The Devil and the Donut

This one took some willpower. Friday morning my son was expected to bring two dozen donuts to class. I was more than happy to oblige with my paternal duty, but heading off to the donut shop I felt like I was heading into a runner's "Sodom and Gomorrah." I'm four weeks into my Boston training program and donuts are not on the plan. The only donut on the schedule is the donut-shaped "zero" on Friday's mileage chart. I am also fresh off the holidays where I completely fell "off the wagon" in terms of diet. I was on the sea(see)food diet. I saw it I ate it. As a result, I'd ballooned up to almost 15 pounds over my Portland Marathon race weight (more on that later.)

You get the picture. With a weakness for sweets, sending me to go get donuts was like Colonel Sanders watching the chicken farm or Lindsey Lohan babysitting your teenage girls. Wanting my son to impress the classmates, I wasn't going with any old grocery store donut--I headed off to Lamar's donuts. The creme de la creme of donuts. I walked into the store and the aroma of freshly baked donuts filled my senses. I saw rows and rows of freshly baked donuts; sprinkles, glaze, old-fashioned and my achilles heel; the white fluff filled chocolate Long John. The donut temptress proceeded to build two boxes of a variety of the temptations.

What harm would there be in ordering a "baker's dozen" and wolfing one down I wondered. How 'bout I get the Long John and split it with my son, or scarf one down inside before I left?

I stuck with twenty four of the sugar inner tubes and tossed them in the back seat of my car ironically next to my gym bag. The devil on the right shoulder said, noone will miss one out of 24...you're running later today aren't you? I'm not asking for a medal, but to "cut to the quick," the seal on each of the two Lamar's box of dozen donuts was not cracked as I threw them into my wife's trunk when I got home. Curse you ya little circle bastards! The only donut that day was the zero miles as a reward for "rest day." I rewarded myself with a granola bar--not exactly a white fluff filled Long John.

I was feeling all proud of that day and into the weekend. Sunday was a family birthday brunch and there on the table was Mr. Lamar's evil twin, Krispy Kreme. I caved and succumbed to the pressure and gobbled up two of them like a dog scarfing up a steak dropped on the floor.

The score read; Donuts one, Ty one (on.)

A footnote to the blog. I've been reading Matt Fitzgerald's "Racing Weight; How to get Lean for Peak Performance." He has a chapter on off season conditioning and weight gain. By dumb luck (and due to injury,) I focused on strength training the couple months between training and taking time off from running. Matt indicates that it's common to gain as much as 8% of your race body weight in your "off season." By Matt's standards, I was within my rights to put the weight on that I did over the holidays. I'm working on a mind shift to avoid the kids' junk temptations and increase the healthy snacks as I begin week five of my Boston Marathon training.

"I think I can, I think I can..."