I went and injured both my big toes. No biggie huh? Well then you have never injured your’s! Because it is amazing how bad it can be.

So here is what I did. I have a friend that wanted me to play soccer with a group of guys. I join in without cleats to play last weekend (I played a lot as a kid but that was 20 years ago). I run around with running shoes and proceed to bang my toenails on the front of my shoe. Someone then offers a pair of cleats that are about my size. I used them for the second half and they were a smidge too tight. All my cardio work did wonders and I was one of the most energetic running around like a fool chasing on offense and defense with a 6 on 6 game. This probably made things worse.

I got home and my toenails were acting as though they were riding a bed of jelly on top of my toe. It was cool to watch them move like that if it didn’t hurt so much. They are definitely bruised underneath but I only see a light hue of purple so far, no black.

Anyway its been 3 days now and I can move around a bit and have taken a fabulous liking to my steel toe work shoes that I have never worn much. I also had very mildly strained my ankles and the big tendon running down the inside of the thigh on one leg from all the stop and start running I am not used to. Oh and there is a gargantuan blister on the ball of my foot behind my left big toe. All in all I am hobbling around this week.

I totally blew my workout plan and have a 12k race coming up next Sunday. I will probably test out soon if I can do anything at all. I will run a short stint on Saturday and make my final decision if I can do it as a fun run/training. I am thinking I will heal enough to do it, but there is a giant blister too and if that gets worse I will risk my half marathon in 2 1/2 weeks. I was targetting a PR (2:06) with an outside shot at slipping in under 2 hours but the derailed training probably put that out of reach. I missed my bigest volume week ever by missing my long run planned after soccer. That was probably my single most important workout of this cycle and I blew it.

So here is some advice to triathletes that only do triathlete things. Keep it that way or prepare to be injured. If you do decide to add anything different besure to add it in baby steps with a mind toward what body parts are not ready for the workload you are going to put on them. Oh, and remember soccer is played in cleats that fit, not running shoes, that is another important thing to rememeber – they make all those different types of sport shoes because there is a demand for them. The demand comes from smart people that do not want to get hurt doing a sport they want to play.

It sounds so simple now.

All last year I put a lot of focus on eating before and after a workout and came to the conclusion that although I might feel good for the workouts I end up eating too much and then by the end of the day eating more than I planned or wanted to. My problem on retrospect was I did it for all my workouts when I should have just been doing it for the particularly long or intense ones. Like today. An even better way probably is to just listen to the cravings in the body and have a plan for what to do. Doing it for the less intense and shorter ones gave me cravings that had me eating more.

I recently read an article about how to modify the paleo diet for athletes (link is below). That coupled with the fact that this morning I was ravenously hungry after the workout and had not brought the food with me that I intended to eat made me stop in a convenience store on the way to work. And I sort of did the experiment by accident. With recent similar workouts and lots of leg soreness to compare it to, I am happy to report that this method is much, much better.

So here is the run-down of the eats and workouts for the 24 hours from lunch to just before lunch. I want to show it because I am proud of it and I think it will compare to what many triathletes put their body through for long and/or intense workouts.

• Lunch:

split pea soup 175 calories
lunch ham slices 50 calories

• Snack 3:00

Apple 80 calories
FRS Chew 20 calories

• Pre-workout Snack 4:00

Banana 100 calories

• Workout

Swim 3000 yards about 60 minutes
Run 3.3 miles (intended 4.0 but ran out of time)

• Post Workout Snack

12 oz Smoothie (orange juice conc, strawberries, wheat germ, egg protein) 120 calories

• Dinner about 50 minutes after workout

Tortilla, with 2 eggs and 2 oz ham slices 340 calories
Cran-pomegranate juice 100 calories

• Bed time after watching Survivor from the TIVO (slept 6 hours normally I get 8-9)

• Pre-workout Meal

Power Bar 240 calories
FRS chew 20 calories

• Workout

Bike 60 minutes (about 800 calories burned, 5 1:10 intervals at 300-350W, average 200W)
HEED in bottle about 100 calories worth
Run 4.5 miles (added some “sprintervals” .25 miles @6.5, .16 miles @7.5, .11 miles @8.5 to the middle of the workout)

• Post workout

(smoothie shop closed this early, forgot food and only had a green smoothie and a cheese stick with me, I ate the cheese stick and drank a sip of the smoothie which I now call “bad recipe” smoothie cause it was gross tasting)
Cheese stick 80 calories

• Convenience store stop

(I had a strong craving and this little meal was extremely satisfying, this was energy dense food and I estimate I ate about 6 calories per second, luckily it wasn’t a buffet or I would have blown the week’s intake!)
Cran grape juice 240 calories
Protein builder bar 270 calorie ($2.69 was a penny a calorie! expensive)

• Snack 10:00 am

FRS Chew 20 calories
Green smoothie (water, banana, kale, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cocoa powder, cayenne pepper) 110 calories (using turmeric and ginger as anti-inflammatory not as flavorings which gives higher grossness factor)

So there are several things going on here I think. First is the paleo diet where you try and eat more like a caveman did. (The Paleo diet is how I have been able to begin to tend to eat more like 1800-2000 calories a day when my diet typical to last year I would tend to eat more like 2400-2600 calories a day.) Another way of describing the diet is to eat more of what is natural and less of the processed foods. I am not specifically promoting thepaleodiet.com, rather I am promoting the idea of eating foods a step or two closer to how they were eaten as humans evolved. I clearly am not following the diet too well, but my main three meals of the day are normally more paleo than non when I am having a good day. I seriously modified breakfast since I was just getting ready for and coming off a 1:49 workout. That though is the whole point of the post however.

The paleo diet in and of itself is difficult to stay on as an athlete. Here is the article I read about the modification to the paleo diet for athletes. In the article it is clear that you only modify the diet for long or intense workouts, none of this if you were reading a magazine on a recumbent bike spinning at 50 rpm! The basic idea is to modify the amount you eat based on your energy needs at the time. For example, you start by eating a carb type food just before the workout and then during a drink or gel or whatever if its long, and then after you get the 4:1 carb:protein drink/meal to get the muscles the nutrients they recover best at.

If you only read one of the links I put in here this is the one to read, it goes into much more detail that I found simply astonishing. The site has a bunch of great articles if you have a couple of free hours for that matter.
training peaks paleo diet for athletes article

I then sipped on a green smoothie that had anti-inflammatory properties in the hopes that the damage from running is healed. Another thing I should mention is that I did 3 miles running Saturday, then a 10k race with a PR of 55 minutes on Sunday, a run of 4.3 miles Monday and 4.1 miles on Tuesday before the workouts shown. So you can see why I am worried about pain. I now go into a day off, which is really more like 2 days off since I finished so early in the day. This is my peak week for my upcoming half marathon in 3 ½ weeks. I will hit 30 miles (Mon-Sun is my week), the most ever in a week for me.

Anti-inflammatory foods are typically associated with baby boomers and their aging needs. But the way I see it I have chronic pain brought on by the periodization training scheme to get ready for half marathons and triathlons. Its only chronic in that I provide stresses to my body, which is slightly overweight, and then need to recover before I move on. So while perusing the category you will often see things like chronic pain, arthritis, heart disease, and stroke. But it seems pretty obvious to me that the same types of things will help a runner that bangs away on their legs day after day. So when reading the resources you have to keep this in mind.

Wikipedia Anti-Inflammatory Food
Dr Weil Anti-Inflammatory Diet Description
Dr Weil Anti-Inflammatory Diet Pyramid
Livestrong Anti-Inflammatory Herbs Article

So here I sit knee free of pain and no dead leg feeling when I get up from the computer to walk around (to the bathroom because of all the water I am drinking). I think I might have done a great job in getting ready for my half marathon this year. (I drink this type of green smoothie often so I am not sure how long it might take someone from their first time to see the benefits FYI).

So the deal is you have two competing choices, power and drag. Obviously drag is bad and power is good. But if you have to trade them off then you have to compare. In the video he doesn’t say this but it seems pretty obvious to me, if you have bigger biceps and shoulder then you will weight power lower and drag higher. And if you have flippers for hands then you will weight power higher and drag lower. (This was the root of my problem in thinking that swimming with the hand paddle things taught you the best technique but it alters the equation in favor of the deeper pull. Not good!) All of this is on a scale mind you and there has to be some testing, so you try the technique after warming up in the pool and carefully time it and see if it works better for you. It did for me.

There are two things that I have always done since my coach a couple of years ago taught me this. First I do not cross my hands over in front of my head and then try to pull with each arm staying on its own side. Second, in trying to do the high elbow thing I sort of modified this a bit over time to bend my elbow and run my hand down my middle as if I were trying to push down on the edge of the pool while climbing out of the water. It made sense to me that I wanted more of the pull moving me forward rather than if my hand is further out it will tend to want to twist my body. As it turns out I was wrong and I do want it to twist my body, but not because I want my body to twist.

I do it because I want to keep my shoulder as much out of the water as possible and my elbow close to the surface. This reduces the forward drag created and lets you swim faster with less effort. The only downside is that my muscles are not as developed that I need for that slightly different motion. But that is ok there is still plenty of time before my first race to get them in shape.

This video is worth its weight in gold. (How much does a bunch of megabytes weigh anyway?

The Race Club Video – Gary Hall Sr

http://brianthinagain.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/race-report-half-marathon/

I ran at 9:38 minutes per mile average give a few take a few here and there. My last mile was the fastest. Lat year I was basically on the same pace for the first half, then died and got a stress fracture in my foot for the effort. This year I finished up strong, passed people the last 2 miles and ran a total of 7 miles the following two days after the race.

What a great difference a year makes when you train consistently.

I think the best thing I did was to plan where my wife and kids would be on the course to meet me and cheer me on and then visualiize the race in my head the night before and the morning of the race. I had envisioned high fives for the family at mile 9.3 and that kept me running strong from mile 7 to mile 9 looking forward to the moment.

There was a girl just behind me the whole race that had a friend, a loud friend, who must have bounced along 2 miles at a time in her car to cheer her on. The sign said “Dig Deep DIVA”, which didn’t really speak to me, but I did get a bit of extra motivation running by her as she cheered everyone that went by on.

It was quite an accomplishment to think I wasn’t going to be able to run any faster this year. In fact I had planned on 10 minute miles being my stretch goal. Dropping from 2:14 to 2:06 was a huge boost in my confidence. I am going to go kill it on this sprint tri coming up. I want to drop about the same amount of time and try and run 9 minute miles. That would be amazing if I can pull it off.

Green Smoothies are all the rage nowadays. What better way to get all that you need in one quick dose? Now of course there are people out there that are going to say that comment shows how ignorant I really am. These smoothies are drunk by these people because they taste good. Yeah right! Now I am not saying that brainwashing yourself is a bad thing, but look at it this way, we are trying to get those that think I am a nut for considering it to actually try one. Anything to make it easier to eat your veggies I am all for.

So the how to get your veggies is easy, stuff them in a good blender with some liquid and puree. You can fit a whole 3.5 cup portion of a green leafy mix into the blender and get it down to about a 24 oz drink I think. If you can be brave for the 10 seconds it takes to down the beast you can mix it with water and drink something like 40 calories. Now it won’t taste good, but there are ways to work on that. Find a good recipe. Personally I am going to try and use nonfat milk to add protein in there and then a sweet fruit of some sort to bump it up to 200 calories but make it have a chance at tasting good.

When to drink the nasty beast? If you are working out regularly, drink that sucker as your recovery drink. You might want to add more fruit like say a banana and make sure the total calories comes to something like 300 if you worked out for an honest hour. It would be best if it was about 60 calories of protein and 240 calories of carbohydrates. You can even dump the whey isolate powder in there if you are worried about the speed it gets into your blood stream. Better if you just have it sitting there to start sipping as you are doing the last steps of your cool down, or starting on it the second you are done if you can’t take it along. None of the showering and lounging around before you head off to make it is what I am getting at.

Don’t take my word for it either. I found a few links for you to explore.

First is a great podcast/blog called Zen and the Art of Triathlon and a link to his post on how to make the green smoothie. I listened to his podcasts and he sort of records while he is doing other things. One of the things that made it to his podcast, besides being nekkid in bed with his wife wearing bicycle helmets for protection, was that he drinks green smoothies with something called spirulina in them. I bought some and made one solely because of his podcast.

Second is a blog entry that talked about these vile green smoothies as if they were the height of delicious eating. OK not really, but they do seem to like them quite a bit over there. They give you tips about how to make them so that you don’t revolt from the first one and never come back. Here is my tip on that front, don’t add 2 tablespoons of spirulina to your first one like I did (Thanks coach Brett for making me think this was a good idea). Spirulina is an algae that is very good for you and hence tastes like crap and smells a bit fishy and pond-like.

In fact here is a story about my first green smoothie I hope you will enjoy.

I made the smoothie last night before a long morning workout and there was too much for the container by about a quarter cup so I figured I’d taste it. Yuk! It smelled a bit fishy, and the spinach made it earthy while the grapes must not have been ripe, because there was no sweetness in that puppy. I added 3 packets of Truvia (stevia) hoping that was enough but not bold enough to taste it again to find out. I probably could have used another 1 or 2 more. The greenness that collected in my mouth and on my teeth was disgusting. I had to chase it with a few rinses of water and boy was I glad I just bought a new kitchen aid blender for the task, my old pile of junk would have left spinach threads and leafy bits in there that surely would have made me hurl.

I got to bed at about 10:15 and was getting up by 4:30. I had bad dreams about that smoothie. I envisioned myself gulping it down to get through it fast after my workout on my way through the parking lot. I was walking between a couple of cars as I downed the last bit and then the taste hit me. I lost it. The whole mess came up and hit the side of this little red car about roof level on the back driver side window. It basically oozed itself down the side of the car about the whole width of the back door, and that spirulina was so green even a thin coat was enough to get a deep lovely green. I emptied my water bottle on the thing in one big swoosh but it just hit the middle and had trouble washing much off. I tried to squeegee it down with my hand but then looking at the threads of green colored stomach acids mixed up with that vile smoothie stretching from the car to my hand as I pulled it away for another swoop had me gagging and I almost choked up the few last bits. Instead of cleaning more I made it to my car, got $10 out of my wallet and wrote a little note that said I was sorry, but here’s the money for a car wash and a latte while you wait. I also added not to worry because I will never drink another green smoothie in case they thought it was something malicious.

The real test that came this morning was not nearly as exciting. I drank it and it didn’t taste nearly as bad as I was thinking. Being a bit hungry after a long workout (3600 yard swim 5.25 miles on the elliptical) makes one less finicky I guess. I will need to work on it though. My first thoughts are to use less spirulina at least until I get used to it, then try something besides spinach which tasted a bit like dirt. Lastly I think I will use nonfat milk and a banana and a sweeter fruit than those sour grapes I found.

I left my wife a bottle of the stuff too, and I told her that I had killed an alien and ground up his brains in the smoothie. I had a yellow shirt on and the powdery spirulina got all over me so it seems like the story matched what I looked like. We shall see if she drinks more than a sip. [EDIT: This just in, she hated it]

All I can really conclude is that it is wonderful to get so much nutrition from so few calories. And although I do get all my fruits and veggies in a decent percent of the time, recently anyway, this will sure make it easy to do so more often. Especially once I get myself brainwashed into thinking it tastes good.

[EDIT:Thanks to coach Brett from Zen and the Art of Triathlon for your comment. I will be looking to add more fruit for my next smoothie]

I made it to 100 posts. I thought I would post a list of my most popular searched on entries.  There are 14 that got more than 200 views from specific searches. 

1. Basal Metabolic Rate and METS – Biggest Loser Theory – 1805
2. South Beach Diet: – 1391 (4 posts)
   1. Phase 1 Example Meals - 629
   2. Science of Carbs – 306
   3. I’m melting – 242
   4. Chocolate milk substitute – 214
3. Swimming – 938 (2 posts)
   1. Proper technique – 566
   2. Balance – 372
4. NutraSweet vs. Splenda – 629
5. Treadmill vs. The Road – 417
6. Post exercise recovery drink – 355
7. Lactate threshold: how to improve – 319
8. Fiber: Soluble or Insoluble – 267
9. Slow Fat Triathlete (Good Book) – 259
10. Working out to lose Fat: EPOC – 238

I got in a long run of 6.65 miles on Sunday. I did it at a slow pace of 10:50 per mile average. I was shooting for 11 minute miles thinking that would allow me to keep my heart rate lower than usual around 140 bpm to start out. I know I was on exactly 11:00 miles at 3.1 miles, so I actually ran a negative split of about 17 seconds per mile pace the rest of the way and it included a slight uphill section about a half mile long. I was worried a little about having sore legs Monday and even today, but then I read a post a coach wrote about sore legs and it made me feel better: http://running-advice.com/blog/?p=31

I just got so used to running all out last year as I did most of my running at lunch in a group that was faster. It is hard for me to run at this lower heart rate because I feel so good I have the urge to speed up. I must have glanced down at least 10 times during the run where I saw my hear rate in the 150’s and forced myself to slow down. Since I didn’t have anything to drink my heart rate naturally drifted up. That is the one thing about heart rate training that has always bothered me a bit since I didn’t know why. Recently though I read an article that explained why. It was in a magazine that I cannot recall. I found a few articles online that also explain the various things that affect your heart rate as you work out. So when you use heart rate as a tool for training you need to know these things so you know why it might be acting differently.

• Cardiac drift: Heart rate goes up because sweat mainly comes from the fluid in your blood so the decreased volume of blood means your heart has to beat faster. (fifth item in the article: http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=6627 )
• Heart rate goes up as your body temperature increases, which happens during exercise. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0675/is_4_20/ai_90924147/ 
•  Heart rate goes up as ambient temperature and humidity increase so you will have a higher rate on a hotter or more humid day even if you do the same workout. This and the last item are obviously tied together and are described on the link as above.
• Another item that is something to watch once you use heart rate monitoring for a while is that when you get sick your heart rate increases. So if you get in the habit of checking your resting heart rate in the morning before getting up and notice it’s higher than normal it might be a sign your body is working on something. Maybe you sleepwalked at 3 am to get a PB&J or maybe you are getting sick, maybe you woke up dehydrated, or maybe you are training so hard that you did not recover overnight. You cannot measure this a few times and get a clue. You will need to keep a watch out over time.
• Another thing to note about heart rate is that your resting heart rate will decrease as you get more fit. Mine went from around 60 to about 45 so far. Also the recovery of heart rate to normal levels after working out happens faster as you become fitter for the same length and intensity of exercise.

For more info on training in heart rate zones try this link:
http://www.fitzones.com/members/Fitness/heartrate_zones.asp  

I have decided that I trained to intense all the time while running last year, so I will be doing a lot more less intense stuff. I am starting a little later than I should be as this is what is considered base training, but I will just not run the races too intense and get a worse time than last year but then enjoy the rest of the year without the same injury.

July I will be doing the same almost Olympic race. It’s a little short on the swim and run but is a classic around these parts. I plan to skip the August Oly I did last year and replace it with something else. I might do an open water swim, maybe a bike tour, or I might do a… well… a half ironman. Yeah, you heard me right, I have gone mad. It’s in my home town and would like to try it. I will not do it if I have trouble building up to the half marathon, or for some reason cannot keep up the running volume after the half. In other words I must be injury free and able to build my volumes up to riding more than 60 miles a week and running more than 30 with long runs of more than 13 miles. If I cannot or do not build up to this, then I won’t sign up. I am giving it about a 33% chance of it happening at this point in time.

In September I will do the same Oly I did last year. The race was great and it is a nice end to the year. I love how the swim starts up a river into the current on a cold morning with steam rising off the water around a long slow bend so far that you can’t see the end of the swim. It intimidates people, but I loved it. This is the race I will be going all out for. Because it is my “A” race, I will evaluate how I did last year.

I had a great swim. My time was 54 seconds a lap equivalent (50 yards). Each 5 seconds a lap is about 2 minutes improvement in the swim time. So I am not expecting to be able to do more than a 2:00 improvement on my overall time based on effort in the swim. As a comparison I took the 4 quartiles (top 25%, second 25% etc) and averaged their times per lap: 45, 56, 60, and 72 seconds. I was in the middle of the second quartile with my time, 64th of 165 total entrants.

My transition was very slow. The running 100 yards directly on the boat launch/parking lot with no carpets slowed me up a bit. Then there was the tiredness I had to fight through as I got changed. It took me 3:53 to go from the swim to the bike. The overall average was 3:10, the quartiles are a better representation, 1:36, 2:42, 3:35, and 4:36. I fared slightly better than my overall group around me by just a few seconds as I was in the last quartile overall but I was out of my league with those around me at the time since my swim was fast. The thing is there is no reason for this wasted time. I should be able to change my clothes faster than 50% of the people if I put a little effort into it, for goodness sakes. My goal is to get this done in 2:00, so I will need to practice and work out the kinks a bit. So I can knock off almost 2:00 from the total, 1:53 to be exact.

It took me 1:26 to ride my bike 40k, 24.8 miles. That is a speed of 17.2 mph, by quartiles again the speeds were: 21.9, 19.7, 18.6, and 16.5 mph. Again I fit right in where I should be according to my finish, but it left me wanting for more. I would hope that I could hit the average of a group of men and women at a minimum which would be 18.9 mph. This then is my goal. I am working more on the bike this year because of how poorly all my bike outings went so that goal should be there for the taking.

My second transition was a good time, right where I would expect and of little consequence. If I save 7 seconds I can round up both transitions to a 2:00 improvement.

The run will get better by being able to do more volume. It took me 1:13, which is an 11:44 per mile pace. I ran a 10k race early in the year at a 9:13 pace. So the speed is there, I just get tired and can’t do it as fast. I will never make a 10k PR during an Olympic triathlon, but I should not drop off that much. I would hope I wouldn’t drop off more than 40 seconds to a minute a mile. I never did run a triathlon where I felt good on the run like I do when I just go run. So this will be a work in progress and I will likely not have the big improvements here. The quartiles for the triathlon participants at minutes per mile pace: 7:12, 8:07, 9:43, 11:00. I was pretty much last place, a confirmation that the distance was a bit too long for me to hold up.

It is not too long anymore though. I am working out for over 2 hours a day 3 days a week and 1 hour to 1 ¼ hours two other days. It will not be too long after I do this for 8 more months and then get out there to ravage the course. My initial goal for the run is first to hit 10 minute miles. This will work out if I can build up to handle the distance well. Put another way I need to build my endurance to 3 hours of hard workout.

To sum it all up, I am thinking I can reach the goal of saving 2 minutes on the swim, 2 minutes in transitions, 8 minutes on the bike, and 10 minutes on the run. So I could potentially finish the race in 2 hours 52 minutes which would be about 100th out of 165 in last years race. So my goal at this point is to crack the top 100. I will just not mention to anyone that there are only 165 entrants when I tell them of this goal.

I think the best thing I have done is to use all that I have learned about sports periodization and applied it for use. It helps with the mental aspect of working out. Periodization is the idea that you need to give the body a stress to improve it and the stress needs to increase for your body to keep adapting to it. If you keep giving it the same stress it will improve less and less. But, it also needs a break. You can’t just increase it forever. So if you graphed it’s like a sine wave (wavy line) plus a sloped line to tilt it upward. (Yeah I know, us engineers and our demented ways of thinking.)

So there are micro cycles which are more like a weekly plan. It doesn’t have to be a week, but let’s face it is there anyone that doesn’t use the week to organize their time? The macro cycle which is usually 3 or 4 weeks, then there is the year plan and the life plan, all these cycles come together to look like a stock market chart. The plan is like the simple examples of how stocks move in patterns as you might find in a book, and recording what you actually do looks like the stock market.

Back to the mental aspect I wanted to explain. If I sat down after the triathlon season was over and planned my whole season for the next year and had it all on paper, it would be daunting. It would be like coming into an operation that was half done and taking it over right in the thick of things. Hello Brian, this here is the half completed pyramid, here is the quarry and the forest and the farms and the workers, enjoy finishing it. A tad bit overwhelming! But then there is the cliché to take things one step at a time and such. This is too small but to keep your mind focused on the one thing at hand, the living in the moment, the zen of it all. I like the macro-cycle. I can plan it out easily, I can commit to it without feeling like I am giving away too much, I can have an idea about what is behind the corner for the next one, but I don’t actually have to plan it until this one is over and I am in the resting phase. It is easy to plan something when you feel like you are not doing much and are proud of any progress you made. That is what I mean by mental aspect.

A review of my last 6 weeks. It was a macro cycle because I had to start out slower and wanted to hit 200 pounds before I took a break. If you look close it is actually two macro-cycles that are 3 weeks long. My darn knee of mine had me lay off a bit. I am now in a week that has not been planned except for key workouts during the week. For example, I got this bike workout on Wednesday that I am working on building my power, it is set up for the next 8 weeks, I have done 4 of 12 so far. I can easily add on or back off the week by adjusting another workout that is more flexible. Just don’t mess with the key workouts! Now have a look at my chart of the last 6 weeks.

First, I must confess this is a hard to read chart. All the units are different. I could have scaled them based on calories burned which might be more appropriate to show the equal efforts, but I didn’t. Instead I will give you samples: The peak run week 5. I burned about 2680 calories running and walking each day: 2.1, 3.8, 3.1, 1.3, 0, 5, and 2.5 miles. I basically just stick a short treadmill workout, or a long one on the end of my other workouts, I never actually went for a run on it’s own, that is how I managed to get so much. The peak bike week 5 I burned about 2410 calories riding : 17, 0, 15.5, 0, 8, 16, and 0 miles. On the chart so these don’t spike upward I divided by 5 so the total is 56.5 miles but is just about 11, according to calories burned it should be close to the run line peak but I do not want to redo the chart. The swim peak was week 5, I swam 0, 3600, 0, 4200, 0, 1850, and 0 yards for a total of 9600 yards which is about 5.5 miles and burned 2020 calories. It is interesting to note that I burn about 12 to 13 calories a minute over the week on all the sports so I could just as easily chart by time instead of calories. The 12 to 13 is the average, each entry is recorded as best as possible based on my effort and ranges from 10-15.

The last number is the calories total. This is all calories burned and saved. By saved I mean that to maintain my weight I need to eat about 2500 calories a day, so if I eat less those are added in the total. So with week 5 as an example, I burned 7300 working out 619 minutes and saved 5900 by eating 1655 calories a day average. The main point was to look over the chart as relative values and see the macro-cycle period climb up and drop off. I am proud of how well I did these six weeks.

A note about the calories burned: we are all told that 3500 calories is a pound, but then to accurately measure them, especially regarding workouts, is nearly impossible. The total calories burned and saved that I recorded is 49,300 and that divided by 3500 estimates 14.1 pounds. The weight I dropped was from 212.6 to 198.8, or 12.8 pounds. Close enough! If I really wanted to I could test which is off by doing the same workout times or by eating the same amount of food and vary the other side. But like I said it is close enough for me.

Anyone that wants to figure out these for themselves I had some posts about basal metabolic rate and METS that should get you started. Just remember it is all relative, if you are bigger it is easier to get the deficits. My wife cannot eat nearly as much as me and must then work out for more minutes to get the same numbers, just not easy to do unless you got sent off to a ranch somewhere. So don’t worry about the size of the numbers if you are attempting the same goal, it takes a bit of time to get it down. There is no way I could have done this last year, I did not have a handle on the eating part. I am only barely starting to honestly.

Another benefit of the macro-cycle it the light at the end of the tunnel. You get to have a moment like I am having now as I look over all my progress. I keep a food log to track the calories, obviously, so I can go back over it and make some nice realizations. In the thick of things last year before triathlon race season, I was more worried about all of the nutrition that goes around working out and making sure the recovery period went well. I peeked back and found a week that I had a day I ate 3100 calories and averages 2200 for the week, the week of my first 10k race. Last week, the worst day I had was 2720 calories, and I averaged 2024 for the week. For the six weeks I averaged 1957 calories a day. I am improving.

I highlight my mistakes in yellow or red depending on if it was controlled or total all out neglect for the plan. I have red and yellow every single week. How well I could do if I was actually able to control myself for weeks at a time? About the best goal I have accomplished is making the 800+ calorie meal a rarity. Last year I made it a goal to not eat out as much and if I do don’t eat more than 800 calories in the meal. I ate 1000+ calories in one meal 10 times in the last 6 weeks, 7 of which while out of town for work. The reason I have been doing so well in spite of this is to not worry about it as it happens, once it is going to happen there is only extra stress to worry. Instead I pledge to remember how full my belly is over the rest of the day and the next day if it was for dinner. I frequently have a big day now followed by a little day when this happens. Examples: 3260-1250, 2400-1390, 2720-1200. Each of these second days was easy because of the full belly from the day before coupled with reminding myself to only eat healthy filling foods so as not to get any empty calories that I had already used up from the day before.

I hope some of these comments help you in some way. I am now planning my race season and will share that next time. These races are what keeps me working out now, I do not want to show up this summer and collapse across the finish line after taking a good hour and 15 minutes longer than the winners and 30 minutes longer than the middle of the pack.

Yes, that is me talking to my blog. It kinda feels like it’s alive. I am amazed that all my time spent writing has not gone to waste, and that a lot of people still come by and read the posts I spent so much effort on. 

I am sure that you, dear readers, either don’t know about me or don’t care, but if you do remember the good old times, then I have a few updates for you. Oh, and thanks for checking back too. If you don’t know me then its just a recap so consider it to you as well. 

• I finished the oly I referred to in my last post in 3:18 with leg cramps from running hills and riding my clip-less bike pedals with running shoes because I forgot them at home, and was passed by a guy with a ‘68’ on his right calf about a mile from the finish. I love the fact they mark everyone by age, it is fun to guess and then take a peak.
• I did my season ending Olympic triathlon three weeks later and scored me an improvement of 3 minutes down to 3:15.
• My weight over the last 2 years:
  • June 2008 ish = about 230 lbs
  • Sept 2008 ish = about 213 lbs (this is when I started the blog)
  • Lowest point since then: about 192 lbs (running a lot)
  • Average weight during the end of 2009 tri season: about 195 lbs
  • Weight max since end of season as of Jan 18 2010 212.6 lbs (more on why later)
  • After 6 weeks of eating well (mostly well) and workout out hard: 199.8 lbs, that is where I sit now looking for another push closer to 190 this week.
• I got over my sore foot, and replaced it with a sore knee. Working on fixing that bad boy at the same time I am trying to get ready for the coming season.
• I love triathlon,
• My new favorite show is Alton Brown’s Good Eats

So now that you are all caught up with me, I need to finish this post up. I will be writing once a week, but may split up different categories into different posts scheduled for different days, so I hope you enjoy hearing about my progress. It looks like I will make it to my 100^th post shortly, this is #97. 

I plan to outline my diet and workouts and how they allow me to drop the weight at will next time. Coming up later I plan to lay out my race season and what I will focus on this year.