Sunday was the Las Vegas Rock ‘n Roll Marathon, a race I signed up to do but unfortunately could not participate in because of my increasingly annoying Achilles injury. The last time I updated you on the status of my feet, it was the left foot giving me grief while the right Achilles was intermittently tight. Now my left foot appears to have healed but the right Achilles has gotten worse. It’s now instantly tight and stiff when I start running and is stiff in the morning when I wake up and hop out of bed (morningtendon?). At first I thought I could still manage to do the half marathon, but after realizing that I wasn’t going to post a decent time and would just end up risking further injury, I begrudgingly opted out of doing the race entirely.(Believe me, eating a $135 race entry is a tough pill to swallow. I can only imagine what it’s like to get injured when training for an Ironman and watching your $600 entry fee get flushed down the toilet.)

If you’re a serious athlete, you eat to train. I am not a serious athlete, so I reverse that mantra. Jas and I love food more than our non-existent children (those ungrateful little shitheads), so we train to eat. A big chunk of why I dutifully put up with working out upwards of 15 hours a week is so I can enjoy cramming poutine, frozen custard, handmade tagliatelle, and other unhealthy deliciousness into my gaping mouth until my belly is as bloated as Val Kilmer’s face.

Shortly after I signed up for Ironman Canada, I started doing strength training once a week with a personal trainer. My goals are pretty straightforward: I want to get stronger, slim down, and be able to do some pull-ups without flailing and looking like a sad little weakling. I have managed to get stronger over the past few months and the pull-ups are getting less tragic-looking. As for the weight, well… My strength trainer is a big nutrition buff. Shortly after I first started working with him, he urged me to write down everything I ate for about a week. I obliged and appalled him with my food log (I believe he referred to me as a “carboholic”). He made several recommendations (eat every three hours, don’t eat carbs until after my workouts, cut out fake sugars and stick with more natural foods) and told me to check back in a while. I was all gung-ho until the holidays hit, at which point I gained back what I had lost and chubbed up to my fattest weight ever. It was pretty depressing – I wouldn’t call myself “fat,” but I was definitely at my flabbiest. I checked back in with my strength trainer, who agreed that I looked a bit “chunkier” (sigh) and told me to start writing down my food again. He also bullied me into sharing my weight every week, so instead of my vague “I’m down a pound,” I’d have to start giving actual numbers. Crap. This week I turned in my food log and was told I had made a marked improvement in the slop I was shoving down my gullet. I’ve so far lost about 6 lbs but have a ways to go to hit my goal weight. I’m basically going for “skinniest I’ve been since I got my tonsils removed when I was sixteen” weight, only with more muscle mass and fewer popsicles. (It was the “subsist off popsicles and tea” diet, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t poop for a week. Damn was I skinny though!) The one thing that threw me for a loop was when I got my body composition tested. To me the fat percentage seemed inaccurate – it was about 4% higher than I expected and placed me in the “poor” category. Normally I wouldn’t think much of it, but I don’t look that fat, for crying out loud, and I do stay pretty active even if I do tend to eat utter garbage. Also, bear with me here as I introduce an example derived from VH1 of all places. I caught part of an episode of Celebrity Fit Club on TV this week, and one of the “celebrities” getting weighed in looked considerably chunkier than me but apparently had 2% less body fat. Granted, she was about 3 inches shorter than I am, but still. She was told that if she lost 20 lbs, her body fat would drop about 4% (I forget the exact number), yet my strength trainer told me that if I lost 20 lbs to hit my goal weight, I’d drop 10% of my body fat. That seems like a pretty big difference for two people with apparently similar body compositions and weight goals. This whole body composition nonsense kind of confuses me. Either way, I know what I want my goal weight and my body fat percentage to be, so I guess it doesn’t matter too much what the test says I’m currently at. All I know is that racing should be a bit easier when I’m hauling 20-25 fewer pounds through the water, on the bike and while I’m running. I’d...

Though the term is kind of douchy, I’d call myself an equal-opportunity “foodie.” Okay, more of a food lover, really. The word “foodie” has a pretentious air about it, while I’m content to eat just about anywhere so long as my meal is good. I love sketchy burrito joints just as much as $400 meals at Fleur de Lys, and street food is just as delicious as [insert fancy dish with truffles]. Every year I even make a pilgrimage to Taco Bell, stuff my face full of grade-E meat and experience instant regret and self loathing. It’s been a tradition of mine for years.