Thursday, March 13, 2008

More on weight

Response to "how much should I eat?" on RW forum.
I used to believe I could eat almost carte blanche if I trained over 50 mpw. Over a couple of years, I began to race at increasingly heavy weights(from 158 to 167) and saw my marathon times cease to improve in spite of better 5-10K times and the same mileage. Now, I eat a lot, but not quite as generously as before and I'm upping the mileage, so my weight is back down.

My point is that it's not only an individual thing, but that it can change from year to year as your metabolic system changes.

Here is my weight and pre-marathon race for each marathon:
1. 158, 45:32 10K, 3:58 marathon
2. 158, 39:31 10K, 3:35
3. 157, 38:02 10K, 3:13
4. 162, 37:58 10K, 3:24
5. 164, 1:28 HM, 3:12
6. 164, 18:32 5K 3:31
7. 166, 3:28
Now my weight's around 157. The first two I was training at low mileage. The last two, were both affected by injuries or temperature on race day. But the point is that I was training between 45-55 mpw for all of these marathons, yet my weight rose. I think it was mostly a matter of eating habits. We'll see.

4 comments:

Willis said...

Funny that you just posted about weight and diet - I just did the same on my blog! I'm on the "non-gorging" diet as of now - no more devouring entire large pizzas and multiple pasta boxes! I'm trying to lose the extra 5lbs I've added since Houston in Jan. We'll see how it works out!

Ron said...

Pasta is my weakness. Pizza is like cake to me: only for a whambam special occasion.
With all those miles just make sure you eat less that squirrel:)
You'll lose and ace the R&R.

GB said...

Hey Ron, up until this year I pretty much ate everything and anything I wanted, thinking marathon training would keep the weight in check. Well, my body is not like it was in my 20s so after putting on the extra weight, I realized I needed to watch what I ate, even while training.

I have been monitoring my activity level as well as my calorie intake, and have found a good balance with which to safely lose weight and still train hard. So far so good!

I'm hoping the weight loss DOES make a difference in my race times. We'll see.

rundangerously said...

for me it's simply a calories in, calories burned equation.
fwiw, all things being equal (training volume) i'll run faster when i lose weight. if my weight stays constant, will speed up when i increase my weekly mileage.
the calories in, calorie burned rule doesn't apply to sushi - which i can eat non-stop until all sources are exhausted :)