That Winter Five Pounds

There is not a runner in our running group who has not gained at least five pounds over the winter, and most of us are a little worried about it.  Will this little bulge above the belt stay with me from now on?  That age-old, tested formula comes to mind:  two seconds per mile per pound.  That is the amount of time over distance one can expect to gain by losing weight (or lose by gaining weight), down to the optimum weight, below which diminishing returns can be expected.   You can do the math yourself - that is a huge amount of time whether you are running a 5-K or a marathon.  Even the current issue of Runner's World which came yesterday is called the "Weight Loss Issue," and features an article optimistically entitled "Run Your Way Lean."  On the cover is a woman having absolutely no fat and displaying very well-developed abs.

I am not worried.  I have been a runner for a long time, after all, and I know that I can gain an extraordinary amount of weight, especially when that December post-marathon binging segues smoothly into the Christmas holidays.  And it all starts to melt like a lump of butter on a hot griddle when serious training begins, like double-digit-miles and hill training.  

Christopher Robin nodded. 'Then there's only one thing to be done,' he said. 'We shall have to wait for you to get thin again.' 'How long does getting thin take?' asked Pooh anxiously. 'About a week I should think.' 

Well, a bit longer than that.