Plug his age, sex and height into a calorie calculator and Reid Coolsaet should be the size of a house.

For an average 32-year-old man standing 5-foot-8, the ideal energy intake would be 40 per cent less than Coolsaet actually consumes each day.

Of course, an average man doesn’t run the equivalent of five marathons a week.

And it’s that gruelling running load that has made the 140-pound Hamilton native — whose body-fat percentage sits at around 3 — Canada’s No. 1 distance runner going into this summer’s London Olympics.

“Compared to the guys I’m competing against at the Olympics, they were running a lot faster than me at earlier ages,” says Coolsaet, who won Sunday’s inaugural Yonge Street 10K by 3/10s of a second over Kip Kangogo of Lethbridge, Alta.

“My rise to whatever sort of success that I’ve had came with more hard work than a lot of other people and it came a bit later because it took time to build that aerobic base and stuff.”

In the months leading up to a race, Coolsaet will typically run 36 kilometres a day, broken up into legs of 23 kms in the morning and 13 in the evening.

“Once a week we will just do one long run which can be anywhere from 30 to 45K,” he says.

Together, these runs add up to more than five 42-km marathons a week, Coolsaet says.

To fuel that pneumatic pounding, Coolsaet typically takes in 3,500 calories a day, where most men his age and size would make do with 2,100.

And he basically burns up everything he downs.

“Probably even a little bit more,” he says. “I’ll start off right now at 140 pounds but by marathon race day . . . I’ll probably be down to 136.

“And the funny part is, I’m probably a bit heavier than a few of the other marathoners I’ll be competing against.”

Given his running regimen, Coolsaet says he could basically “eat anything” he wanted and still keep his rake-thin physique.

But at least 3,000 of the calories on his daily menu would pass Canada Food Guide muster.

“I eat a lot of food, but I try to make the bulk of it your vegetables, fruit, whole grain and meats,” he says. “I’m pretty big on cooking my own meals and not ordering out and doing frozen meals and crap like that.”

The top marathoner in Canada, Coolsaet sits third in the North American rankings. But because of the unmatched power of East African runners from countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, he tops out at 35th in the world.

With that success, it seems a little shocking that when he lines up in London, Coolsaet will be starting just the fifth competitive marathon of his life.

But this is not as unusual as it may sound, he says.

“It’s actually fairly common to do what I did,” says Coolsaet, who started his first marathon in 2009. “You kind of do the 10K for years and you don’t move up into the marathon until you’re really ready to hit it hard.”

He began running on the cross-country team at Hamilton’s Westdale Secondary School.

And for most of his world-class track career, he was a middle- and long- distance specialist, competing in events from 1,500 to 10,000 metres.

“But I always knew I’d run a marathon . . . just because I’m not that fast at the sprints,” says Coolsaet, who is currently training at altitude in Arizona. “But as the distance gets longer, I always get better.”

Coolsaet says the famous “wall” is the most difficult thing to overcome as a marathoner.

But there are actually two walls a runner can hit, only one of which has affected him.

“There’s a wall where you run out of fuel . . . and I’ve never experienced that in a marathon,” he says.

“The other wall . . . would be just the pounding and your legs get really tired. But that wall is not as bad — you can run through it and just tough up.”

Happily for Coolsaet, this wall has been coming later and later in his races.

“It keeps getting pushed back a little bit and one day I hope it gets pushed back to 42K.”

A University of Guelph marketing graduate, Coolsaet has given his life over almost completely to racing since he became a federally funded athlete in 2005.

“I pretty much pour everything into running right now,” he says. “I’m in the mindset that if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right.”

He hopes to put his marketing degree to work in the running industry after he hangs up his cleats.

Coolsaet’s nickname is Cold Neck, but it’s a completely concocted sobriquet.

“I actually told a story but it wasn’t even true, that a guy with a mullet called me Cold Neck for looking at his girlfriend,” Coolsaet says. “The guy with a mullet wouldn’t have a cold neck.”

Which part the story is untrue?

“All of it,” he says.