Clear Liquids Only

All freaking day. This should be fun. Then nothing at all after midnight, not even water. And of course, I drew the afternoon straw for my time in the OR, so I get to starve all morning tomorrow too. But it's all for the greater good. That switch to black coffee is looking like a good decision today though. I've made it stick too. I actually enjoy it, though not as much, which has helped me cut down consumption. All good.

Speaking of consumption, I passed two months of meticulous food logging. No real surprises. In 64 days, 194,261 calories went on the books, an average of 3035/day. According to the tool I'm using, my running and cycling workouts have totaled 51,703 calories burned, leaving a balance of 2227/day, against an estimated BMR of 1800. The tool does not allow for entry of calories burned during other types of exercise, such as gym training, and it also gives me a much higher number (especially for cycling) than the Polar OwnCalS does. The tool also only works by distance, so for cyclocross, it's useless. What I've done is entered phantom running workouts along with the cycling time entered to bring the total up to what the Polar gives me.

Of course it's all estimates, but I've been pretty careful and over time I think a lot of the up and down inaccuracies get averaged out. The values for foods are always suspect, packaged or not. Restaurant food is nearly incalculable IMHO, but one of the positives that came out of the recent years for me is that I've put restaurant eating behind me for the most part. At any rate, my body weight dropped about five pounds over this time period, meaning I'm managing a deficit of ~220/day, and since I've been very conscious of maintaining protein intake and concurrently doing strength training, I think most of the weight loss was fat. My body weight is now equal to what it was when I entered the second half of my life 23 years ago. I think I'm as lean or leaner than I was when I was 30 years old and at the peak of my cycling fitness. Interestingly, I weighed six or seven pounds more then than I do now, so old age has taken away some muscle for sure.

The rest of the year is going to be break time. After tomorrow I'll need to stay off the bike seat for a bit anyway. Hopefully the snow will all melt and we'll be able to run someplace other than the middle of the street. My annual training totals didn't end up too impressive this year, for various reasons. 305 hours on the bike, and 75 running puts the grand total 20-40 hours short of plan, but overall the year was very positive and I'm pleased with where I am going into 2008. More on this later. For now I need to conserve my strength. This apple juice just ain't cutting it... Thanks for reading.