Your Fastest Weight

All runners, cyclists, swimmers, rowers, biathletes (my favorite Winter Olympians), etc. think about that. What is my fastest weight?

The answer, according to the NYT, is that losing too much weight is bad. Great. But how much is too much?

Any serious athlete (or anyone who reads the article) knows the answer. (I will discuss that more below.) But to understand why I love the article so much, you need to understand (1) that I love irony and (2) the structure Gina Kolata likes to use for her "Personal Best" columns. (Most of the articles I post are from that column.)

Every week, Kolata seeks to overthrow (or at least to revise) conventional wisdom. And the article today is no different. The title says it all: "Slimmer Doesn't Always Mean Fitter." That does seem to contradict what most people believe: most people think lighter is faster. (How many runners are trying to gain weight?) Now read the article. Consider any of the half dozen examples. Take Dathan Ritzenheim. He is 5 feet 8 inches. His fastest weight? 122 pounds.

Are you laughing? If you are, then you know what any serious athlete does: for a normal person to reach his or her fastest weight in a healthy way is basically impossible. The volume and intensity of training required is simply too hard for most to sustain. (And the qualifier "in a healthy way" is not some sop to those crusading against eating disorders. You will never be your fastest if you do not eat.)

So that is why I love the article. Kolata seeks to explode a myth (lighter is faster), but all her evidence suggests that, for almost all of us, lighter is faster.

For the record, I am 1 percent taller than Ritz. I am 22 percent heavier.