Racing Weight

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you are carrying 15 pounds of excess weight. It could be fat, maybe muscle, whatever. But this weight isn't contributing positively to your running performance in any way. Now, imagine that you are free of this weight. You have suddenly lost 15 pounds of unwanted baggage. You feel lighter on your feet. Your belly no longer feels as if though a jug of water is sloshing around inside of it while you are doing your speed workouts. Heat is transferred from your body more efficiently, allowing blood to flow to working muscles instead of being directed to your skin to dissipate the metabolic heat waste that you are creating. Paces that used to leave you breathless now feel easy. You are free...
This is how I felt going into my senior year of college. The weight loss was not sudden, but had occurred throughout a summer, and could directly be attributed to my diet (I had a low calorie breakfast and lunch, then ate as much as I felt like for supper) as well as an increased amount of exercise volume (to compensate for not being able to run- I had an athletic hernia- I was biking about 90 minutes a day, a load that was significantly larger than the 55-60 mpw average that I had been putting in running the previous summers). Coming into the season, I was worried that I would not be fit, as I probably put in less than 100 miles total that summer. However, running quickly came back to me (a first, as other times that I had been sidelined by injury and forced to compensate by cross-training, I felt out of shape when coming back), and at one point in the season, I was our number two runner. I finished running nearly a minute PR in the 8k, and had the best indoor track season of my collegiate career. Somehow, the aerobic capacity gained from biking, along with the lightened work load thanks to the lost weight, I was able to set a new standard of athletic fitness for myself.
Fast forward to the present. I currently feel like I am still carrying excess weight. At 6 feet and 168 pounds, I am what you would describe as a large runner (at least for the level that I aspire to be). I mean, Chris Solinsky weighs about the same as me, but is also a couple inches taller, and he is described as being a very large elite runner. I realize that to continue to bring my weight down to what I believe to be my ideal racing weight, I will probably have to lose muscle. But I have muscle that is not supporting my running to lose. In the next couple of months, I plan to significantly bring down my weight to be a lean, fit racing machine. And I am blogging about this so that I will have people to keep me accountable.
To attain this goal, I plan to use vegetables, fruits and lean meat as the base of my diet, supplementing with small amounts of potatoes, seeds and nuts, and to eat sweets and grains sparingly. I will limit myself to a single glass of wine (I will indulge in alcohol socially). :) Perhaps the biggest adversaries that I will face will be the chocolate/candy bowl that frequents the dining table just outside of our lab, as well as the free food that comes with seminars. It is my hope that by posting about my progress and success (or, if my willpower falters, failure), I will be held accountable, and make steady progress toward my goals.

Blaze on!