March Too Much

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Blowing off the fat.

I have an interesting aside to one of my runs to tell you about. This morning I did something I had long wanted to do but had thus far failed to actually do. It was a simple matter: I weighed myself, completed a 12.7km run, and then weighed myself again, making allowance for the precisely one litre of water that I drank in between the two weigh-ins. Now, I sweat easily and profusely, and I expected to have shed about as much weight from sweat as the water that I drank during and immediately after the run i.e. around 1kg of weight. I was more than just a little astonished therefore to find I weighed 800 grams less than before the run. In other words, allowing for the 1 litre (1kg) of water, I lost 1.8 kg during the 12.7km run!

Of course, most of that will have been reinstated through normal hydration, but it's interesting to see just how much fluid you can lose during a run and why it's important to replace it.

As my mate and science media guru Dr Karl (below) is quick to point out, sweat does not equate to fat loss, as the majority (84%) of burned fat is exhaled as CO2, and the rest is expended as sweat, and not given off as heat, as I had thought. So you need to run a hell of a lot further than 12.7km if you want to shed any substantial amounts of fat. The majority of your sweat needs to be replaced with water and electrolytes fairly quickly of course.

I'm now properly into my new training schedule, and it's all going very well, thank you very much. I've upped my short runs to between 12-15km and thus covering quite a respectable weekly distance, and more importantly, am spending a decent chunk of time on my feet each week, and feeling fantastic for doing so. I'm not in PB territory yet by any means, but I feel I'm in with a chance. At what distance remains to be seen.

March is already shaping up to be a great month for me (touch wood). I aim to keep it so.



         Dr Karl Kruszelnicki shamelessly plugs my book.