The Olympics: On 800 Calories a Day

The 25-year-old Mariash has been a runner for nearly as long as she can remember, and began competing in triathlons in 1998. Like many female athletes, she strictly limited her food -- dipping as low as 800 calories a day -- to improve her performance by losing weight.

But her results were just the opposite.

"I used to wake up really tired," she said. "I used to take a lot of time off training because I was so exhausted."

No shit. Holy crap! 800 calories???

"In high school track, we all starved. That's not how you get to the Olympics," she said. "Now I can train harder, farther. Things I was afraid of, like a four-hour bike ride, are easy now."

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In Which the Protagonist Returns

Got back home to Chicago after reasonable airport delays and promptly fell into bed. I caught my mom's cold, and it's a crappy one. Had a great time spending Christmas at the Oregon Coast, at the Goonie beach.



It was incredibly relaxing, which is just want I needed. I was pretty burned out on everything. Got to catch up with a couple friends and did a lot of shopping. All my clothes are too big, and a belt will only get you so far.

Looks like I won't quite reach my book deadline, but I blame that on the fact that my computer crashed and I'm now using a backup laptop whose internet connection doesn't work for some reason, and swapping files back and forth without gmail is a bitch. Wrote out the final outline for the last part of the book so I have a map that ties up all the loose ends. Should bang out a lot this weekend.

Anyway, back to Chicago, piles of half-melted snow, but at least it's 30 degrees out instead of 10. Sorely in need of sleep and grocery shopping tonight.

Because of the dead computer, things may be quiet here until I can get it fixed or get a new one.

So it goes.