TGIF!

Thank God it is Friday. It has been a pretty hectic week for this guy. It started out great with a really great workout on Monday and went down hill from there. Overnight Monday my daughter got sick and by Tuesday morning I realized that I was sick so Tuesday nothing happened. Wednesday I didn't feel 100% but felt great compared to Tuesday. I went out for a run that was intended to be 10 miles but at the 2.5 mile mark my intestines told me that I needed to head back home which I did. Of course I didn't bike either because I didn't feel great. Yesterday I got up and did my swim which felt great. 2200 yards and I felt great doing it. Last night though I felt exhausted so I skipped the run and the bike I had scheduled. Today is a beautiful day here in Iowa so I am going to get outside this afternoon and get a 6 mile run in and sit on the trainer for a couple of hours. Both are going to be easy because I have a long workout day planned for tomorrow which I am actually looking forward to.



One thing I started to do this week that I have never done before was I started logging all of my food and their calories. I have it all set up nicely in a spreadsheet showing my basal metabolic rate, calories consumed per day, calories burned from exercise (estimated of course) and my weight everyday. The main reason for doing this is that I am working out a lot more and I am at a pretty good weight but would prefer to be a little lighter going into the race season. That being said, my diet had been pretty decent for the most part but at the end of the day I do not think that I was eating enough. I think I was eating so little that my body actually started doing the exact opposite of what I wanted it to. So, working under the assumption that I need to eat more I decided to try and work towards a better balance of the food that I was eating so on the advice of a friend I am taking a look at the Zone diet. I don't like calling it a diet because it is more like a manual for how your body uses food and at the end of the day the word "diet" for me is associated with restricting food consumption when in fact I will be eating more as a part of the program. I am sure that they sell products and the whole bit but it isn't necessary and I do not. We already keep a lot of the foods that I need to eat in the house. The difference will be balance. I am not sure how effective it is yet because I just started but I can tell you that so far I am not as hungry and I feel like I have a better understanding of how everything I eat affects my body. You might hear me chat about this from time to time so I might as well spill the beans on my current stats so we can see how it is working. I am currently 5'11" and as of this morning I weighed 182 lbs. My low weight last year was in the 173-175 lbs range and I think that 165-170 might be a better weight for me although I will be happy getting down to where I was last year. I am not sure it is realistic to cut weight down to 165 right now when I should be trying to get stronger in each of the triathlon disciplines. In case any one is curious, I did buy a paperback book on the zone that I am using as a reference although I am sure that the internet is saturated with information on the Zone. The book is called "A Week in the Zone" by Barry Sears Ph.D.