Friday, August 28, 2009

Lance tells me to eat more.

So, in an attempt to begin logging my food, I signed up with the Daily Plate. I must say, I am super-extremely impressed. I signed up with weight watchers a few years ago for the same reason, and they were awesome with recognizing all foods, and having info on them. I did not have to enter much information about food at all. Since then, I have been disappointed with the food logging sites because I felt like I was the first one who was using the site, and had to enter every item of food individually. It takes about 1/2 day of that before I give up. The Daily Plate is not like this. You do not have to enter the info for your piece of bread, because you can choose the brand you bought and they have it. That is how good it is. I can't stress how friggin awesome this site is for tracking food. I also can track my weight, my body fat, and lots of other stuff because I signed up with the livestrong site, and they add to it.
That brings us to the problem. I put in my weight, my goal of losing a pound a week, added my workout for yesterday (35mile bike, hard - which took just over one and a half hours) and started putting in my food. Yesterday was a weird day for me because it was the first day that I got done with my bike ride and was full. I did this on purpose because I need to have proper nutrition in order to get to the end of my race. I have been learning this the hard way. - i.e. BONK BONK BONK BONK. - so I had a pretty good breakfast (or so i thought) before I left, hydrated on the way to the ride, and hydrated during the ride. Yogurt and banana muffin before, gatorade before and during, PB&Honey on the bike, took endurolytes. I got to the end, and was pretty full. I had a planet smoothie on the way home, and started entering my food and exercise into the tracker. I entered lunch too. Then looked at the numbers and almost choked. I only had 3000 calories left for the day. Wait a minute, I had not even eaten enough calories to cover my workout, much less fuel myself for the rest of the day. 2800 calories is my BMR, and 2800 calories used on the bike meant that I am not eating enough by a long shot. SO all these days I have been thinking that I was being a pig for eating a little more at dinner, I was actually just barely not starving.
Logic, and the common thought about eating seems to dictate that I should be losing weight at an alarming rate. I am missing roughly 2000 calories a day! I should be losing a pound every two days! But I have lost no weight. Here are my reasons for this. (They may not be the real reasons, but they are my reasons, and I am sticking to them. If you have others, leave me a comment.) 1. My body thinks it is starving, so it is in starve mode. Everything gets stored as fat, and the body is trying to conserve and not release any energy. This would mean that I am lethargic, not able to recouperate, and feel not great.
2. I am building TONS of muscle. I naturally build muscle. I have avoided any sort of weight lifting for this reason. I am trying to get smaller, not bigger, and if i lift, it will be to build lean strength, not to build mass. The only mass I want to build will be in arms and shoulders. My hope is that building mass in my shoulders and upper body will suck up the saggy skin I am getting because I am losing my gut.

Really, both of these are good reasons why I am not losing weight. The third reason I am not losing weight is that I have only been working out at this level for less than 6 months. February is when I started this program, and really, the first couple months were a shocker at how out-of-shape I really am.
Ergo, Lance says I need to eat more food. Roughly 2000 calories more food on long workout days. This is one more BIG meal, and/or more food before and after working out.
I also look at the pie charts that are created from entering the food, and it looks like I need to reduce fat, and increase lean protein - at least yesterday. Most of my food is carbs, and they are not straight veggies, but a processed carb like bread or more bread, or muffins or tortilla chips. I need to work on the veggies and lean meat with my food, as I eat more of it, that way I can start looking at losing the weight. Don't worry, I am not going to go all paleo diet, or atkins, or south beach, or whatever, just eat more veggies, and less bread and stuff like bread.
That could be a major reason I did not feel well on my (what turned into a) 6.5 mile run. I was likely dehydrated (another thing Lance says I need to do is drink more water) and poorly nutritioned when I set out. To top that off, the stupid community center where I was planning on water refuel had changed the combo! Urgh!
That is good for now. I will type more at another time.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Back to School

Kids are back to school now. I think that scheduling will likely get a little harder, at least it has the past two days. Between the muggy, sticky, furnace of a state, and the whole 'WORK' thing, and then random appointments, debate clubs, basketball practice, and then whatever the youngest decides to throw in the mix, it is going to get interesting. I may have to resort to working out in the wee hours of the moroning, or late in the evening. (yes, that misspelling was on purpose, cause that is where my brain is at that time of day).
I also have a few more epic workouts to put in before race day... which is looming like a bully towering over the nerdy kid on the playground. There are still questions as to whether this nerd can handle it. Think positively. I did a 50/3 brick a couple weeks ago, so my 55/8 this Sunday should be no sweat, right? Right. I still have more than 4 weeks until the race to work out the kinks in my stride.
Originally I wanted to ride to the race in my truck, stay in a hotel room by myself, and be able to sleep and prepare for the race on my own, but I recently realized that A) I have to save money, and B) I could do with trusting my friends to help me out, and C) I am going for the experience, and what kind of experience would I have if I did the whole thing by myself. I am cancelling my reservation for my room, and am not going to drive up to Augusta. I am going to room with the crazy Puerto Ricans, and hang out with my friends. Race the longest race of my life, and hope nutrition holds true during the race.
Today, 6 mile run at race pace. I need to loosen my legs up from the epic 5 hour yard clean-up I did on Sunday. I still can not touch my toes, and it is two days later.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Recovery.

I have to admit up front. I did not go at 70% effort for my entire bike ride this morning. I intended to. I started out tired, and late, and tired, and had to reassemble my trusty steed, because I had removed the stem thinking I had ordered the correct one from amazon.com only to find out that the one I had ordered had a quill that was too large. Anyway, I had to put the old long one back on, aired up the tires and took off. This week I have been doing pretty good at recovering and taking it easy on my workouts. Monday was a day off, but I played 2 hours of basketball with my son's team of 13 year olds. Tuesday was supposed to be a 6 mile way easy run. I turned it into a 4 mile tempo run, with another 2 hour basketball practice. Wednesday was even better with a 1800 mile easy ladder swim workout turning into 35 minutes treading water trying to help the little one swim better. Today I did the distance as prescribed on the workout form. 25 miles. I did the first 6 at about 16 mph, but it seemed like I was going a little slow for the effort I was putting in. The second 5 miles was the same, maybe 1 mph faster, but I began to notice that I may be battling a bit of a headwind. At the turnaround, I realized I was fighting more of a headwind than I thought. I hit 18mph easily, and felt it. You know what it is... It is the NEED FOR SPEED!!!!! I was feeling pretty good so I amped it up a bit, just for fun. 20...... 21...... 22.... Kept 22 for a bit. That was a good time. Wind was at my back, so I held the 22mph for the rest of the 5 miles until the turnaround. Then I dropped it back down to 17, but this 17 was much easier to keep.
In order to keep it to a 25 mile distance, I turned around at about 2.5 miles into the second lap, and then I kicked up the speed again to 21 or so MPH. I love going fast. I can't transition to run after going fast, but I love it just the same. After leaving the loop and getting back to moderate interaction, I knocked it back to 19mph for a bit. The wind was still at my back ;)
Then came the high interaction. I love and hate this part at the same time. I hate it because there is no shoulder, and I am riding on a two-way road with no median lane, so the cars get close. I love it because the cars are close, and the speed limit is 25, which means they go 30. I like to draft a bit there. It is only 2 miles, but due to some drafting, and some big gear pedaling, I hit 26mph for about 1.5 miles. I love that part. The last 5 minutes back to the house was an easy spin and I am done.

Good times. Sorry coach. It really did feel good though....

Monday, August 17, 2009

Good weekend.

I have to say, I had one of the best weekends I have had in quite a while. There was nothing in particular that made the weekend so great, just a good weekend. The weird thing is that this week's training schedule was the heaviest that I have had ever. Training started with hill repeats early in the morning on Saturday. 6x 1/2 miles with 1.5 mile warmup, and 1.5 mile cooldown. I have to say that this was tough, but I got through it, and even was able to pull out a sprint at the end of the 6th repeat to finish strong. Then did not walk as we made our way from the hill back to the car (which is very tempting to do). My son had a basketball game, and I got to help coach. He ended up winning the game, and the team worked together and did really well. My son did exceptionally well. Ice bath and lazy day for the rest of Saturday, and then the epic LSD workout on Sunday. 50 miles bike, and 6 miles running. We ended up cutting the run short because of the seriously hard workout on Saturday, but I still felt for the first time like I might be able to race a 70.3 and finish the race at the finish line, not in the DNF medical tent. Part of that may have been a change in nutrition that I am working with. I went old-school on the food part, and ate peanutbutter and honey on the bike, and drank several (3) bottles of gatorade. Also, every 10 miles on the bike i took two more endurolytes. Ended up taking 2 the night before, and 12 before I started to run, and once i got to the run, I felt pretty good. I had some muscle soreness from the hills, but for the most part just kept a normal pace and finished my workout.
Then I played a game with the fam after lunch and just enjoyed being a family. Grilled burgers for dinner, and everything just melded together to have a great weekend. No one thing made it great, just enjoyed life.
This week is a recovery week. Volume of bike is significantly lower than last week. 25 total miles this week, vs. last week which was 100+. Run volume is increased 2 miles over last week, but the speed is lower, and swimming is increased 600M over last week, but is also slower. Should be a fun week.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Here's bug in your eye.

Today, I was attacked while riding my bike by some sort of mutant grasshopper/locust. I say 'attacked' because I think it takes effort on the part of a large bug to hit me in the eye while I am riding by at 17mph. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my brother and I would use dirt clods as grenades. sometimes it was clumps of grass that we pulled out of the yard, and some times it was on the farm where the freshly tilled soil formed pretty awesome grenade sized clumps of dirt. Only once was it puff-ball mushrooms that had turned rotten and made a poof of green rotten mushroom spores. We learned fast on that one.
Anyway, one or two times, instead of throwing the clod in an arc, or up in the air first, my brother threw it straight at me, like a baseball. That is cool if you have a shield, which sometimes I had, but when there is no shield, and you are not ready for the clod....well. Poof. One such clod hit me in the face and that sucked. This mutant friggin grasshopper thing hit me in the face, and if I had not had sunglasses on, I would likely still be picking pokey mutant friggin bug legs out of my brain.
Other than that, my ride was pretty ok today. It was a pace ride to get used to my half-iron man pace, so 17mph max. 25minutes warm up at about 16mph to get to the nice part of the road, 15 minutes aero at 17, 10 minutes at 16, 15 minutes in aero at 17, then 35 minutes cooldown. Cooldown ends up being between 15 and 19, depending on the traffic. For some reason when I am in a high interaction area, I focus more on traffic than the mph and am probably drafting off of the cars, cause I get to 19mph lickety split. Every time i caught myself doing that, i shifted down and spun faster, probably comedically bouncy, but i kept my speeds down. Overall, not too bad. Then I grabbed a bite to eat, took a shower, drank too much coffee, and headed to work.
Tomorrow is a monster swim. 3000M open water in a lake. Focus is going to be breathing, stretching out, and high elbows.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Man, I am sore.

Just telling you, I am really sore. LSD Brick on Sunday took it all, then Monday night I followed it up with a track workout. Squats and lunges kicked my ass. Seriously, I hurt so bad that i am Snap-Crackle-Popping out of seats, and basically falling down onto the toilet or the office seat to sit down. It feels like someone kicked me in the ass. I swam this morning, and thought that the swim would shake out the soreness. I really thought it worked too. I swam 5x500 or 2500. It felt good. Then, as I stepped out of the lake, the soreness set in x2 and it followed the water. As my abs came out of the water they went KA-Thump and were sore, as my butt came out of the water, KA-THUMP my ass was WAY sore, and it traveled down my legs as they came out of the water, so it was almost painful to step onto the bank and go back to towel off to go home.
Speaking of the lake, what the hell was in the water today? There must have been a storm yesterday that knocked branches and leaves and grass into the water, because as I made my way across the lake, I kept grabbing things. This is not a good feeling in a Florida lake, and each time I would jerk my head out of the water and check to make sure that i had not just grabbed a snake. During the mindlessness of crawling across the lake I would envision that all of the lake snakes had babbies and that when I looked up I would find that I was really swimming through a two inch layer of baby poisonous snakes. Then I thought of my friend Geni and how she already has visions of stuff in the water and how she would have just totally freaked out.
Time to cook dinner. It is my night. That means Spaghetti! whee!