Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 - 10:08pm
Six pounds and all the richer
I train quite a bit for triathlons. This means that I workout between 6 and 10 times per week, for a total of 8 to 15 hours. It doesn’t always happen as planned, but I have managed to workout enough to transform myself significantly. (See for yourself)
What does all this have to do with An Event Apart you might ask? Well, my plan was to head to San Francisco and train at least three or four times while I was there — a couple of runs, a swim or two, and I wouldn’t fall far off my schedule, save for the day traveling home. Easy, right? Not so much.
I met up with Eric Meyer at SFO, headed to the hotel, checked in then went with Eric to eat. Once we were done that, we explored a small portion of San Francisco then headed back to the hotel. A short hour later, and we were on our way to the speaker dinner. Follow that with:
- two days of the best food I’ve ever eaten at a conference
- social drinks and good conversation with Daniel Burka, Ben Bykowski of optiem, Andrew and Arquay of CBS interactive, Greg Storey, Luke Dorny and many more at the media temple opening party
- more drinks at the AEA post festivities at the House of Shields with Hillary, Wes, Jeremy and Lauren of objectadjective
- more food and drink at 21st amendment with Ruth, Dan, Ryan, Ethan (wish you guys could have stayed longer) and…
Well… you get the picture.
Combine the food, drink and time spent in sessions when I thought I might have a chance to workout can be best summarized thusly:
Total workouts while in San Francisco = 0
Total pounds gained while in San Francisco = 6
Yes, 6.
And all the richer? Well, that has everything to do with the richness of the conference experience itself. I speak at quite a few conferences and I’m not often able to make the time to see all of the other speakers/sessions. This time, I did. I couldn’t help it — I wanted to be there for all of the sessions. All of the speakers were engaging, the audience was intelligent, eager and switched on and the overall organization of the conference was impeccable.
antoine butler
August 28, 2008
Wow, 6lbs! In what, 3 days? I give you credit though, for having such a “normally” strict work out routine and sticking to it more often than not. FedEx me a dose of that motivation, please.
But hey, a few days in a new (or not so new) city calls for a little excess. I expect to put on a few in Chicago (AEA)… then a few more in Vegas myself!
Ethan
August 28, 2008
Seriously. Remind me to never, ever complain about my oh-so-grueling five hours/week of working out.
You, sir, are a machine.
Stephanie Hobson
August 29, 2008
I had seconds of every desert they served there and more beer in two nights than I normally do in a month. But it *was* a great conference and I met great people too. The weight will go, the experience will stay :)
Andrea Hill
August 31, 2008
The same thing happened to me last week when I was visiting my family! I gained 4 lbs in 3 days. The good thing is that once the workouts recommenced, the …um… stored fuel was used quickly.
p.s. I love the name objectadjective and I’m glad you linked to it!
Neill Harmer
September 2, 2008
I totally here you on this. I had the same type of weekend last week. Had to go to a friends for his wedding. Out of town, outside routine, LOTS of heavenly food, etc. Being on a strict, and I mean strict, intake of food (low calorie, 1800-2000 a day, around 1500mg of sodium, etc) and working out at least 2 times a day. Came back to check the scale… and I had gained 13 lbs after three days out of town. I was like OMG. But I’m positive it was from the salt intake I had taken in, lack of mass amounts of water I usually drink, and doing NO exercise (I don’t consider walking exercise at this point). The good news was, after a few days of being back to normal that water shed off fast.
I bet at this point you’ve dropped that weight back off being back to normal?
Great before and after tho!
Jeremy Anderson
September 3, 2008
If it makes you feel any better, those two days of AEA took a toll on even us locals, but man, some good stuff.
It was an enormous pleasure chatting over drinks.
feather
September 5, 2008
Just a quick note to update you all — I still haven’t lost the 6 pounds yet, but I am closer to the weight I was before AEA SF. Just have to keep on working out and not eating so many sweets :)