average of about 1 3/4 per week). On the high side, but still doable.

Bringing this back to the world of triathlons, the good news is that my power to weight ratio on the bike is improving (the power is going up while the weight is going down) and I have less to lug around during the "run." The bad news is that I'm going to need new race clothes and a wetsuit. I no idea of the size that I would need.

I like having these problems.

Ho Ho NO - my first DNF

On Friday the weather gods frowned on us, dumping about 4 inches of the white stuff. The kids celebrated by making the first snowmen of the year as it snowed most of the day and into the night. The next day had the HoHoHo 5K scheduled and I was looking to break 34:00 to get one of my goals off the board. Amanda and I decided that if the race went off, we would run.

We woke up Saturday to wind, snow, unplowed roads and a race going off as scheduled. After Courtney ran the fun run, we were off.

Amanda, as usual, dropped me in a few seconds. I tried to stick to a 10:30-10:45 pace but it was like running in sand! I passed the one mile mark at about 10:55 and made the turn onto a unplowed road. My right calf then felt like an ice-pick was not so gently inserted into it. I stopped, walked, started again with the same pain, realized my day was over, and literally limped in. I thought about walking the second lap but every step was painful. I stopped. My first ever DNF.

Everyone had a hard day time-wise including Amanda but most (except me) finished. My friend James said he can't recall when he ran so slow but he also never placed higher in his age group.

Time for some rehab. Hope it will be quick.

Hot Chocolate

This morning I "competed" in the Seaford Wellness Council Hot Chocolate 5K (see www.seafordwellness.com ). I went into this race with two goals:

1. Run the whole thing.
2. Finish under 34:00

I came close to meeting my goals, running the whole thing but finishing 9 seconds off the mark. I stuck around to make sure I didn't win any of the raffle prizes (kept that streak alive) and, of course, had to sample namesake beverage. Lots of Team Total Training people on the podium and a little celebration afterwards over Steve and Jean's house. Thanks Steve and Jean!

Give me a break

No video to watch as the camera developed a leak before it was my turn to be filmed. No, I don't think it was due to putting on the wide angle lens needed for a fat guy. To be rescheduled at a future date.

Let's go to the video tape

First, a weight loss update: 11/25 led to a gain of 2.0 lbs while 12/2 had a loss of 1.2 lbs. Overall weight loss is 12.6 lbs. I seem to be treading water and the goal is still to lose another 39.6 pounds before Eagleman. In order to be on track I need to lose > 9.6 in the next month. I'm sure the Egg McMuffins I had for breakfast didn't help so we need more focus.

Tonight I am getting my swimming form (or lack of it) videoed. I know I suck at swimming but I need to see the video to see the degree of how much I suck. After we film, I'll review it with Steve and/or Takao and try to identify the most impactful flaws to try to get those problems minimized.

To coin Warner Wolf I hope this isn't the "Boo of the week."