I am Athlete, hear me roar!

Yesterday's workout:

After getting up at 6:20 and driving 70K in a near-blizzard to get to my workout, I did the following:

3-hour indoor bike ride. On one side of me, an Elite-level 20-something cutie named James. He races at the ITU level (i.e, the same guys who go to the Olympics, although he has not yet made the Canadian Olympic Team). On the other side of me, a 60-year-old, 4-time Ironman and his 5-time Ironman age-group winning wife. Although I'll never race at the ITU level, I hope I'm still doing Ironman at 60!

60 minutes of the hardest core workout I have ever attempted. And I say "attempted" because I couldn't do all the reps of the workout as I am just not strong enough yet. I'm only mildly sore today, but I know that by tomorrow I'll be in agony. Don't make me laugh, OK?

60-min swim workout. Since I was so bagged from the other workouts, I kind of sandbagged this one and only swam about 1200m in total. I still managed to stay under/around 1 min/50m, so that's good.

I was so bagged when I got home at 6PM that I just got Swiss Chalet and called it a night.

I didn't log or journal any of my food yesterday, but whatever I ate, I'm sure I more than burned that in exercise.

Today's workout:

16K run. Temp, -12C with wind chill of -20C. Brrr! Considering I ran IN SHORTS on Thursday, it was a bit of a brutal awakening. We ended our run downtown at a coffee shop and then took the streetcar back to the store. Well, in the 2-3 minutes I spent standing in the shelter waiting for the streetcar to come, I completely froze up and my fingers actually turned white! They didn't thaw out until I was in the shower later.

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Flo made an interesting comment in her post yesterday. She said, "I am an athlete" and (I'm paraphrasing) that makes her different than all the other weight watchers. No truer words were ever written!

I've known this about myself for a while, but never really knew how to make the distinction. Or even how important it is to make that distinction. My nutritional needs are very different than someone who does 30 minutes of aerobic activity 3-4 days a week. In a normal week, I work out 5-6 days for at least an hour at a time, and much longer than that (2-4hrs) on the weekends. That's why I've always said that I can't "diet" while in heavy training mode. I need all the calories I can get!

My goal is to lose up to 15 more pounds by the end of March, because after that my workout mileage and intensity is going to ramp up significantly and I won't be able to focus on weight loss at that mileage/intensity level.

So, if anyone has any suggestions on how this athlete can lose weight, I'm open to hearing them!

I've also started to make this distinction with respect to dating. I am not "active", nor am I interested in dating someone who is simply "active". I am an athlete. I train. A lot! I'm interested in dating another athlete, not someone who's idea of activity is "rollerblading on the boardwalk". That might sound harsh, but this is a HUGE part of my life, including my social life. Anyone who does not already lead that kind of life (or is actively trying to get into it) is only going to feel left out of mine. I know of two couples (off the top of my head) who broke up after a couple of months because the other person thought their partner spent too much time running/training and socializing with other runners.

That's not to say that I don't also enjoy other things. But someone who would rather sleep late on a Sunday morning, then head over to the Home Despot to look at lawnmowers is not really going to "get" me.

Oh yes, and this very well could all be a huge rationalization/excuse on my part. Sigh.