Nutrition Station

(If you haven't already, don't forget to donate to my effort to help cancer victims!)

Back when we remodeled our house, we added a dedicated theater in the basement.  Outside of the theater we put a kitchenette in so we could prepare snacks and to be able to clean up afterward.  But we don't entertain a ton, and even if we did that's a very infrequent use of that kitchenette.

So now that I'm doing all this crazy training for the Leadville Trail 100 MTB Race, I find myself preparing a lot of nutrition products. While actual meal food is prepared in our normal kitchen (and usually not by me!), any sort of shakes and smoothies are prepared in my nutrition station (ie. the kitchenette).  It turns out I have almost everything I need right there already.  As you can see below, we have a refrigerator, drawer dishwasher, and sink:

The drawer dishwasher is great because it's very easy to load and only half the size of a normal dishwasher.  Since my loads are small, that keeps energy and water consumption to a minimum.  Don't worry, blenders and even the very tall bicycle water bottles fit just fine.  Notice I have a single blender but two actual pitchers for it.  Turns out the cheapest way to do that is just to buy two blenders, so I have a spare motor I keep in the closet.  (Note: That's a normal Braun blender, which I like better than even the incredibly expensive Vitamax type blenders.  Some of these powder based nutrition products will aerate far too easily if the blend speed is high, and units like the Vitamax are just too fast.)  But this way I can wait to wash one until both are dirty, or I can prepare two different drinks at the same time and not have to wash one by hand.

Below you can also see what's on the other side of the sink...a small ice machine:

These aren't very expensive and are half the width of a dishwasher.  You can actually pair one with a small refrigerator that is the same size, too, if you like.  If I had this to do over again, I'd add a half-drawer freezer under the dishwasher, too.  For the frozen stuff I have a small dorm freezer just around the corner in another room, which is only mildly inconvenient.

The ice machine is great because a lot of what I do is fill water bottles and Camelbak systems with ice and water.  The ice the machine produces is relatively small cubes and you just scoop it with a big scoop.  These days most refrigerator ice is half-moon shaped and comes out of a dispenser, and there's simply no good way to get a lot of it into some of these different vessels as efficiently as the small cubes.

So what do I use this for?  My regular pre-workout breakfast is actually a homemade smoothie.  I blend ingredients like spinach, yogurt, milk, orange juice concentrate, a variety of frozen berries and mango, protein powder, fiber powder, flaxseed oil, fresh banana, etc.  My post workout shake is a product called Cytofuse.  Often I'll blend that before my workout after I make my smoothie.  I then put it in a Nalgene bottle and put that in an insulator designed for Nalgene bottles.  These will keep drinks cold in extreme conditions for quite some time, so they're great.  I also use these special caps on the Nalgene bottles if I'm going to be drinking directly from the bottle.  Much less chance of a mess!

Near the kitchenette is a closet, and that's where I keep my nutrition product stash:

I keep all my Nalgene bottles and other bottles in the cabinets above the kitchenette.  All my actual Camelbaks and spare bladders are in the closet you see pictured above.  I can easily hang a Camelbak bladder on the cabinet knobs above the sink for it to dry when I clean those, too.

So while I know most people can't just re-purpose a kitchenette or build one from scratch, I point all this out in case you are remodeling and are an endurance athlete, or in case you do have a similar setup you could be using.  Yes, it's quite a setup, but when you're training six days per week, sometimes multiple times per day, it's really nice to have everything for your nutrition in one neat and organized place.  There are a few tips in here that I hope will help even those who can't do something as self-contained, too!  Oh, and a lot of the above applies to making frozen liquor drinks, too.  Adapt as necessary.

Pump up the jam!

No, not the 80's classic by Technotronic.  Thankfully.  No, it's the pump track that we added at the ranch!  This isn't a great video, but Kevin shot it with my iPhone while I rode a little over a lap. 

So, what's a pump track, you say?  Well, it's a small BMX-like track where the object is to ride laps continually without pedaling.  That's right, you can't pedal.  You make the bike go by getting a small start with the pedals (or ride in from outside with just a little bit of speed) and then you use your entire body to pump down the back side of each little hill.  So you're simply moving your body up and down with your legs and arms in rhythm with the small rollers (or hills) so that you are putting energy into the downhill side to generate forward speed.

It's very cool.  And useful, too.  When biking on the trail, you sometimes need to be able to pump in places to generate extra speed, especially in places where the terrain may not allow for much pedaling.  Or sometimes in a race there are places where you can gain some "free" speed on folks who aren't pumping.  I wasn't really cornering with great technique here, but the bowls on the ends of the track are very good for working on better cornering technique, too. 

And ultimately, you can start actually jumping the front side of the rollers and pump as you land down the back side.  All with no pedaling.  So cool, fun, and good for mountain bike skills work!

We've got plenty of dirt stockpiled to add on a little more length, and the plan is to add some other skills features around the pump track in the form of wooden decks, jumps, platforms, etc.  Fun stuff.  Oh, and it works great for racing remote controlled off-road cars.  I'll try to get some video of that soon, too.  And some first person biking video.

Want to run more this year?

So you've made your new year's resolutions and one of them is to run more (or at all!).  But as soon as you do that, the weather turns frigid. It's just not fair, right?!?  But you made the resolution, so you begrudgingly dig out what you think is "just enough" clothing to get the job done.  You know, that fine line between freezing your patootie* off until you warm up and then hopefully not so much that you boil in your own sweat.  It's a tough one.

(* Patootie is a highly technical term, sometimes referred to as your "tuckus", "tushie", or the Englishman's "bum.")

A common method that helps with this is to wear a jacket or sweatshirt that you can remove once warm and then tie around your waist.  This is often referred to as "dressing in layers."  This has its own set of problems (from fashion nightmare all the way to the potential for it falling off and tripping you and causing death-by-faceplant).  Nope, not a good idea.

One possible scenario here is that you push through it with as little as you can stand in the clothing department and avoid becoming a patootie-popsicle.  But you get warmed up, run for a little bit, and then start to get too warm.  You fight through that for a while, maybe do the dangerous sweatshirt-turned-skirt trick, and ultimately change your running route so you can quit early.  Yeah, that's right, you went to DEFCON-SCREW-IT.  So much for that resolution since it's going to be even colder tomorrow.

But there are alternatives.  I've recently started doing what I call "dressing in segments."  Now, I'm fairly lucky in that I seem to have no problem getting the lower half of my body covered in such a way that I don't need to change it during a run.  Thin Smartwool socks are the norm for me no matter the temperature (because let's face it, I don't have to exercise in sub-20F weather in NC very often, if at all).  Anything below 48F or so and I wear CW-X running tights (light insulation), but above that and it's just running shorts.

But it's the upper half of the body that's the troublesome part.  Above 48F and I generally just wear a dri-fit shirt and headband and suffer a little until warmed up.  For 35F to 48F is where the segments begin.  At this point I usually wear a Smartwool short sleeve shirt, insulated running gloves, and Smartwool arm warmers.  On the upper end, I may still wear just a dri-fit headband, but on the lower end I switch to a dry-fit type (or Smartwool) full head cap.  I've recently considered putting a headband in my pocket to switch to if the full cap gets to be too much (which means it's soaked in sweat).  On the upper end, that's all I need.  On the lower end of this range, I wear a fleece vest on top of all that. 

With that setup, I can generally be pretty comfortable at the beginning of a run.  As I get warmed up, generally I notice my hands are starting to sweat and at that point I remove the gloves and put them in my pocket.  Depending on the temperature, at some point my arms begin to get warm.  If it's far into the run, I might choose to push up the warmers a little, but generally it happens early and I remove the arm warmers while running and put those in my pocket.  I usually find a point where I also start to unzip the fleece vest, and even move to unzipping it almost all the way.

But what about below 35F?  At this point I think it's good to have a thicker cap on the head, but carry a thin one to switch to.  I would also probably just go with a long sleeve Smartwool and a thin or thicker sweatshirt depending on just how cold it is.  And the fleece vest over that.  I'll still use the gloves, but often I still need to remove those, even pretty far below 35F.  But at this point the arms are usually fine.

So none of this is rocket science, but the big revelation for some may be the arm warmer trick.  That's something that mostly only cyclists use, but I think they're great for running, too.  And notice that everything I've mentioned should be things you can easily stuff in pockets rather than having to tie things around your waist.  I'm just not a fan of that, but if it works for you, great!

Hopefully this helps you keep that resolution and stay out there running this winter!

Leadville Milestones

Okay, I think I had a pretty great milestone today...longest ride on a bike ever, and it was by a lot.  My previous best on a mountain bike was 34 miles and was basically an all day affair in Pisgah with the boys.  My previous best on a road bike was 41 miles and happened at the Outer Banks while riding with Alan (and I'm pretty sure involved at least one reasonable break and him doing a lot of pulling).

Today I went 48 miles on my mountain bike.  I did it with one VERY brief stop to take a leak.  Otherwise, no stops.  About nine miles of it was on pavement with the rest on gravel road.  Yeah, I know, that's not very interesting, but in my attempts to be environmentally friendly that was the only real option as it is very wet right now.  In fact, I was lucky to fit this ride in at all without getting rained on.  It did start raining on me on the way home, but never anything significant while riding.

My route included two trips up and down the greenway in Cary that runs from Oak Hollow Apartments (where Ashley and I used to live!) to Lake Crabtree.  That's all paved and pretty flat and totaled just over nine miles of the 48.  The rest was just riding pretty much all the gravel road in Umstead State Park.  I had to do a few pieces of it three times and most everything else twice to get that distance.

I'm pretty stoked about the ride.  The data summary goes like this:

• 47.99 miles
• 3 hours and 46 minutes
• 12.7MPH average pace
• almost 2800 feet of elevation gain
• 129 bpm average heart rate
• 185W average power output
• 64 degree average temperature (three days from Christmas!)

Not too bad.  I'll take it!  I consumed about 70 ounces of water and five Honey Stinger waffles while riding.  I blame Fatty for turning me on to the Honey Stinger waffles, too.  You want to go ride 50 miles just so you can eat a bunch of them!  That was a tough enough ride that I know I'm not ready for Leadville right now.  But I've got eight more months, and things are happening at a rate that I'm very comfortable with right now.

I need your help!

I need your help.  Well, technically, young adult cancer fighters and survivors need your help.  I've signed up with team First Descents to do the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race.  I've already blogged a bit about the race, but to summarize I'm going to try to do 103 miles of mountain biking in under 12 hours.  Oh, and there's 14,000 feet of climbing and it all happens above 10,000 feet of altitude.  You know, easy stuff like that.

So how can you help?  Donate through my page to Team First Descents!  It's really that simple.  It's a great organization that helps cancer fighters and survivors learn how to live and how to have the confidence they need to continue the fight.  I'm really excited and honored to be able to help out such a great cause, and I hope you can spare a few bucks to help, too.

The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race

Okay, so I've gone and done it now.  I don't know what possessed me, but I've gone and got myself all wrapped up in the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race.  The 2012 version happens on August 11 in beautiful Leadville, Colorado. 

For those unfamiliar, this is actually a 103 mile race that happens at 10,000 feet of elevation and above, and includes a total of 14,000 feet of actual climbing.  Because it's an out-and-back course, that means there is also 14,000 feet of descent.  The weather is known for being quite unpredictable, and the course has some very challenging spots, particularly if it's raining.  So, in a word, it's brutal.  But another word, and the one I'm going to focus on, is epic.

Epic is the reason mountain biking exists.  I'm sure at first it was just some kind of experiment in riding on hiking trails rather than on the road or on a BMX track, but the challenges faced when riding those trails is what caused people to continue to push the envelope in terms of skills as well as machinery and turn the sport into what we have today.

What we have today is a wide variety of types of "mountain biking", and this race even pushes the limits of that to something I'd call "ultra-endurance mountain biking", I guess.  There are only a handful of races in the entire world that are significantly longer than 100 miles, though there are a bunch of races that are basically this same length now.  Well a "bunch" as in probably 10 or 12 in the US, anyway.  More common is the "6 hour" endurance race for mountain bikers, and often those are on MUCH shorter courses and you just do as many laps as you can within some cut-off time (usually around 5.5 hours).

So why do something this extreme?  Because this particular race is considered the pinnacle of mountain bike racing in North America.  To be considered a finisher, you have to complete the course in 13 hours.  Complete it in 12 hours and you get a small, but very cool, belt buckle.  Complete it in 9 hours and you get a large belt buckle.  I know, most of you are thinking "what the hell would anyone go to all that trouble for a belt buckle for?"  Yeah, me too, in a way.  I'm certainly not going to wear the thing, but then again I'm sure most people who win them don't wear them, either. 

It's really about completing the thing and being able to know you did it.  It's kind of a bucket list item for many folks who like to ride mountain bikes.  Most of us ride a few hours per week, and often do one ride per week that's 2-3 hours long, and that's it.  If I train my butt off between now and then (and I'm already in decent shape), and have a GREAT day, I might get close to that nine hour number.  Realistically, my goal is 10 hours (and that'll take a very good day).  If I manage to finish in 12 hours by even the closest of margins, I'll still be VERY happy.  If I squeak the 13 hour mark, I'll be happy.  If I don't make 13, it won't be a good day at all for me.

What can screw it up?  Illness.  My body not cooperating with the altitude.  Mechanical failure.  Not following my hydration and nutrition plan.  Crashing.  Oversleeping.  Not training well enough.  And probably other things.  I've got plans to deal with all those things (well, except maybe illness...I don't think there's much I can do about that!) and then some, however, and over the course of the next year I'll bring you all up to date on what they are.  I plan to blog fairly extensively about it (and given recent history, that may mean I don't blog about much else...who knows, though, maybe this will rekindle my blogging fire on other topics, too).

My next blog post will be about how you can help.  That's right, you can help.  How?  Well let's just say getting into Leadville as a first timer is very difficult.  There's a lottery system and first timer's have a less than 10% chance these days of getting in.  But there's a couple other ways to get in now, and one involves raising money for charity.  That's the one I chose, and I feel pretty great about it because it's a pretty great charity.  More on that in a few days. 

For now, it's nearly time to get myself ready for a rainy day long run.  That's right, a run.  I just wrote a huge blog entry about mountain biking and I'm going for a run.  Why?  Well, cross training is good, and apparently running is becoming widely accepted as a very good compliment to biking.  Which is annoying, because I don't love running nearly as much as I love biking, but that's okay.  On this rainy day I've got a running partner, and that seems to make running so much better.

I plan to give a shout-out in probably every one of these posts to my awesome coach, Sage Rountree.  She is, without a doubt, one of the world's leading authorities on athletic recovery.  But you don't get to that point without being pretty great at how to become an extreme endurance athlete, so she's a great coach for this in so many ways. 

So hang on, it's going to be a fun ride...

The Great Marriage Debate

As most readers of this blog already know, the NC General Assembly has placed a referendum on the ballot at the upcoming Republican primary election to add a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. This would simply be a stronger position supporting the state law that already says the same thing, and would certainly make it harder to change that law in the future.

This has caused a lot of backlash, most notably with this def shephard blog post that's been making the rounds. It's good reading, even if you disagree with the stance. I have a much different take, however.

To me, this boils down to an argument between those who prefer marriage to be defined as a union between one man and one woman and those who want it defined as a union between any two people.

But why? There are lots of reasons that the LGBT community wants legal marriage status, but the only ones that really matter are the ones that are government influenced (as far as this discussion is concerned, anyway). Things like tax breaks for married couples, insurance issues, etc. Otherwise, it's really just about "recognition." Now, I think the folks who want this change are attacking it from the wrong angle. I'd personally rather see, and would support, changes that take the government out of marriage entirely. No tax breaks for simply being married, no link between insurance and marriage, etc. No laws whatsoever governing "marriage." It would simply be something that churches or other entities can recognize. Why does it need to be anything more?

The ultra-conservatives would say that taking away this government recognized system is further eroding some sort of moral fiber. I say hogwash. People already do what people want to do, and the fact that we have gay couples living together in NC and ready at the instant the law is changed to become married (or those going to other states to do it), is proof of that. Just because the government stops telling people NOT to do something does not mean the government suddenly supports DOING it. It simply means the government doesn't have any interest in it, and in this case, I don't see why the government needs to have that interest.

The last question is fairly simple...for those who believe allowing the LGBT community to marry, why draw the line there? Why is polygamy illegal? What's so special about the number "two"? I don't personally care about polygamy, but it is just another line in the sand...