Pretending I'm an Olympic marathon runner.

According to Weight Watchers' eTools, morbidly obese exercisers like me earn 10 activity points in a 40 minute step class. This has always seemed high to me, but step class isn't easy, so maybe it's true. On the other hand, I figure I only earn 5 activity points at boot camp, but I feel way more SPENT at boot camp than I do after step class, so I don't really know what's what.

Inspired by watching yesterday's Olympic coverage of the men's marathon, I decided to see how many activity points I could earn by, say, running a marathon. I searched for "running" and found a variety of choices, all specifying mile times. My 14 minute mile was not represented, but as soon as I eek my time down to a 9 minute mile, eTools can help me calculate my efforts. But since I'm an OLYMPIC MARATHON RUNNER in this scenario, I picked the 5.5 minute mile, which is still slower than the winner's pace (GO KENYA!) and entered in 126 minutes of activity (the winner's approximate time) and guess how many points he would get??

Go ahead, guess!

125?

74?

58?

LOWER.

33.

THIRTY-THREE MEASLY POINTS for running 5 miles an hour for over two hours?!?

That's crazy talk.

That's the equivalent of a fat person's WW points for the day (I specify "fat person" because my friend Big D gets something insane like 15 points because she's borderline too skinny for WW but I admire her for taking care of 5 pounds before they turn into 50...and I wish I could rewind back to 2nd grade and get rid of the first five pounds when I had the chance). I don't know how many calories are in 33 points, but I'd guess about 1800, which doesn't seem like enough ESPECIALLY considering the activity point calculator is assuming MY morbidly obese ass is the one running the marathon. I'm sure the 112 pound Kenyan winner would earn less than that.

Anyway. There you have it: My nutritional analysis of Olympic marathon running.