Which one do you think I ATE?

Which one do you think I ate????
That is my daughter's hand. She went for the soft warm gooey straight from the oven chocolate chip cookies.
She did manage to fit in a few carrot and celery sticks also.

I just started reading Matt Fitzgerald's book "Racing Weight, Quick Start Guide". To date I have calculated my lean and fat body weight(110 and 31 lbs.), my sleeping, training and daily calories burned(458, 742, 1055) and finally my daily calorie requirements of 2255/day. This is very close to the number of calories I discovered I eat in a normal day without thinking about it. It was nice to have my guesstimate validated and with such complicated math to boot. I was validated again as I read Matt's recommendation of 50-60% carbs, and 20-30% fat and protein also, all of which is very close to my current diet. I also liked how he only encourages weight loss in a way that compliments ones training and performance and does not encourage a calorie deprived diet during a heavy training phase. Rather then suggest cutting calories during such a phase he instead encourages substituting high quality foods including whole grains, high quality protein, fruits and veggies for low quality ones such as chocolate chip cookies! BTW I went with the veggies! Yeah for me!!

Really what it comes down to is if eating a chocolate chip cookie is worth keeping those extra pounds that are keeping me from reaching my ideal racing weight. After putting in so much hard work training day in and day out I would be sabotaging myself if I was not seriously pursuing a goal to drop those unnecessary pounds. After a few more calculations I discovered that at 22% fat I need to lose 3.5 lbs.(137.5 lbs) to reach 20% fat and 8.5 lbs.(132.5 lbs.) to reach 17% fat. I think my ideal racing weight lies somewhere in between as I was 136 lbs.(5 lbs. lighter) or 19% fat when I set my 5km PR last year. Matt also makes the point that we cannot truly know what our optimum racing weight is until we race at that weight and until then it is all a guesstimate. To put this all into perspective the average woman elite athlete of my age  is between 13 and 20% body fat so it makes sense that my ideal lies somewhere within that range and probably(hopefully) on the high end of it ;- ) At 13% body fat I would weigh 126 lbs., at 20% 137.5 lbs. so I have a good 11.5 lbs. to play with.

Rather then give you the complicated mathematical equations(although I know some of you like them) Matt had me do I have found this website with some good calculators that gave me pretty much the same numbers I calculated myself.

Well it's 15 days until the Beat Beethoven 8km and 35 days to my goal 5km race Emilie's Run. I have no idea if substituting good food for bad will bring any weight loss my way in that time and it really is not a concern. I know that my training will probably shed a  few pounds alone and I can't be concerned about what I cannot control. I will do all I can do without sacrificing energy to power my workouts which is the most important goal I can have between now and June 25th.

I am currently healthy and back to training hard. Monday I had 7x 2 min. repeats @ 5km race pace with 1 min. recovery's to build strength. I also persevered through a hard strength workout on Tuesday adding in a few of the plyometric exercises I was forced to take out due to my sore hip a few weeks ago. Yesterday I ran in the hottest, muggiest day to date and I did not fair well in those conditions. It didn't help matters that I headed out too fast downhill to begin the hilly tempo workout. Half way into it I felt like my head was going to explode. My face has not been that red in a long time and I actually stopped mid workout. I can honestly say that in my 3 years of training that I have never stopped a workout early for anything other then real pain due to injury. So stopping was a bit of a shock and a blow to my ego and sense of pride. As I gasped for air I thought I could try it again tomorrow but knew that would throw off my entire weeks schedule and perhaps even next week so I decided to start up again. Of course me being me I tried to makeup the time I had lost and bonked again big time. What I should have done was given myself a good minute recovery then started back slowly. The funny thing is that I did complete the loop of the tempo course faster then I have ever before as I ran it in a series of fasts and slows and stops and collapses and not a nice steady tempo pace. I was then suppose to extend the route by another 5min at a slightly faster pace. I knew I could not do that but some part of me wanted to try and I actually made it an entire 83m at that faster pace until I had to stop again. I now realize that not only was my body fried but my brain was also and although I did manage to finish the workout I am not sure what benefit will come of it. It was certainly not the tempo effort I was going for however coach assured me that my erratic behavior must be of some benefit although he was unable to quantify what that may be and that it was at the very least a learning experience. What I did learn from it was that on the first few hot muggy days of the year I need to ease into my workouts and back off the pace a bit the way I might if running into the wind or uphill. I am also looking forward to redeeming myself on my next workout so if anything it was certainly a good motivator for me. C'est la vie!!