Race Report Preamble

I haven't seen my friend Erik since 1987 when I moved to Vermont, but we've done stuff like this before.  From the 1985 Clinton sprint:

I'm trailing and Erik looks like he's going to take the win from my brother Charles.

Today:

I'm the one wearing the squirrel on his face.

Anyway, on to the tale of the weekend.  It started out with something of a bad omen. 

I had a bit of an adventure picking up the rental car.  Turns out that the foreigner with the Colorado drivers license wasn't welcome to rent an automobile with the presented plastic.  The problem sprung from the fact that I didn't bring an actual credit card from Bolivia, just the debit card I used to make the reservation.  I should have thought about that, but hindsight is 20/20 - something which will repeat itself in this report.

Fortunately, my Mom had taken me to the rental location and offered to rent the car herself and loan me her car for the weekend: Problem solved.  Thanks so much, Mom.  Without Mom, none of this could have happened.

Once I was with vehicle I drove to Ithaca, NY where my Dad was waiting to take me out to dinner.  I'd loaded the directions to his house into my phone before I left my Mom's house; that was a good thing too, because I couldn't find WiFi on my route (essentially: Interstates 87S and 88W).  My intention had been to get a sim card for my cell phone with a data plan, but when I asked after it (at a Radio Shack in Fort Lauderdale) I was told that no such "pre-paid" plans existed.  Um, I think somebody ripped me off...

Dinner was at an Italian restaurant in Ithaca named Lucatelli's.  My Dad recommended something called Combination Casserole a la Parmigiana (click through and you'll see the menu).  He said something like, "I ordered it once and it brought me to my knees."  I ordered it then ate some bread, soup, and a salad.  What I was presented with had more cheese than I was expecting total food.  I ate it all.  When she came to clear my plate, the waitress noted that, "I've worked here 6 months and have never seen anyone finish that dish before."  I had a bit of trouble breathing for a half an hour or so, but overall was pleased with the meal - the breathing problem was my own fault (perhaps another instance of foreshadowing).

After the meal, we returned to my Dad's place and I plead tired/full and hit the couch.  I wish I could have had the fortitude to keep myself up, but I was thinking ahead a bit too. 

I slept really well and the next morning Dad, his friend Erik and I went out to a breakfast at a greasy spoon where I enjoyed an artery clogging cheese and bacon omelette, some toast and home fries.  Dad and I then bid Erik adieu and we went to procure a hand bottle for my race and a little wooden airplane for Deneb.  Once that stuff was aboard the good ship Honda CrV, I hit the road for Berk's County, PA.

It rained for much of the drive, but overall it was easy getting there, though it took the better part of 4 hours.  I ate some salty snacks and powered back a bunch of water while driving, but didn't really have a formal lunch - not that I really needed it...

When I got to Erik's house I had to call because I was unsure which was their house, there were 3 stone houses all right in a row and I was unsure which one I had the doorbell I was supposed to ring.  Good thing too, when Erik answered he suggested I turn around - I had been wandering around and looking into the windows of the wrong house...

I brought my bag inside and was promptly introduced to Erik's wife Jane and his two great kids, Connor and Maddie.  Maddie was a bit shy at first, and I think Connor was hoping I'd join him for some Lego Star Wars - sorry man, next time.  I hadn't run since my morning jaunt in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday and I was starting to get a bit twitchy. 

It worked out pretty well actually because, for all the cycles being spent on Lego Star Wars, Mr. Connor had a birthday party to go to which happened to be on the way to Blue Marsh Lake, where the race was being held the next day.  Erik and I dropped Connor off and headed over to the most significant obstacle on the Blues Cruise course, "Ski Slope Hill".  

Erik lead out, and we were quickly onto some pretty sweet single track through the trees.  I was wearing my Vibrams and deemed the trail soft enough that I could run in them for the race.  Sure there were some rocks, but there was also lots of leaf litter to help cushion the impact and it seemed an easier surface than the road on my Bella Vista route.

Ski Slope Hill itself was runable in a short race, but I power hiked it with Erik.  It came 11 miles or so into the Blues Cruise, and I knew that I wouldn't be running it on race day, so it would be best to power up it.  Erik and I knocked out a half an hour and then headed back in the direction of the birthday party.

Erik and I picked up Connor, then headed back to his house.  Dinner would be at the Kutztown Tavern with Erik's parents.  What a treat!

Erik's dad coached a softball team for which both Erik and I played.  We were surrounded by girls.  We didn't really know what to make of that.  We played for the Yankees.  Ugh.

Erik back left, me back right and Erik's Dad back dead center.  The Yankees.

Anyway, I enjoyed a good old American Bacon Cheeseburger for dinner with a glass of birch beer to wash down my tasty meal.  Erik's mom chatted my ear off and I answered a bunch of questions about Bolivia, Deneb, Nataly and life in general.  Really good to see them...

After dinner we went back to Erik's house and chatted a bit while the kids got ready for bed.  They were settling down around 9 and I felt my battery was essentially discharged too and suggested I might be ready for a sleep as well.  I don't think it took me more than 10 minutes to fall asleep and I slept like a rock...

Thanks for reading and the real report will come tomorrow.

Jay

Thinking about food

One reason I've always led an active lifestyle is it's given me pretty much a blank check to cash in on whatever food and drink I wanted.  That's great because I love to eat and drink.

Recently however, I had been struggling with my weight.  I was well over 220 lbs and often found myself tipping the scale at 230.  I drank a fair amount of high octane beer, and had a diet which seemed reasonable at the time, but I'm not so sure anymore.

Something about my diet changed when I got to Bolivia.  I don't have a scale, but I can see in the mirror that I've lost quite a bit of weight - my gut has clear left, middle, and right sections and veins are popping out all over the place.  In Colorado, I was soft - for sure.

Again: something about my diet changed when I got to Bolivia.  It's hard to pinpoint what precisely, but I haven't been eating this:

Though I want to be...

The thing is.  The diet here isn't much different than what you see on that plate.  Up there is pork, cheese, potatoes, cheese, onions, chilis, garlic.

I think I may be more restricted in my caloric intake in general.  I've had ice cream like twice, maybe 3 times since moving here in February.  I eat a lot more fruit.  I eat breakfast.  I've swapped out normal beer for microbrew.  I have about a normal human's size portion of food for lunch - today: 1 Chicken Thigh, a good sized helping of potato salad, which included probably 1/2 a tomato, 1/2 a green bell pepper, and 1/2 a carrot.  Last night's dinner was about 2 servings of Lentil Salad.  Breakfast was probably 2 and a half eggs and a peanut butter sandwich with 1/2 a glass of yogurt and 1/2 a glass of milk.

Not having a scale is interesting, and I expect I will have one soon.  I'd really like to measure my sweat rate for one thing (another post for another time) and I'd like to start tracking my weight again.  If I end up actually lining up for 2 one hundred mile races next year, I'll need to stay on top of my nutrition.

That brings me to the whole point of this post in the first place.  Recently I listened to a very interesting podcast which talked about race day fueling and other things nutrition.  Based on that I posed a question to Joe Friel on his recent blog post.  One part of what he had to say in response to my question, I found to be quite provocative (emphasis mine):

Sugar is closely monitored and processed by the body as it is viewed almost as a toxic substance. So the body does unique things with it (e.g., converted to glycogen, glucose or fat very quickly after processing) that it doesn't do with fat or protein.

While running yesterday, I was mulling that statement over and remembered that Joe is an advocate of the so called Paleo Diet. I googled alot about it last night and this morning.

Essentially it is a diet which is centered on lean meats, fruits, nuts and tubers.  The kinds of foods that hunter gatherers would have eaten before we settled down in Mesopotamia.  I'm usually quite skeptical of stuff like this, but a lot of the arguments for a "paleo" diet hit the same "that makes sense" button that the barefoot running advocates I've come to subscribe to tag.  One interesting article is found here:
http://thepaleodiet.com/published-research/cordain-anthropology-of-sport-chapter/
It's a quick read, and worth the time.  If for no other reason than to familiarize oneself with the arguments.

I don't expect I'll ever fully subscribe to a paleo diet, but I may begin to incorporate some of its principles into my daily eating.  I first need to get my brain around what that really means...

Thanks for reading, and try to understand why before actually doing.
J

Diet.

One thing about living in Bolivia is the diet.  Lunch always consists of some sort of major production; it consists of meat, multiple starches and vegetables with lots of fried stuff.  For some reason, Nataly requires that our house hold to this tradition of dinner for lunch.  I'd prefer sandwiches and were it not for our assistant Mary, I'd require them.

Anyway, I bring this up at least in part because of a chart linked to by Scott Jurek about the carbon footprint of food (here's a link to the pdf).  This past weekend, Nataly complained about the amount of meat we were eating, lunch and dinner, 2 big meals with different kinds of meat - chicken then pork, beef then sausage, hamburger then chicken...

I didn't disagree with her.  That put me to cooking other stuff for dinner. Three nights in a row we ate pasta with a variety of vegetable based toppings.  Last night I switched things up a bit and made a quinoa and lentil stew kind of thing.  I'd never made quinoa before and googled around a bit for what to do with it.  Turns out it's a native South American seed with a good nutritional profile.

It's hard to say precisely what I did, I cooked the lentils and quinoa together and them brought them together with the "stewed" ingredients.  Then added things (salt, honey, vinegar, cheese) until I liked the taste.  Turned out pretty good.

I'll be making more quinoa dishes that's for sure and the meatless nights experiment is going to continue that's for sure.

Yesterday, I'd planned a 1 hour and 15 minute long run, but ditched it because of crap in my chest and rainy cold weather.  I'd've gone running were it not for the rain or crud, but the combination forced me to respect the possibilities.

Thanks for reading, and breathe free.
J

Ache Here, Ache There, Ache Everywhere.

Mmmmm.  Bison Cheeseburger.

I took Tuesday off thanks to the heat.  Skipped lunch and left work a bit early with the plan to run easy around the Boulder Reservoir, but as I got closer to my run destination, the temperature gauge in my car crept over 90 degrees.  Even for a short run, 90 degrees with no clear objective in the near future didn't seem fun.  I opted instead to stop at the grocery store and pick up some ground bison for hamburgers.

Yesterday I was much better about the whole motivation thing.  It took me a while to actually get out for my lunch run, I've been reincarnating a PC in the office which had gotten funked by a trojan.  It'll be running Fedora 13 and Windows 7.  I do like the Windows 7.

I finally got out at 2 PM and headed down to the Creek Path.  I wore my heart rate monitor, but since I've taken so many days off, it's not really a good judge of my effort.  My heart rate tends to be sky high even after 2 days off: 10-15 beats per minute faster than usual for a given pace.  I'm not sure why, perhaps my heart shrinks?  Probably it's well rested and ready to go?  It conjures an image of Homey bouncing around when I grab the leash.  I'll often run the first couple of workouts after a layoff without the HRM because the data are so screwy...

Anyway.  I knocked out 7 yesterday in just over an hour.  Pretty easy.  One disconcerting thing occurred while I was out there, my left knee really grumped at me.  Patella tendon I think.  I was running in my Green Silence shoes (Monday was a vff day), but after 5 miles I decided to take them off and run the rest barefoot.  That helped the knee almost immediately, but my left achilles tendon got grumpy.  Ugh.

Today I woke up with achy knees, elbows, back, neck and a sore throat.  I don't have a fever, but Deneb got something viral after his trip back from Bolivia.  I expect that he's passed it on to me (and maybe Natatly too).    I'll run short this evening, while pushing Deneb.  That'll take some of the pressure off my knees and ankles.

Thanks for reading.
J