Day 5, Week 4: How to gain weight while training for a marathon

This morning I did some delicious PHA training with Cathe again as part of my Wednesday workout alternation of PHA and Boot Camp from her Strong & Sweaty series.  So, I've talked about this one before (it's glutetastic!), so I won't bore everyone with another review of how awesome it is.

Instead, I want to talk about fat.  Specifically, I want to talk about how I gained more of said fat while training for marathons.  Please review the pictures below, taken at the 2016 Austin Marathon where we got heart-shaped bibs because Valentine's day marathon that year:

When I got those race photos, I wanted to cry instead of laugh at how I ruined someone else's photo by posing stupidly behind them.  It was these photos that made me realize how much weight I had gained since starting to train for marathons about 4 years ago.  To give you a reference point, here's what I looked like at my very first marathon:

Wait...wait...that's not it.  How'd that pic up there get in here?  Where's that first marathon picture....oh here it is:

So, like any reasonable person, you're probably asking yourself MY GOD WOMAN WTF HAPPENED? OK, so maybe you're not asking yourself that. But that's what I asked myself, anyway, when I saw those Austin Marathon pics.  After finishing asking myself that question and receiving absolutely no answer (sometimes I'm a jerk like that) I went upstairs and got on the scale.

And that's when the number on the scale almost had my eyeballs popping out of my head.  I had gained 35 pounds since that first marathon.  Thirty.  Five.  Three tens and a five.  Seven groups of five.  Five groups of seven.  No matter which way I grouped those pounds, they were all grouped on me, sometimes in groups that made unsightly bulges around my midsection.

And I didn't like it.  Not one bit.  But I knew how it happened.  Let me give you the steps on how to gain weight while training for marathons:

1. Train for a marathon.
2. Eat crap like entire bags of chocolate candies, spinach dip, french fries, but have an occasional salad to round out your food pyramid.
3. Eat all the time because, you know, marathon training and you'll just burn it off later so you can eat what you want.
4. Gain 35 pounds.
5. Run your goal marathon and don't get the time you're shooting for because the extra weight is slowing you down and you haven't actually eaten any food with real nutrients to fuel your body.

I've already told you how I fixed it.  If you don't believe me, look at this 2017 Austin Marathon pic:

But the problem came about because I had conned myself into believing this popular weight-loss lie:

"If I'm working out all the time I can eat whatever I want."

Nope.  Nope nope nope.  Nopeity nope. Not true.  Eating matters MORE in planning for being the weight at which you want to be.  Don't get me wrong - I love running and I love working out.  But doing it all the time fooled me into believing I was burning TONS of calories so I could shovel TONS of food (and really nutritionally void craptastic food) into my face and not gain an ounce.  Those pictures showed me that I was a fool to believe that. 

And this picture shows I'm just an all-around fool:

Kids...it's lesson time:

• PHA training with Cathe is awesome and glutetastic.  Go buy the DVD already.
• It's true: if you eat whatever you want while training for marathons, you will gain weight.
• Really, it's true.  Believe me.  Did you look at the before and after pictures in the post?
• Excuses do suck.

Tomorrow's workout:  5 mile tempo.  Will she do it?  Tune in and find out.