After a last race at November 1st I took one month off. For the first time I’ve decided to stay in US for couple months in staid of going home to a cold Ukrainian winter straight after an end of a season. I use to stay in Clermont, Florida, a great place for winter training, but nothing else to do there except of training. And an idea to travel for a little bit wasn’t the bad one. A first trip I took was the trip to Atlanta, GA to see my Ukrainian friends. For four days I have so much fun with a girl friend (I miss girls company sometime), we’d done so much: we took two classes of Bikram Yoga, that was new for me and I really liked it, although not every pose came out well during my first class; next thing we did was a shopping, you can’t find as good person as my friend Roksolana for a girl’s shopping; then we went to visit other friends and went to a park with them kids.

After that I spent another week in Clermont, before I’ve planned my next trip. I went to Arizona to watch a last Ironman race in 2008 and to visit my home stay family-friends from 2007 year. Next flight I took was the flight to Las Vegas, I never been there before. I don’t think I would go to Vegas by myself, I don’t think it would be fun. But my friend, Oliver from Germany stayed in Vegas for couple days. It’s hard to imaging better time than I had for those 3 days in Las Vegas: a helicopter flight, a Great Canyon trip, driving around city and walking around old down town.

After those trips it was time to start training again, get my fitness back at, then build some running and swimming mileage. And to my opinion a good place to start doing it is Los Alamos, NM, one of my top places in US. And now I am almost one week of training, still feel unshaped, but I keep it easy I have time.

You can find hundreds of articles online or in magazines on how to avoid the off season weight gain. This post will address none of that and instead focus on how to gain mass during the off season. Here are some simple rules on how to increase your off season weight.

1. Reward yourself: For anything… no matter how small, you’ve earned it.

2. Increase the number of times you eat per day: Don’t make any meals smaller, just try to eat one or more of the same sized meals per day. You can even try to have a meal of purely chocolate.

3. Donuts: Join the co-workers for a few. For a healthy work environment, competing with your coworkers is always beneficial, so why try to have a donut eating contest at work?

4. Get cable: there is no better way or excuse to plant yourself on the couch for endless hours of no activity.

5. Surf the web more often: It brought you to read this article, didn’t it? Sitting on you’re a$$ will only help to slow down your metabolic rate (unless you are getting excited about power meter posts).

6. Alcohol: preferably beer.

7. Add extras to your favorite caffeinated drinks: Double-doubles, triple-triples… frappacinos… you get it.

8. All you can eat buffets: this is a great chance to eat things that you would have never ordered off the menu in the first place, like chicken balls or cheesecake and blueberry pie (i.e. double dessert helpings)

9. Slurpees: These sugar drinks are simple but an effective way to gain weight. Please take caution, as slurpee headaches are exceptionally painful.

10. Anything worth eating is worth eating deep fried.