It takes more than exercise...

I find that with even putting in 16 - 24 hours of week of Ironman training does not guarantee weight loss, as strange as it sounds. From personal experience if I eat simple sugars, fried foods, over eat or drink beer, no matter how much I train I don't lose weight. Which is unfair. One would think that with that kind of effort you could get carte blanche and eat whatever and as much as you want. 

My Achilles heel is beer. I love it. I use it often as a "reset" button. If I'm getting burnt out from training I'll have a "bunch" of beers, enough to really feel it, and the next day it seems like the slate is clean and the burnout is gone or at least a lot less. I know a very wealthy family, who's father built a multi-billion dollar empire. The son, who is now the CEO of the company was telling my brother a story about how he learnt to handle stress from his father. He explained that one day he hit his breaking point and was having a near nervous breakdown, he just couldn't take the pressure at the time and went to his father's house to explain his situation. His father took him downstairs to his bar, pulled out a big bottle of Scotch and they finished it that night. Needless to say the son was hungover the next day, but was much less stressed and it helped him to keep moving forward. His father showed him how to hit the "reset" button. His Dad was definitely no "Ward Cleaver". 

Now I'm not endorsing or recommending excessive and regular drinking to handle stress and burnout, but from personal experience I have found that this also works for me when I get to my breaking point and life's not fun. The next morning, especially if I'm hungover, I find that I never have a greater resolve than after a night of excessive self indulgence. In training for triathlons this may seem counter productive and it may be for some, but it works for me. I love the euphoria, mania and fun times that come with it. Thankfully I'm told I'm a happy and funny drunk, at least 95% of the time, which would be an A+ in school. What I don't like is the weight gain. If I lose 2 lbs in one week and I have one night of beer drinking on the weekend, I gain it all back and it takes another week to get back down. At the Louisville Ironman, in the elevator after the race, I finisher was saying he hadn't had a beer in 6 months and was looking forward to one. Now that's an Ironman!!!

I didn't need to hit the reset button today, but I was tired from not getting to sleep until 1 am and my legs were tired from 3 plus hours of leg training yesterday. After an early evening snooze I pushed myself out the door. I knew I'd feel better 5 minutes into the run, and I was right. I had a good run, I didn't look at my average pace on my watch and just focused on keeping the HR under 140 bpm. There was a light rain and by the time I returned home my body was steaming. It looked like smoldering smoke coming off my clothes. I've never experienced that before, it looked really cool.

Tempo Run - 51:38 / 6.64 miles / 7:46 pace