Why It Matters

“Nothing can beat the CRR of the Open Corsa EVO CX II”

“Tuesday's ride put me at -23 TSB, I need to back down a bit for this part of the season.”

“There's no real reason to race that 5k, I need 50 seconds for the next VDOT and that's not happening in two weeks.”

“I got you a 2010 team GXP BB to go with your new crank.”

These are all small parts of conversations I've had in the last week. Living the life of a triathlete, chatting with other athletes, leads to a lot of conversations just like this. Bike mechanics, running, swim drills, and the stuff that goes with swimming, biking, and running, occupies are scarce free time. That's ok. It's fun, it's interesting, it keeps my mind as engaged as my body in this demanding lifestyle. It's a healthy outlet. It's a bonding opportunity. I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's more to being an athlete than training and polishing your bike though. Sometimes I forget that, but this weekend I was reminded in a big way.

Most Saturdays I wake up, eat some oats, do a bike workout, take a shower, and then get on with life. But there was something bigger on the agenda for last Saturday. Since the previous week, my six year old son William had been asking for me to take him to the track to run. He's been running the kids runs at our local 5ks, and he's really caught the running bug, to the point that he decided he wanted to practice.

By the time I was off the bike on Saturday, William had his running clothes on. We had lunch. “Dad, I'm going to eat good food so I can run really fast today,” he annouced. “That's a great idea, what do you think you should eat?,” I asked. “Umm, apples, bananas, and probably not ice cream,” he said. “That's all pretty good stuff,” I said. “And ice cream is okay sometimes too,” I added, “especially after really long runs.” William smiled and asked “Like 50 miles?” “Yes, I answered, especially after 50 miles.”  Apparently he's an aspiring ultra runner...

A few minutes later we were at the track. Like any kid, William only knows one way to run. All out! And that kid is fast. We would slow down to a trot every now and then, but as soon as someone was anywhere near us, he was determined to run them down. We had run about 4 laps on the indoor track when I told him that 9 laps was a mile. After that, it was on. He was determined to run a mile. So we did. And we learned about pacing along the way!

My 6 year old has a better handle on eating, and can run a faster mile, than I did at 30. He loves his chocolate chip cookies, don't get me wrong. But there is room for cookies and fast miles in life.  And after all that running, we had some cookies and played some playstation. There is room in this life for relaxing on the couch on a Saturday afternoon too.

Living the life of a triathlete has probably saved my life by giving me something healthy to throw my type A personality into, but if that weren't enough it now allows me to lead by example for my son. Sharing a run with him Saturday meant sharing lessons on pacing yourself, balancing work, and play, and making good food choices. It meant bonding with him, and lots of quality time.

So, it's monday now. I'm still talking about gear ratios and training stress scores, but my run with William is still at the front of my mind. I won't see him again until thursday, but he's already asking about our next run, and that's why it all matters.

The Off Season

So what have I been up to this off season?  I’ve been busy!   I’m getting revved up for the final push to Ironman Wisconsin.  I’ve been building towards this goal for around 3 years now, and it seems like the pieces are all finally falling into place.

General Training

I’m approaching training in a somewhat untraditional way this year.  I’ve built a lot of intensity in and lowered my volume considerably.  I’ve been using Endurance Nation coaching to help me with this plan.  It appears that I’ll be coming into this season a good deal faster because of it.  It’s been rough though, all that intensity is…well…intense…

Medical Stuff

The intensity plus the cold resulted in the discovery that I have exercise induced asthma.  After steelhead last year I had a bit of an asthma attack, although I didn’t really know what that was at the time.  This winter I had another, more serious asthma attack.  A trip to the doctor later I’m now “fixed” with an inhaler.  It was a bit scary at the time, but it’s very controllable.  Life moves on. 

I’m also dealing with some biomechanical stuff related to the knee repair that I had done when I was huge and fell in the snow.  More on that later as it shakes out…

Bike Fitting

I recently went to visit Get a Grip Cycles in Chicago for a professional bike fit.  They spent a bunch of time looking at my flexibility, anatomy, and goals and put me on a fit bike.  Then they put me on a fit bike and did some motion capture video analysis to really get my fit dialed in.  They did good work, and I’m more comfortable than ever on Karma (my Cervelo P3).

Swimming

I’ve been working hard, and not so hard, on my swimming.  All the intensity in my bike/run training has really left me wiped out.  A lot of the folks training with EN stop swimming during the off season because of stress involved with their bike/run training, and the “return on investment” of off season swimming.  I stopped for a while myself.  I missed it though, so I made a compromise and took my swimming back to the drawing board.  I stopped pounding out yards, and started doing entire swim sets of drills.  Drills, drills, and more drills.  Now I can bilaterally breath, swim with much less effort, and swim a bit faster as well.  It was time well spent, and it helped keep the weight off this winter!

The Other Stuff

Life has been very busy, and there isn’t really much time for all that much “other” stuff, but this off season has found me a little extra time and I’ve been having some good times.  I’m cooking my way through all the recipes in the book “Food Matters” by Mark Bittman (what an awesome book!!!).  I’ve also managed to finish all three God Of War games, Heavy Rain, and a few other titles on my PS3.  I’m really working to find some balance in all of this, and so far I’m winning…but it’s a fight!  Healthy is more than just triathlon though. 

St. Pats 5k. 22:09

The race season has officially began.  Lana and I ran in the Bloomington/Normal St. Patrick's Day 5k today.

I had a pretty good day.  I ran 22:08, improving on last year's 25:03.  I've been working hard this winter on my run, and it seems as if that work is starting to pay off.  I pushed pretty hard today.  In the last 800m I gave myself permission to vomit, and started wondering what that Jimmy John's I ate for lunch was going to look like on the pavement.

I'll have more about the off season coming up in my next post, I have lots to report but that warrants it's own post. 

My plan is to run my daniels E pace for IMOO, so today I earned the right to run a 9:28/mi marathon on the big day.  Can I hold that together?  Who knows, but it's at least a target to shoot at.

Would you bet your life on it?

Something that's been on my mind lately... 

American's love diets and "lifestyle" plans.  Low carb, high carb, primal, paleo, no gluten, high fat, intermittent fasting.  There are so many opinions, bits of pseudo science and books out there it's become a (grim) hobby for me to keep up with them. 

The Next Great Thing

One of the latest iterations of "the next great thing" is the HCG diet.  Here's how it works. 

1.  You get weekly injections of HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), a hormone created by the placenta in a pregnant woman in order to signal the hypothalamus to mobilize fat stores. 

2.  You eat a 500 calorie a day diet.  

Does #1 do anything? Honestly, it's irrelevant because #2 is both unsustainable and dangerous.  If you're fat enough to need this diet, your fat enough to need behavior modification.  A quick fix isn't that. 

Studying China

I know someone else that is convinced, after having read "The China Study" that consuming anything outside of a vegan diet is poison, and that consuming a vegan diet is all that is necessary to solve all your health problems. 

Lets put the logical fallacies present in that statement aside for just a moment.  This person doesn't have the discipline to sustain a completely plant based diet.  They try and fail over and over, and the weight problem that will eventually kill them remains. 

There are some great reasons to adopt a vegan diet.  Food intolerances, convictions regarding the treatment of animals, or even the environmental issues around animal consumption are great reasons... And while most vegans eat very healthy, eating healthy and eating vegan aren't the same. 

There is junk food for every eating pattern.

Betting Your Life On It

I'm not going to log my food, thats way to extreme!

I'm not going to exercise every day, thats way to extreme!

I hear stuff like this all the time.  And you know, for someone that can manage their weight and be healthy, maybe food logging and daily exercise is more than they need. 

But I have to ask...  Is it more extreme than injecting yourself with unstudied hormones and subjecting yourself to a starvation diet?   Is it more extreme than the vegan diet you can't stick with?  Can you do the thing that you are doing right now for the rest of your life and be healthy, not just as a diet but as a lifestyle change  Are you sure?  Are you so sure, that you're willing to bet your life on it?   

Running in a Blizzard

Disclaimer:  You should not run in a blizzard.  I did because 1.  I'm an idiot. and 2. I had the stuff and experience to do it safely.  Don't try this at home.

There's a blizzard going through Central Illinois at the moment.  Big snow, big wind, big cold.  My day started pretty normally.  I woke up, ate some breakfast, donned the spandex, and got on the bike.  After that, shower and off to work.  About an hour in it became very clear that we were about to get a big big snow.  A few hours later we were sent home.  So, I did what any runner would do...I went to the gym to try to get my run in before it closed.  Alas, I was too late.  The gym was closed as well. 

At first I was bummed.  I really hate missing workouts.  Then my mind wandered to some people I was helping a few days ago, and some of the word on this blog.  And then the endurance athlete started bargaining with the sensible part of me.  "Well, the snow isn't that deep, and you're just supposed to run 5k easy anyway..."  "Besides, you just told all those people to do whatever it takes, and to suck it up buttercup."  Yeah, I did say that.  And then my mood changed.  How many people go running in a blizzard?  This is going to be fun!  Apparently, my inner athlete had thought I was suddenly getting off too easy.  "And oh, BTW, these easy tuesday runs are always form work...so you're running in your vibrams (aka almost barefoot), but hey, that's not totally barefoot, so no whining."

 

So off I went.  It was 16 degrees out, with 25 mph winds gusting up to 55 mph, and a wind chill of -1.  There was, at the time, about 4 inches of snow on the road.  At first it wasn't so bad.  I was working hard to run my easy pace, since I'd probably added about 20 pounds of clothing.  The snow wasn't so bad at all.  The cold was bad.  It cut right through both pairs of gloves and my hands stopped hurting less than a mile in.  In the cold, the absence of pain is concerning.

The hardest part was the wind and blowing freezing snow/ice.  It really hurt.  My eyes stung to the point that I kept them closed as much as I possibly could.  It was in the worst of this that I started to wonder "why on earth am I doing this?"  It was for me, in my quest to be better than my previous self, sure.  But more than that, it was for the people I've met since my escape from obesity.  I know the fight.  It's every day, it's exhausting, it hurts.  It's not even a fight that can be won, but rather it's a fight you take on for the rest of your life.  I ran in the middle of a blizzard so that I could say "suck it up buttercup" and not be just another fake with a weight loss book talking about the latest gimmick. It was because, for at least today, I'm fighting and I'm winning.

It continued to snow, and after I had been out there around 20 minutes traffic was having a real difficult time making it down the smaller streets.  They certainly had strange looks to share with me however! 

After returning home I stood with my face over a sink of steaming hot water, melting the ice covering my eyes, and grinning like a dumb ass. That was a huge challenge, and also possibly the most fun I've ever had running.

So suck it up buttercup, what's your excuse, a blizzard?

Building the Perfect Breakfast

Eating breakfast is a great idea, we all know that.  But what should you eat?  Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time not only pondering that question and experimenting with my morning meal, in a quest to find the perfect breakfast.

 The good news is that I think I’m close.  While there are always possibilities for improvement, if you’re looking for a nutritious, fast, filling breakfast I’d suggest this as a great start.

Mike’s Morning Oats

Step 1.  Making Oatmeal Fast

Start with Old Fashioned Rolled Oats.  You know, the kind in the round container with the guy in the hat.  Not quick oats, not instant oats, not a packet or a pouch.  Old Fashioned Rolled Oats.   Get yourself a large bowl, and put 1 part oats and 2 parts water, and a pinch of salt in that bowl.  Microwave that mix on medium power.  In my 1200W Microwave, ¾ cups of oats and 1.5 cups of water are done well in 6 minutes.  My typical serving of oats is 225 Kcals/40g of Carbs/7g Protein/4.5g Fat.

Room For Improvement?

Maybe.  Oats are great because they’re a complex carb that is very high in soluable fiber and B vitamins, and they only cost about .07 cents a serving.  But…

·         Rolled Oats on the stovetop taste slightly better.

·         Steel Cut Oats “stick” even longer and taste even better, but they take a lot longer to make.

·         Making a porridge out of grains like Amaranth, Millet, or Quinoa is my last great frontier…

Step 2.  Adding Protein

A balanced meal should have a little protein as well.  After all, you’re still recovering from your last workout and if you’re running a caloric deficit you also want to avoid catabolism!  Also, that protein will help keep you full.  Oats do contain a bit of protein, but probably not as much as you’d want. 

I add protein to my milk with casein powder.  I typically add about ½ a scoop, which works out to 60 Kcals/12g protein. 

Room for Improvement?

In general, choosing real foods over processed foods (like casein and whey powder) is smart.  You could add an egg to your oatmeal before you cook it (I’ve heard this is really good).  You could also just eat your oats with a side of lean meat.  That said, I find protein powder very convenient, and fairly benign as a processed food as it is almost completely protein.

Step 3.   Add Some Fat

Although fat is calorically dense, fat does not make you fat.  Some fat is good for you, especially if it’s Omega-3 fat which you may not be getting enough of.    Besides increasing satiety, lowering blood triglycerides, lowering your risk of heart disease, and helping with your immune system, eating Omega-3 fats has been shown to reduce inflammation in some groups AS MUCH AS taking NSAIDs!  Eat your fat.

Anyway, I add about 8g of broken up walnuts to my oatmeal for some added fat, and added crunch.  Walnuts are mega healthy for lots of reasons, including a great omega-3 profile.  This works out to around 50 Kcals /5g of Fat.

Room for Improvement?

Other great fat sources are readily available as well.  Chia is great.  If you’re looking for a creamier texture, almond butter is another great option. 

What’s in Your Bowl?

So there it is, my perfect breakfast. It’s as simple as real Oats, Protein Powder, and Walnuts.  It’s that easy.  It takes me about 10 minutes to make, and it keeps me running all day long.  It’s a balance of nutrition, convenience, and repeatability that works for me. 

There are certainly many variations that you could come up with that would be just as good (and in fact I think a protein, nut, blueberry oat pancake sounds delicious).  

The premise is simple though.  Pick a protein, pair it with some fiber, a complex carbohydrate, and a little healthy fat and you’ll be well fueled and ready to take on the day…

Welcome 2011 - Where Have I Been?

It's been a while since I've written anything, my apologies to my readers.  What exactly have I been doing?

On 12/12/2010 I married my best friend Lana.  We had a very awesome, small wedding.  Together we wrote the ceremony, including our vows to one another.  I made the cake.  We had a "post race" themed reception with bagels, cut fruit,  and Jimmy John's sandwiches.  We even replaced the typical "get the couple to kiss by clanking of glasses" with 1 mile spins on a bike trainer.  It was really an amazing time, one of the best days of my life.

After the wedding we spent a week together in Key West.

Every  morning I got up, ran a few miles on the beach, and then spent the day eating, walking, sitting in hammocks, drinking wine, and in general having an amazing time.

That was the end of my 2010.  And so now, here we are.  It's a a new year, and I'm beginning a new life with my wife.  New hopes, new plans, new goals, new challenges, and new setbacks.  I can't wait to face what life brings with Lana, overcome the obstacles, and enjoy the successes.  Welcome 2011.