Counting Calories

There was a discussion I participated in some years ago between a couple of high school buddies along with one of their idiot wives and myself where we were pondering the possibility of past lives. One of my buddies said the idea of past lives and reincarnation was a farce and not worth discussion. My other buddy said that he had no thought on the subject. I don't think he understood the question. The idiot wife said she was a princess in a former life until she was unjustly dethroned by an evil stepmother. I said she was confusing the plot from Cinderella with her former life and she said I wasn't listening and I was stupid. She was technically correct on both points, but I think she too wasn't listening and missed my point. If everybody has had a past life, then you don't get to choose to be a princess, or in my case if I did have a past life, which I might have if I was asserting a newly found affiliation with Hinduism, then I don't get to be a secret spy or a knight or Abraham Lincoln. If I did have a past life, I was a peasant. Everybody was a peasant. Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the human population for the three thousand years has been a peasant. So if you decide to switch to Hinduism and therefore validate your past life dream with divine authorization, you better know you are a peasant, through and through. Peasant you were and peasant you will ever be.

What does that have to do with triathlons? Just this. The odds are against you. If you think you are going to win, you aren't. If you think you can run a sub 10 hour Ironman, you can't. Pro triathletes do it, you can't. Well, you probably can't. It's pretty hard to do and very few can do it. The odds are against you.

Today, we rode like six hours then had a late breakfast at the Original Pancake House. So lets see, I burned max calories for about six hours.  Lets say that rounded out to 800 calories per hour, so its 4800 calories. During that workout, I ate four gels and a energy bar and a coke and a hot chocolate, lets say a thousand calories. The OPH stop was good for a thousand calories of bacon and eggs and pancakes. Then I get home, eat five cookies at fifty calories each followed by dinner.  I had seconds, so lets call that another thou. I am short about fifteen hundred calories, which is awesome because I will drop a pound. Now, I happen to know that there is a bucket of vanilla ice cream in the freezer. It calls to me. I hear it now; ice cream, you are a siren and you call to me. I must answer.  That pound I was gonna lose?  Not today.

14 days left.