Total March Madness

We're watching the NCAA national championship game right now, and it's a real nail biter. Turns out, most of March was pretty tight too!

Swim: 25,550 yards, 9 swims
Bike: 40 miles, 3 rides
Run: 41 miles, 2 runs
Strength: 7 times, some long
Yoga: 13 times

I only ran twice in March, an easy 3 miler in the middle of the month and the 38 miles of pacing in the Umstead 100. Did another easy 3 on Sunday and my hip has been killing me since then. Got to go see a doc about that one. What kind of doc do you go to for a hip flexor problem?

March also included a week in Disney, and I got a new tattoo inked in on the 26th. Which really makes the 25k I put in the pool that much more impressive! I did that in only 18 days available to swim! boo freaking ya. It is swim season and I'm loving that. We're going to see a lot of swimming through the summer, partially dependent on the hip issue, partly just because I freaking love it and I can swim that often now that my masters team has noon practices.

In my non-swim time I hit the weight room pretty good. I'm seriously sore tonight. Saturday I lifted and actually squatted 225 for the first time in years! And I've been really working on my swim muscles, that could be why I've been hitting some faster splits lately. Curling with a 60 lb bar, hitting the triceps and lats hard too. March is the time when the swimsuit body is built. Summertime showing off is built in the spring. it's cutting season.

And naturally that brings us to the Monday Morning Naked Weight. I still (shockingly) haven't lost all of the Disney weight yet. I have dipped under threshold (175 lbs) a few times since then but nowhere close to the 171's I was seeing before. This week it's time to get serious and get back into the 160's. Last Monday came in at 180.2, but that was after the buffet at the Umstead 100. This week was 177.4, so close and much more manageable. Bodyfat was also down to 18.6%. I'm hopeful about getting back into some low numbers this week.

Also, I've finished signing up for my races this year including a surprise addition. This is the first year for the official Raleigh Beer Mile, and I've wanted to do a beer mile for years! Can't wait for this race. It's at a local microbrewpub, so we get to chug Natty Greene's beer. Also, I picked the WC-50 as my qualifying 50 mile ultramarathon this year. It's in Charlotte at the national whitewater center, all trails, lots of single track. And as if that wasn't enough, I've been asked to join a husband and wife team as their swimmer for a relay team in Ironman Raleigh! I will jump at the chance to swim in Jordan Lake.

This past weekend was Easter, and we had some good family time. The kids had easter egg hunts, but I didn't get enough pictures. The best picture I got was a family portrait of us in front of the flowered cross at church on Sunday morning.

Yes they wore easter bunny ears to church

April is going to be fantastic! I am very optimistic about spring coming and the work I get to do in the next few weeks. Bring it on!

Final: Duke wins! Love seeing an ACC team win a national championship. It might even be a good night to ride over to Durham, but there could be rioting around campus. Sometimes those Cameron Crazies can really be nuts.

The Disney Weigh-in

Ah, the reported MMNW post vacation. It's always a disaster. So I had low expectations.

The day we left for Disney I hit the low for the week at 171.8 lbs and 16.7% body fat. That pretty much rocks, as Friday's usually do.  Of course, I didn't weigh in while we were out of town.

But, coming back to the scale showed quite the different tale. 178.2 lbs and 20.3% bodyfat on 3/16. Yep, added a solid 7 lbs. This week wasn't much better, coming in at 177.2 and 19.7% on 3/23. So it's not coming off quickly. I did a fruit fast and got down to 174.8 last week, it did feel good to get down below the threshold weight of 175. But that vacation weight needs to be released and never come back. I'm sick of it!

I did enjoy lots of clean eating and lots of fruit last week as well. It felt really good to get back into some solid workouts. It felt really good to get back into the water! Regular swim practice was fun, and you know I had a special outfit for St Patrick's Day!

it's a green speedo

Got in some good swims and then on Thursday night we took the kids to a play. The local community theatre was putting on a production of The Velveteen Rabbit, and it was delightful. Afterwards the kids had to get a few pictures with their favorite cast members.

With the Velveteen Rabbit

Evil Genius with the Little Steve

I did run an easy 3 miles without any hip problems. Afterward, i would say there was some discomfort there, so I decided not to run again until this weekend. I'm not too worried about it though. I have also been hitting the weights regularly and *sheepish grin* hitting the stationary bike at the gym again. It's one thing to ride, it's another to actually enjoy it. I got about an hour and a half on there saturday, after an hour of solid weightlifting.

On Losing and Losses

Something good happened on Monday. My MMNW came in at 174.8 lbs and 17.5% bodyfat. That's down nicely from last Mondays 175.4 and 19.3%. This means I didn't totally post-DNF eat my way into oblivion. This is also the first official MMNW under my typical plateau weight of 175. With all of the snow and the taper for the race on Saturday, the workouts were pretty slight last week. 4 snow days, the kids were only in school on Monday, it gets hectic, snowed in, and stir crazy.

So naturally, this week, the kids went to school on Monday. Then we got lots of snow and they have been home for the rest of the week. I'm again having really light workouts, going stir crazy. The weight has continued to drop, thursday was a low point at 171.8 lbs. I feel great, light and healthy.

Also something bad happened on Monday. Late last week we got word that Kelley's dad's oldest sister had passed away. He's got a huge family as the youngest of 8 kids. This sister was 21 when he was born, she was really a mother figure for him. Kelley and I are still very close with that entire side of the family, so while this was not really a surprise (she was 90), it is a very sad loss. This Monday the funeral was held in Biscoe NC. I'm getting very tired of putting on that black suit.

This makes three major losses for us recently; on different sides of the family. First it was Kelley's stepdad just before thanksgiving, our first parent to pass away. Then my grandmother passed away about two weeks ago, our last grandparent to pass away. Now out of 8 kids, Mickey and one sister are the only two that are left. They say these things come in threes, and I really hope this is the end of it. I really hadn't planned to miss any more work thanks to the other bereavement leaves, but Mickey asked me to sing at the funeral and I'm not going to pass up that chance. We ended up getting to see some people that couldn't make it to the big family Christmas last year so that was nice too.

Also on Monday night, Evil Genius and I had an Indian Princess meeting at BounceU, an inflatable fun house. We had a blast playing around on all of the fun games! And that's a better picture to end with than funeral news.

Those boxing gloves were huge!

The other thing that I've had plenty of time to do with all of this snow is register for races. Most of them were open - there was actually 1 marathon that was already sold out and 1 ultra that doesn't open registration until March 1st, but I went ahead and signed up for the rest of my year. I'm going back to Maryland to run the Potomac River Marathon in November. I'm also going back into the water. My swim season now has the Jordan Lake Open Water Challenge 2.4 mile race, and the Big Deuce 2 mile open water race for the 4th time. Every year on that one I say I'm going to drop back to the 1 mile race but still keep signing up for the 2. Those are both leading to the big dog, the 12 mile Swim Around Charleston! This is a bucket list kind of marathon swim that has a 6 hour cutoff. I am incredibly excited to step up to such a stiff challenge. My brother Michael is going to kayak for me, it's going to be amazing.

MMNW on point!

Last week, in general, I had a hard time getting my stuff together. Too much to do, high stress work time, not enough hours in the day to get everything done. My standard MO in those kinds of situations is to do the highest priority stuff first and whatever doesn't get done is water under the bridge. After my grandmother's funeral, it took me forever to get the pictures organized and keep up with all of the training and other stuff going on.

The Monday Morning Naked Weight (MMNW) for 2/9 finally showed some nice progress! I didn't totally blow it over the funeral weekend. 175.2 lbs and 19.1% bodyfat. Finally down to typical plateau level. I think my scale is calculating the bodyfat % more erratically because I haven't figured out how to adjust the age that it figures into the calculation. This week I felt very slim.  I got in 3 runs for 29 miles, and 2 swims for 5300 yards. Eating was pretty well on point, and we had 1 night in Greenville in there too.

This turned out to be a great setup for the week that followed. I hit a low point (since 2011 I think) of 173.6 lbs on Wednesday morning. My workouts and eating were totally on point through the week! I did meet an old college friend for lunch at an Indian buffet on Thursday but that was the only hard part. Today's MMNW was 175.4 lbs and 19.3% bodyfat. So 2 weeks right around plateau level.

Normally this is where I stop the weight loss phase and ramp up the training. This year I'm really trying to maximize my weight to power ratio so I want to bust through this plateau and see if I can get past the "skinny fat" phase and just get to thin. So let's keep on this track for a few more weeks and see what happens.

One thing that happened. My grandmother hung onto a few pictures from when I was heavy. I stitched them into this:

I lost more than the glasses

I snapped that pic on Wednesday before swim practice outside of the pool.  I got in 3 runs for 29 miles after taking Saturday as a full rest day and getting in an 11 mile long run on Sunday. Also got in 3 swims for 10,500 yards including a 4000 yard swim on Friday! RAM practice included a 1000 y warmup and a 2600 yard main set. It was totally insane. I never get in that much yardage for a noon practice! It was so amazing.

I'm tapering this week, got the Frozen Heart 50k coming up in Maryland on Saturday! That's the other reason not to ramp up training and end the weight loss phase. I'm going to have the insane post-50k eating festival and recovery week. Also this week Raleigh is getting snow, which means the entire state shuts down. So workouts are going to be sparse as they should be, and my eating has to be pretty strict. Typically I blow the nutrition plan during the taper, so keep your fingers crossed that I will a:) be able to get to maryland and race in a snowstorm and b:) arrive at the starting line rested, light, and strong.

Jan & MMNW

January is supposed to be the most winter-like month we get here in North Carolina. This one? pretty mild, gotta say. That groundhog is predicting 6 more weeks of winter today but we're still getting highs in the high 50's. I would love to see some snow fall this year but like always, I'm not hopeful. And now that I've lost every reader in the northern US & all of Canada we can talk about what did actually happen last month!

Swim: 27,950 y, 7 swims
Bike: 13.25 miles, 1 ride
Run: 128.6 miles, 13 runs, 2 races
Strength: 7 times
Yoga: 9 times

The races included the Harbison 50k in SC where I barely finished intact and the Frozen Toes 5k where I took 3rd place overall. If I had managed to get in one more RAM practice I would have broken 30k yards for the month - I have been loving the noon practices m/w/f and getting in as many as possible. After the 50k I had to take some time for recovery, that was kind of expected. That included the only bike ride, an easy 45 minutes to spin out the legs. It was the perfect recovery ride! 128 miles of running is a seriously strong month too.

I've been on a basic pattern of doing yoga m/w/f and strength training t/th before getting ready for work in the morning. I still had to take some recovery time, but those numbers and that pattern are pretty steady.

Moving into February, I need to start making the individual runs longer. Feb 21 is the Frozen Heart 50k and March 28 is my 50 mile pacer job at the Umstead 100, so I've got to get the endurance built up for those. And that takes more than just 20 mile weekends.

Also, I got signed up for the Kiawah Island Marathon for this year on December 12 down in Charleston. Every time I've tried to run that marathon before it has sold out too soon, so I'm grateful to get in this year! It's been on the bucket list for a while now. Very cool.

The MMNW for the week left me at 177.2 lbs and 20.1% bodyfat after reaching a low last week of 174 lbs and 17.2% bodyfat. So what I'm telling you is that we threw one helluva Super Bowl party last night! Ha, well we did have some people over and it was a blast watching the game. And I know that beer bloat is going to be gone by tomorrow. Last monday's naked weight was 178 lbs, so officially I'm down 0.8 lbs this week and I can live with that. My plateau weight is 175, so anytime anyhow anyway that I can get below that is good, and this week is looking pretty good.

Last week's workouts:
M: AM yoga, Noon 2200 swim (had to leave practice early for a meeting)
T: AM strength, PM 7 mile run (mile repeats)
W: AM yoga, noon 3250 swim
Th: AM strength, PM 5 mile run (5k time trial at 8.6 mph on the treadmill [21:50 time] plus w/u & c/d)
F: noon 3500 y swim
Sat: 13 mile run, yardwork
Sun: 13 mile run, house cleaning, super bowl party!

The other notable thing that happened this week was that I shaved my beard! The before pic should explain why:

ok not quite the same but it was a mess!

Regular swimming and running has taken its toll on the old beard. My sweat towels would pull and the pool water got caught a lot and it just got to be more of a mess and hassle than it was worth. Plus I'm feeling much better now about looking forward to springtime so I don't need the winter coat anymore. Like I said, feeling good about this year.

Overall, yes, January took forever to wrap up but it was a very steady, straightforward month where we all kept our heads down and stuck to the routine.

Double MMNW

If you're keeping score (and nobody is), the last MMNW update posted had my weight at 179 lbs even. Totally missed posting last week's update, but it was 178.2 lbs and 20.2% bodyfat. This week's update is 178 lbs and 18.1% bodyfat, causing me to think that monday morning is by far the worst time to weigh in. See this kind of thing happens on the weekends around here

And that brownie in a mug is fantastic. The weekends are my weakness. Friday morning I weighed in at 175 even, which was fantastic. that's typically my training weight, so yay! Then I swelled up 3 lbs over the weekend. So frustrating - but it's really not. Weight always goes up and down, friday is usually the low point in the week. Seeing the pattern without being able to change it is what's frustrating.

This past weekend, we went to visit Kelley's old college roommate and I love getting to hang out with them. They live on the coast and we always have a good time together. This time it also included tons of beers, a 5k race (where I took 3rd place overall - yay!), all you can eat sushi, pizza, and breakfast buffet. All were wonderful. That's putting life into living. This week I've got to pay back that weight debt, and hopefully break through that 175 plateau I've been stuck on for years.

My long runs for the last couple of weeks has been pretty good. 2 weeks ago I got in 9 miles Saturday and 11 on Sunday for a 20 mile weekend. Then this weekend had the 5k race saturday, then another 10 miles after we got back home on Sunday. My next race is a 50k in Maryland coming up in 4 weeks. I need to get the endurance base up there so hopefully I will be a bit more comfortable than I was at the end of the Harbison 50k a few weeks ago.

Those long runs were fueled by SaltStick! Those are a great way to get all of the electrolytes I need without having to take in all of the sugar and calories in Gatorade. Really digging it right now.

January has flown by! The end of Jan makes 9 weeks on this weight loss phase, and brings with it the Super Bowl. Time for some fun. Discipline is fun, right?

MMNW update

Yep, it's not exactly that extreme now, but I am glad to say that the 4 lbs I put on over the holidays is gone. Today's MMNW came in at 179 lbs and 19.7% body fat. But Brian with abs and nipples makes me laugh.

I am very pleased with this. Jan 12 and the holiday weight is gone? That is faster than I was expecting. It took a lot of discipline and a lot of recovery this week from the 50k.  Here's how the workouts went down:

Mon - rest & recovery from the 50k
Tues - 45 minutes on the bike. yes, I actually rode the bike! Easy spin to flush some lactic acid from the legs
Wed - Yoga
Thurs - abs & 7 mile run
Fri - total rest
Sat - 8.5 mile run
Sun - 80 minute hot yoga class at Firefly

Seriously, I'm addicted to hot yoga now. By Wednesday, my legs felt pretty cleared of all of the race funk and I was able to walk down stairs again. So the bad decision was to run a bit faster than I should for those 7 miles. This meant my hamstrings were really sore the next day (ok they are still sore). So when it came time to long run on Saturday, I took it really easy then ran out of time (ok and had to poop) after only 8.5 miles. But Sunday. Sunday I got to go to Hot Yoga. and it rocked. The top of my left foot was really hurting from that basketball thing which is why I only got on the mat once at home. In the hot room, the first child's pose really put the pressure on that same spot, but after that it has felt fine! so amazing. The teacher was kind of wild, the room was 105* (which I like) but she said she likes to keep it around 85*. Also she gave lots of instruction, which was nice, I got a lot of adjustments.

I knew in savasana that was going to be the warmest I got all day. It was so peaceful, so relaxing, so destressing just having all of the stresses melt away like that. Even in NC, it has been cold as balls here this week. Not much sunshine, lots of rain, even some thunder! And the wives tail is that winter thunder means snow is 10 days away. and we don't get real snow in NC, so that's pretty scary.

And now, some other seemingly random pictures from this week

She was embarrassed to be seen with my hair straight up like that. I think it's pimpin.

Las Juice! The juicer I got for Christmas has been a big part of losing this holiday weight.

I am absolutely loving the juicer! Staying hydrated and pumped full of vitamins and minerals really helps me feel good this flu season.

Quick MMNW update

First things first, the holidays were awesome! I've got a crap ton of pics to share, the kids had a big time. We spent several days in SC at my parents house as well, including three big family Christmas celebrations and lots of beers. I felt like this guy above...

Last week's MMNW was 179.6 lbs and 20.5% body fat. Last week's workouts:

Monday yoga, 2800y swim
Tuesday yoga, 7 mile run
Wednesday hot yoga 90 minutes
Thursday nothing but christmas and driving
Friday yoga in SC, played basketball with my brother Morgan
Saturday's SC long run was 3.18 miles shortened by poop.
Sunday we just drove back to NC

Aaaaaaaaaand all of that led to today's MMNW update at 183.3 lbs and 21.1% bodyfat. Hey, you take the good with the bad. I had a wonderful trip with the family in SC. I gained 4 lbs this week and that's ok. I can't count the number of times I said I Love You to people. Here's the important part of this week:

It's a weight loss phase, yo!

Recently I found MyFitnessPal. Less recently, I was enjoying a frivolous offseason. Then suddenly the pants didn't fit quite as well. I knew it was time to bring back the MMNW (monday morning naked weight), and start tracking.

The last time I needed to drop some serious lb's, I went totally vegetarian and tracked everything I ate and stopped at 1800 calories a day. It worked great, I felt good, and I got from 205 lbs down to 175 in a reasonable time frame, and was ready to start training for my first Ironman. My comfort zone became staying around 175-180 during the season, and 180 - 185 during the offseason. Anything over 185 is cause for concern.

Given my race lineup for 2015 I decided to go ahead and start up a weight loss phase. I've been logging on MFP for 22 days straight now. My starting weight was 188 lbs even, and that's practically panic time. I like how MFP tracks, they start with a base number of calories to lose 2 lbs a week, then add in exercise calories earned. One of the key points to my weight loss is limiting the workouts to 45 minutes or so, and this time I haven't really been able to do that.

If I run more than about 5 miles, I have to eat more to recover and that would thwart the weight loss or push me over 1800 calories that day. I guess, now I'm conditioned well enough to run longer. I've been running 4 or 5 days a week, swimming 1 day, and doing hot yoga 1 day. I'm still getting on the yoga mat at home too almost every day, but that's not nearly the workout that hot yoga is. To lose 2 lbs a week they start me out at 1250 calories a day, and so far I've only had one day where I didn't add any exercise calories on top of that.

The losses haven't always been consistent but I'm learning how to manage the process. Every day I take what the scale gives me. Today's MMNW was 179 lbs and 20.5% body fat. There's always faster progress when you first start a phase like this, but 9 lbs over 3 weeks is still a pretty good average.  I'm going to try and start posting the MMNW every Monday. The goal is to average 2 lbs a week over the long term. Most of the online calculators say that for my height, age, and activity level I should get down to 160 lbs to maximize my power-to-weight ratio. I'll see how close I can get to that.

In 2011 training for my first ironman got me down to 165 for a while. But now that I'm almost 40 years old it's not as easy to shed the bodyfat anymore. So we'll just see how it goes. I'm trying to be all zen about it. Some days are up, most days are down, I'll just take what the scale gives me and stick to the plan.

Trying to lose weight during the holidays still sucks. Wings, beer, friends, Christmas parties, vacations, you name it. ugh.

The Immediate Contradiction

Last night it was our turn to host the tribe meeting for Evil Genius's Indian Princess tribe. This year instead of doing a regular meeting most of them are being held somewhere else.

Ella put on my vest.  goofball!

Not coincidentally, I finally replaced the battery in the bathroom scale over the weekend. This meant that my first MMNW (monday morning naked weight) since the spring was going to be terrifying anyway.

Since I haven't done a MMNW in a while, I think that around Rev3 CP race day I was sitting around 175. I know how those pants should fit. Real racing weight should be closer to 170, though I'll take 175 whenever I can get it. The comfort zone is 175 to 180, and anything over 185 is cause to start a weight loss phase. 

Typically I put on about 20 lbs right after an Ironman. This MMNW came in at 185.8 lbs and 22.1% bodyfat, so let's start counting those calories and cut out the meat, k?

Naturally, then, we hosted the Indian Princess meeting at our local Krispy Kreme. Each dad/daughter pair got 4 doughnuts to decorate, and Kelley wanted me to pick up another box while I was there just to have some to bring home.  This is not too bad.

Good turnout!

The kids all loved watching the doughnuts on the line

EG loved the decorating

I think we pulled off a pretty successful meeting! Everybody had fun and we didn't drive the doughnut makers crazy. And they got a special "doughnut decorator" patch for the vests!

And I only ate 1 doughnut. The rest of the day was really healthy portions of really healthy food, so I feel ok about it. Back under 180 in no time! 'nuts and all.

The Other Stuff

There hasn't been much going on worth blogging about since the Ironman. I got in an easy 3 mile run Saturday morning just to test out the legs. I know I need to take at least another week off before trying anything serious. It was just an easy jog.

I still have 58.4 miles of running left before hitting the Cast Iron Club milestone. And with just under 2 months left I think that's going to happen.  I'm sitting on 52.22 Iron Swims, 34.52 Iron Bikes (and holding fast), and 27.78 Iron Runs. The goal is to get over 30 for each sport.

Today's MMNW (Monday morning naked weight) was 181.8 lbs and 20.6% body fat. This is pretty good. After IMFL in 2011 I put on 20 lbs in the first two weeks after the race, which was pretty extreme. I'll take a 6 lb gain the first week no problem. You should see the massive amount of foods I've been taking down.

Recovery has been going really well. By Wednesday I felt normal again and the "holy shit why did I want to do this" mentality has turned into planning for the next one. No troubles walking with the kids on Halloween.

This weekend was all glorious relaxation.  I got to watch college football and it was fabulous. I made some hot sauce and a salsa with the habanero peppers from the garden.

I love how Kelley used a Hello Kitty water bottle that the kids don't use anymore, and drew on the skull and crossbones and the "do not eat" warning for the children. It is a pretty hot sauce, a Trinidad Peppa Sauce that I almost used that recipe for. Mangos and onions and habs, oh my! Pretty tasty stuff too. It makes a really good meat marinade, like a jerk sauce for chicken and stuff.

All in all, I've got another week of relaxation and stuffing my face lined up. Going to hit the yoga mat and strength work pretty regularly again, and spend plenty of time with the family and friends. I'm already looking forward to it.

The Dump

So there I was, singing karaoke in a dive biker bar that was in a bowling alley parking lot.  That happened.  I have been so busy this post will be a dumping point for everything I haven't had the chance to blog about.

March Totals
Swim: 28,400 meters, 10 swims
Bike: 311.75 miles, 16 rides
Run: 80.6 miles, 12 runs
Strength: 6 times
Yoga: 7 times

Who's glad to be back swimming with the RAM team?  This guy.  holy smokes 28k in the pool?  That's unheard of.  Last ironman cycle I usually got around 20k per month in the pool. so I'd call this a roaring start.  311 miles is nice bike month too.  Last time I averaged around 300 miles a month when it got long.  This time it's a starting point, so I like where this is going.  And soon enough I'll be back running over 100 miles a month.

In fact, this week is a bumping point.  The midweek rides go up to 20 miles from 15 and the midweek runs are going from 5 to 6 miles.  Wednesday I did 20 on the bike before work and bumped up the resistance another notch, and after getting the kids down I ran 6 in 46 minutes flat.  Nice long and fast.  Last week was another story.

The week was fine, except for that crushing start to the work week.  Easter weekend was great, we went to SC to enjoy the holiday with my parents. I had a great run saturday morning, 8.5 miles around the neighborhood.  Felt great, very very hilly, and stayed pretty fast.  Totals for the week had 46 bike miles, 16.5 miles running, and 2953 yards in the pool. Total time was 5:33, just a bit lighter than the 10.5 hours last week.

Cast Iron Club: Through 4/3, I'm at 10.93 iron swims, 6.74 iron bikes, and 6.74 iron runs.  This is through only 2 months of base training in the Ironman training plan.  Goal is 30 iron distances.  I'm feeling comfortable in this goal for the year.  Really glad to see the swim number get over 10.

I'm still kind of blown away by discovering that I swam 28,400 meters in March.

The Pics
The long weekend workouts are the important part of an ironman training plan, so I feel guilty about not doing more last weekend.  But the good news is that all of this happened instead:

Evil Genius asleep and about to work herself out of the bottom of her bed

The kids dying easter eggs with Grandma

Ready for some color!

These were eggs dyed with shaving cream and neon food coloring.  Make your own jokes, but it actually turned out pretty cool.  youtube it if you don't believe me.

all the love

For a while now EG has been saying she wants to let her hair grow as long as Tangled's hair.  She means Rapunzel, but that's cute.  Now it's gotten long enough so she's tired of dealing with the tangles, and wanted to get it cut.  So of course I made an appointment while we were in Greenville to get her hair cut by the same barber who has been cutting my hair since I was 5.  Her mind was sufficiently blown when she made the connection that she is still 5 years old and Kevin has been cutting my hair since I was 5 years old.  Now she wants to go see Kevin every time we go to Greenville.  This could get expensive.

That is some long hair.

and she got a lot cut off!  maybe about 8 inches?

Almost there

All finished up!  so cute!

There's the end of an era in Greenville.  The Clock is a drive in restaurant on Wade Hampton Blvd.  My parents used to go on dates there while they were in college.  It's closing the doors after more than 60 years in business over a real estate problem.  Bob Jones University has been wanting to get the land for years now, and they are finally getting it.  The Clock is a greasy spoon place, my favorite meal there was a double chili cheeseburger with half & half (fries and onion rings).  Kelley and I got to have lunch there saturday, but I did not get the double chili parts.  This Greenville landmark closed down on Sunday, and will be greatly missed.

 

So long familiar landmark

EG got apples from the Easter Bunny and loved it.  She digs the honeycrisp!

Bigun digs all the Reece's

Showing off my mad yo-yo skillz

Making yeast rolls with Grandma - always one of EG's highlights

Hunting for easter eggs in the garden

Morgan got in on the action too

 That's a fun weekend in SC.  Saturday night Morgan's girlfriend wanted to go sing karaoke, so the 4 of us went out.  This biker bar was near his house, and they knew the dj.  I sang a Black Crowe's song and the Bartender Song from Rehab.  Morg did a few, and Martha sang a bunch but we couldn't get Kelley up there.

Sunday's ride back was pretty tough.  Usually it's about a 4 hour drive, but we had to stop a bunch of times, including picking up our niece.  Kaileigh is always glad to get some time in Raleigh, and we're always glad to have her.  She's on spring break all this week.

April Fool's!
Monday the kids went nuts over April Fool's day.  You can imagine the corny stuff that a 5 and 7 year old can come up with, and they did it all.  Kelley got in the shower to find that all of the soap had been hidden.  Bigun switched the bags of Frosted Flakes and Fruit loops, then asked for the loopies for breakfast and got Frosties instead.  Evil Genius called me at work to tell me that my pants were on fire.  The creativity those two can put out there is pretty impressive.

When we switched back onto daylight savings time I made a joke on facebook about moving to Indiana because most of the state doesn't observe DST.  So for April Fool's I put that same joke out there with a more serious tone.  I don't think anybody believed me.

Not April Fool's!
Monday night I got accepted onto the AAA Carolinas Triathlon Team!  I am incredibly excited about this.  It's a regional team, not national like Rev3 or Wattie Ink.  But they sponsor a the NCTS and SCTS series of Setup Events races.  So I get a racing kit and a few other perks, and have to do a Setup Events race this year which is not a big deal.  I'm very excited and will do another full post about the team once the profiles come up.

MMNW
Monday morning's naked weight was pretty bad this week.  184.8 lbs and 21.2% body fat.  I should be closer to 175 after 2 months of Ironman training.  You can't out train a bad diet, and with all of this traveling and hectic scheduling and high stress work stuff going on, it's water weight or stress eating?  I can tell I'm making some great strides in strength and conditioning already, and don't need to sabotage that with poor food choices.  I think the quantities have gotten a bit out of hand too. Time to reign it all in!

This week has been much better, and I got on the scale at 180.6 thursday morning.  so that's progress.  I've been working the portion controls this week and the quality pretty hard.  And managing my stress levels better, I think.

Coming up this weekend, Bigun and I are heading back here for more fun in the camp sun.  Let's hope it is sunny and warm this year?  please?

That should have been like 6 blog posts.  That's how busy and stressed I've been lately.  More campy fun pics next week!

10 more days

Only 10 more days until the start of my Ironman training plan!  Feb 2 is going to be here before you know it.  I'm starting out easy with a couple of warmup weeks before the base phase begins.  The distances will actually be shorter than what I'm doing now, but it will establish the schedule that the distances will grow from.  The basic schedule is:

Saturday: swim/bike
Sunday: bike/run
Monday: PM run
Tuesday: bike/swim
Wednesday: bike/run
Thursday: bike/swim
Friday: Praise God Rest

Double downs.  Two a days.  They start here.  2 weeks of warmup, 22 weeks of base building, a 12 week build phase, and a 2 week taper.  That's a 38 week plan of weekend bricks and weekday double shots.  T/W/Th's bike rides will be done in the morning with the other workouts in the evenings.  I'll be rejoining the RAM team in March for my swimming practice again.  Got to work my distance back up to the yardage they put in. 

I know you're all ready to tackle my plan, huh?  I've been doing a few things to get ready.  Working out once a day to try and get ready, still taking my Friday rest days.  Baha even threw me into a facebook group for a 30 day ab/core work challenge.  Do 15 minutes of core work every day for 30 days straight to help us get ready for the tri season and stay motivated.  I've been working it in with my regular yoga, and by working it in I really mean replacing sometimes.  It's really going well so far. 

I also signed up for twitter, follow me under the handle SendCJToKona - as in I want to make a kona run in a few years.  Eventually I'll get a badge on the blog design.  I am really enjoying the tweet life so far.  It's fast paced and cool.

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Following up on a few older posts:

We ended up dropping Directv.  Time Warner cable actually offered to lower my current bill with them if I added the tv service, so we ended up doing that.  I really hated their dvr software the last time, but I can't turn down a lower bill.

I got in a great 6 mile run outside on Sunday afternoon.  My cousin came down from DC for a surprise visit which was fantastic, and when they left it was about 70* so I got to pound some pavement.  Today I also got in a 4 miler.  My legs are finally getting re-adapted to running distance at a consistent pace again, flushing out the lactic acid, and being able to rebound nicely without feeling sore for very long.  It took longer than I thought it would, but is quite a relief.

This monday the MMNW finally came in inside of the safe zone for the first time this year.  179.8 lbs and 19.9% body fat.  The safe zone is under 180 and 20%, and I wanted to be there before launching the ironman training plan.  Good to go.  Jan 1 I came in at 186 and 20.6%, fwiw. 

Relief is the key word for a post I'm working on for next week.  Do you ever anticipate anything as much as I do this training plan?  I'm ready for kickoff here!

I'm a winner!

I've been listening to the podcasts from the Brilliant Body Summit in the afternoons lately.  It's a really interesting take on the raw vegan approach to healthy, weight loss, and fitness.  It's a great way to hear from raw food life coaches, nutritionalists, and people who have changed their lives in ways that they are very passionate about.  It is very interesting to me to hear other people talk about their passion the same way I might talk about Upper Cervical Chiropractic care or triathlon. 

Chris Kendall has to be one of my favorite speakers there.  He's really fun to watch and listen to.  Freelee and lots of the people from 30 Bananas a Day are on there.  Today's speaker is DurianRider, a controversial activist who's incredibly passionate about the 80/10/10 lifestyle.  These people all give away books or promote their products at the end of the podcast.

Yesterday's speaker was Drew McCall Burke, the Sexy Raw Vegan herself.  At the end, I won a copy of her book "Be a Sexy Raw Vegan in 30 Days" and it looks really interesting.  She promotes a combination of juicing, smoothies, and whole fruit.  The book has menu's, shopping lists, and lays out the whole plan very clearly.  It's a good read, and the authors (including Mitzi Mager) have been through some really impressive transformations.

I've been really digging the Fruit Detox Mondays' and I'm thinking about stepping that up a little bit.  Instead of doing just a full day of fruit on Monday I'm going to start increasing the fruit consumption throughout the week. It's the kind of thing that you can't eat too much of, if anything you can't get enough calories from raw fruits.  I'm leaning towards doing more green smoothies for breakfast and fruit/melon smoothies for lunch.  Then whatever Kelley cooks for dinner (which is usually sensible anyway).  I did look up more details on yesterdays food.

Breakfast green smoothie:
2 baby bok choy
handful of spinach
4 bananas
2 small apples
handful of blueberries
3 dates
2 cups of Orange Juice

1009 calories, 249 g carbs, 4g fat, 16g protein

Lunch melon smoothie:
half a Canary Melon (found at local farmer's market, any melon will do)
1 banana
handful of blueberries
2 cups OJ

878 calories, 211g carbs, 1g fat, 17g protein

So I'm up to almost 1900 calories by lunch.  The target is to get between 2000 and 3000 calories a day just from the smoothies like that, so that's pretty close.  But if all you eat is raw fruits and veg you don't get enough protein, right?  33 grams is enough for a full day.  and I still had dinner to go.  It's 91% carbs, 7% protein, and 1% fat.

For dinner last night, Kelley made red beans and rice, and some cabbage with carraway seeds that is really tasty when it's all mixed together.  Vegan, yes, but not raw.  Delish?  absolutely.  I also had a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch as a late night snack.  The beans and the milk also had plenty of protein.

But you can't fuel Ironman training workouts like that, right?  Well, actually I think maybe you can.   Yesterday I did my Ashtanga Primary series routine both in the morning and late at night. Over lunch I hit the weights for a quick circuit and did running intervals on the treadmill.  8 x half a mile each at 9.0 speed (6:39 pace) with recovery in between.  6 miles total.  The last time I tried that workout I could only do 4 intervals, so I was really pleased.  And I still had energy at the end, but instead of doing 2 more intervals I had to go back to work. 

So if I can get in yoga, strength training, and 6 miles of interval running on nothing but smoothie power, I think it will work. 

I made the smoothies on Sunday night and kept them in the fridge overnight.  Everything held it's consistency and texture overnight, and was still quite tasty all through the day.  With my new job, the plan is to make these the night before so I can drink the breakfast smoothie on my drive into work and keep the melon smoothie in the office fridge until I want to drink it at my desk.  After yesterday's performance, I feel pretty optimistic about this plan.

The final theory is that if you consume enough food that contains less than 5% fat, you will also end up with less than 5% fat because you are what you eat.  Yesterday's monday morning naked weight (MMNW) was 178.8 with 19.8% body fat.  Today's weigh in was 176.2 lbs with 19.1% body fat.  So the scale shows a 2.6 lb loss overall with 1.8 lbs of that being melted bodyfat.  My "safe" zone (or what Drew would call the Sexy range) is under 180 lbs and under 20% bodyfat.  So I'm totally in the safe zone.  But the last time I was getting this close to 175 lbs was in the middle of an Ironman build phase where I was working out 20 hours a week.

This is not an Ironman build phase.  This is the very beginning of an endurance base phase leading up to the half ironman/marathon/ultra set coming in the winter.  You may remember that last year, to get ready for Ironman training, I went totally vegetarian and restricted to only 1800 calories a day and it got me down to about this weight.  With this plan I get to eat more than 1800 calories just before lunch, and I still get to melt bodyfat?  I don't need to drop any more pounds, but the reduction in bodyfat is something I never could do last year.  This is going to be fun.

Fruit Detox Report

We all can remember that gluten free sucks, right?  Also right now Fruitarian is all the rage.  I really like seeing the trend towards more whole, natural foods and away from processed stuff.  I've been finding and reading a lot of blogs about whole, raw, & fruit based eating, and it's getting really interesting.  So I've decided to try a little experiment with Mondays.

Supposedly this is from 1917, stole it from facebook

 The fruitarian picks one fruit and eats only that fruit each day.  His theory is that in nature you wouldn't visit a peach orchard and an apple orchard in the same day.  So he buys his groceries in bulk from a restaurant supplier, has 4 refrigerators at home, and stocks them heavily with fresh fruit.  Today's eats might consist solely of a 40 lb watermelon.  Tomorrow might be 10 lbs of apples.  He eats massive quantities of fruit every day, all raw and natural.  And he wins 100 mile ultramarathons.  We cannot question his methods.

Scott Jurek's new book Eat & Run is getting very popular, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.  He promotes a vegan lifestyle with proper training and he's been winning ultra's for years now.  I will read this before my first ultra in December.

I also found this great documentary called Pure Fruit if you've got an hour to watch it.

I'm totally sick of reading Wheat Belly, but determined to finish this incredibly boring read.  It does a really good job of putting me to sleep at night, but the theories are sound and medically based.

If you choose to eat nothing but fruit as a lifestyle, that's called Fruitarianism.  Fruitarianism also allows some nuts and seeds.  If you stick to only fruits for 1-3 days, it's called a "fruit fast", and if you only go all fruit for one day it's known as a "fruit detox".  I'm going to start taking Mondays as Fruit Detox days, starting this week.

You learn different things trying a fruit detox like this.  I decided to take the Fruitarian's approach and start out with an apple day.  Figuring that you could have multiple varieties of apples in the same orchard, I went out Sunday night and bought a shitload of apples. 

There is no concept of timed breakfast, lunch and dinner when you eat all fruit.  You just eat more fruit whenever you feel like it. I still drank coffee all day.  I still drank a bunch of water.  But whenever I got hungry I grabbed another apple.  Monday night I hit the gym for some weightlifting and an hour on the stationary bike, just like every other monday.  The workout just happened to be fueled on apple power.

I also learned that apples are very acidic.  Towards the end of the day my teeth really started to hurt when biting into the apple.  So I switched to a banana before and after the workout, and had some nuts about 10 pm as well.  Overall I still ate about 2000 calories on the day.  Aside from the painful teeth there were really no negative effects.  But on the positive side, we can start by comparing weights:

MMNW: 184.8 lbs, 22.7% body fat
Tuesday's MNW: 181.4 lbs, 20.8% bf

When you multiply that out, I lost 4.2 lbs of pure body fat, and 3.4 lbs overall so I must have retained some water.  But that was only in one day!  One day people!  The theory is that when you only take in food that contains less than 5% fat, the "you are what you eat" rule dictates that you will then have less than 5% fat.  The effects were residual too, as 181.4 is the highest I've weighed since tuesday morning.  I went right back to eating natural, unprocessed foods for the rest of the week. So that fat melted off of me and has stayed off so far.

So I was full the whole day, ate as much as I wanted to, ate constantly the whole day, had plenty of energy, got in a great workout, and melted away bodyfat.  What would I change?

I still don't want to try and sustain eating only fruit all the time.  For a one day detox it worked great, and I'm really looking forward to next monday.  But one day a week is enough.  Eating only one type of fruit for the whole day is also a really bad choice.  I got so sick of apples by the end, ugh.  I can see having a primary fruit with some secondary stuff to back it up.  But you need more variety in the day than just that.  It's supposed to be seasonal fruit anyway.  Apples were a bad choice for the one fruit I was limited to, they are really too acidic.

I'm already looking forward to doing this again next monday.  You never know, I might just eat 30 bananas.  But mango's are in season right now too, and the berries are starting to come in.  So there will be a variety of fruit, and we'll have to see how that detox turns out.

Manamana Monday

Last night I took the kids to see the Muppet Movie with a friend of ours and her two kids.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed the movie, it had cameos by so many fun people!  The movie was very well done, the kids ate way too much popcorn, and everyone had a good time.  Kelley stayed home to get ready for the big week ahead (of which I cannot give details yet).

The plan worked pretty good last week.  Officially the weight went from 187 down to 182.  The goal is still 175 but I want to get under 180 for the 5k next weekend and the marathon on the 18th.  Workouts went ok last week, with Saturday being the only sucky one.  I finally got back in the pool for an incredibly difficult 2400 yards on thursday.  I can certainly tell that I didn't swim in February. Tuesday's running intervals were half mile repeats at a 6:38 pace.  Thursday's tempo run was 4 miles at a 7:30 pace.  I also got 42 miles on the bike done.

Saturday's brick was the only thing that really blew.  It was raining and temps in the mid-30's out there, so I headed for the gym for some cardio cinema and treadmill action.  Captain Ron was playing, and if you've never heard of it.... it may be the worst movie ever produced.  It was Ishtar bad.

I'm not sure what was worse, the fact that Captain Ron was playing or that I got there just in time to catch the last 10 minutes, ruining the ending for the rest of the short time I was in there.  After going all week without processed carbs, I got really hungry a short time into the ride.  The same thing happened while I was swimming thursday as well.  No glycogen means instant fatigue when going hard.  Or maybe I was just ready to lose my lunch after suffering through such a horrible movie.  I mean somebody had to make the decision that Captain Ron was the right movie to play on repeat for Saturday, and I would like to slap them.  But I got that kind of low blood sugar feeling hungry about 9 miles into the ride, and after drinking more water it didn't go away as fast as I wanted it too.  So I got off of the bike at 10 miles, and ran 1 mile on the treadmill just to complete the brick before going home and stuffing myself.  This week I'm going to play my nutrition a little smarter to try and prevent that.

During the week last week it was in the mid-70's and low-80's around Raleigh.  It was incredibly nice driving around with the top down.  March is proving to be very up and down so far, as this week is going back to the 50's and we're supposed to get some snow this morning (but it's not going to happen).  It's crazy, I'm enjoying it, and don't forget that we go back on Daylight Savings Time next weekend.  What a wacky March!

Mom made and sent some incredibly cute costumes up for the girls.  They are Cinderella and Snow White, and the kids have been living in these things.