It’s pizza time! Day 1 of pizza in the race weight project. Ice cream was fun, but it feels really good to be eating savory food again!

It was a public holiday today so I got a decent 3 hour bike ride in. I did a “marginally successful” FTP test and actually got blown off the road by the strong gusts of wind! It was also an opportunity to test out my experimental “1X chainring” – this is the use of a single chainring up front, instead of two. It’s pretty common in the mountain bike world, and the benefits are a) simplicity b) potentially more aerodynamic because there is no front derailleur sticking out into the wind. I’m running a 56 tooth chainring which is larger than standard (a normal large chainring is 53 teeth), but that enables me to still pedal on fast sections of road where others might spin out.

I ended the day with some time at the park with the kids, followed by a heat prep session at the gym (you can read more about my heat prep protocol here). I’ve been experimenting with extending the duration of my sauna sessions (which I don’t recommend unless you are very sure that you’re in good health; be sure you are aware of sauna safety before you go and sit in a sauna for a long time!). My usual protocol is to start heat prep about 3 weeks before a race, building up to 30 mins per session. But right now I’m experimenting with doing it more regularly throughout the year, and slowly building up more and more tolerance for the heat. 

When I got home, I wasn’t even hungry but made a small pizza for Michelle and I to share, and another one for the kids to share. However, Michelle didn’t like the pizza and neither did the kids, so I ended up eating both of them. That means I started the pizza phase with a big bang of 3 pizzas in one day! 

Daily totals: 4248 calories (598g carbs, 128g fat, 154g protein)
Taking my calorie expenditure into account, that’s a slight calorie surplus, which is a good idea every now and then just to make sure you’re not running at a continual deficit for extended periods of time.

Finally, I’m not usually a fan of cover versions, but check out this young lady Jasmine Thompson – amazing!

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this post is a part of the raceweight project, a “calories in, calories out” experiment to see if I can get to my racing weight eating mainly “bad” foods
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