21 Days

                This is the prologue post of what I am going to call the 21 days of Christmas.  During the next 21 days starting tomorrow I am going to attempt to be as strict as humanly possible with what goes into my mouth as well as how closely I stick to my training plan.  I have been pretty relaxed about both since the end of August.  As a case in point, I’m working on some delicious veggie chips and my second tasty Sierra Nevada beer tonight and I didn’t do my scheduled run.  To be fair, I did have to write a presentation tonight which required a couple of bottles of creativity and ate  up most of my evening.  I haven’t really gone off of the deep end since August eating wise (I’m up about 4lbs with a lot of that being muscle), but I’ve got work to do to be in a really good spot for the real beginning of the 2013 Xterra season. 

                So, why now?  Well I haven’t exactly been motivated about getting back into regimented training.  I’ve actually enjoyed just doing different stuff and not being anal about everything I eat.  I’ve also realized that to a certain extent I have sacrificed a lot of the things I love to do outside of Xterra.  Don’t get me wrong, I love training for and racing Xterra.  I have rediscovered my love for strength training, going for just fun mountain bike rides, and I can’t wait to hit the slopes and rekindle that fire.  So again, why now?  Honestly, I think I have let the pendulum swing a bit too far away from structured training and I need to get it into the center again.  You see, I like improving when racing and training for Xterra’s.  The challenge that the sport presents, whether intrinsic or external, and the victory over or die trying approach to those challenges is what makes this sport so rewarding.

                So, what does the 21 days of Christmas entail?  It will actually be 24 days, so from tomorrow, 11/28 to 12/21.  I have built in 3 “cheat” days for scheduled holiday parties.  During those other 21 days the rules are as follows: 

                Complete every scheduled workout

                Ski or go for fun mountain bike rides whenever possible

                Run a 500-750 calorie deficit/day.  This should result in 3-5 lbs of fat loss over this time.

                Eat strictly Paleo/Primal (that means no more bottles of creativity)

Keep carbs between 50-100 grams/day to facilitate higher % of fat loss and promote metabolic efficiency.

                My hope is that this will not be a complete shit show.  I’m going to write every day about how things have gone.  I promise to keep it honest and funny because I think trying to do things like this can be kinda fun, if a bit OCD.  Hopefully 21 days will get the ball rolling again and I won’t need to do silly challenges with myself about getting off my ass and achieving some goals.  Now that I’ve finished my second Sierra Nevada, I’m going to go rock some twinkle twinkle little star on the piano.

 

Bring on the winter

I am a skier.  I haven't skied much in the past 2 years.  I miss it.  I miss it a lot.  I guess I stopped skiing for a couple of reasons.  I got sick of the drive on I-70 for one.  And as I got more serious about Xterra racing, I found myself training earlier in the winter on Saturdays and Sundays. 

Before I started mountain biking, skiing was my favorite thing to do.  I would still say that a perfect day skiing beats a perfect day mountain biking.  There is something about being out in nature on the mountain on a bluebird day that is unbeatable.  The silence when you are way back in the backcountry on a bluebird day combined with the massive mountains surrounding you and the feeling of just being, for lack of a better word, insignificant, in that grand scene is soul quenching.  it just feels "right".  I've missed this feeling.  I could stand at the top of a ridge immersed in that feeling for quite some time without moving and it is perfect.  I honestly can't wait to get back to that.  I'm sure that my triathlon fitness will be delayed until later in the year.  Well, it can wait.  I'll get there when the time is right.  For now, I need the mountains.  So, I've plunked down the schillings for the epic pass and now I'm waiting for some serious snow.  I know it is only mid-November, but I'm ready. 

I'm going to get some fat powder planks this year so I can really rip some big lines, play more in the trees, hit some bigger cliffs and maybe do some touring.  I'm going to push myself on the mountain this year and try to get back to being the skier I used to be.  I'm not going to venture into the park because I'm over that, and I don't think my body can handle a big fall on the hardpack anyways.  I'm older than my 31 years in that regard.  This body has taken a lot of abuse from my days as a park rat.  That isn't going to keep me from finding my limit again on cliffs and steeps.  Hopefully it won't take too long to recapture what I used to know and be able to do comfortably. 

With that in mind, here is the last decent sized cliff I hit before I hung up the skis 2 years ago.  I'm 90% certain this is the cliff that is as far skiers left as you can go before you get out of bounds off of chair 37 or 38 in Blue Sky Basin at Vail.  For the record, I cleanly dropped this cliff, unlike the joker in this video.  Honestly, get your weight back man!  Nice over the bars though!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been really into Gregory Alan Isakov.  The song 3 a.m. kinda sums up my thoughts about clearing my head, answering some questions and getting back into nature.  Love it right now.

Keep the tips up!

NS

Tomorrow is October 1

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new month.  I will be happy to see September go.  I hope that October will be better.  I have reason to believe that it will be.  I love fall, and the temperatures are finally starting to get a bit cooler.  Hopefully October will also have fewer days that I'm working until 9 or 10 pm. 

It is funny how something as small as the flip of a calendar page can be the catalyst for change.  It can motivate you to make changes in your life, or to buckle down and accomplish something you have been putting off.  I hope that I will be able to do both in October.


Jaime and I started doing crossfit a couple of weeks ago at Crossfit Vantage, which is about 1 mile from our house.  I really enjoy it and I know it will make me a better triathlete next year.  They are having a paleo challenge which starts tomorrow.  Jaime and I didn't formally enter it, but we are going to participate ourselves.  In fact, we are going to take it one step further.  We are going to try to achieve ketosis this week (google it for now; I will post about it next week).  The goal is to eat very low carbohydrates so that your body completely changes from glycogen (carb) burning to fat burning.  This means your body will burn more fat essentially.  I need this much more than Jaime at this point, but she is nice enough to join me in this challenge.  To achieve ketosis we need to be around 50 grams of carbs or under per day for a few days.  This is going to be very difficult.  We'll make sure to call our family members before and after so that they know we survived.  Seriously, it is just mentally difficult more than anything.  Yes, we will feel a bit tired, but we don't currently eat a high carbohydrate diet, so I think we'll make it.  How will we know when we've achieved ketosis?   We will pee on ketone sticks first thing in the morning.  When we see dark purple from the sticks, we will have done it.  Then we can go back to a bit higher carb diet (about 80 - 100 grams/day).  I will try to stay in that range as long as I can since I'm not doing extended cardio right now and should be able to complete any workouts I have on the low carb regimine.

 The other big change is that I finally started my training company.  I became a USAT licensed coach way back in July, and haven't set up my business until now.  I'm still getting some things set up, but I have named my company Through The Wall Training, LLC and I'm registered with the appropriate taxing authorities, etc.
THROUGH THE WALL TRAINING
(lots of creative work to do and not by me!)
It is a lot of fun getting this stuff set up and being a creator of what my company is.  It is refreshing to do "work" and enjoy it.  Maybe a sign?  One that was pretty clear to me for the longest time.  For the time being I will keep being the best financial analyst I can be, but perhaps someday this will be front and center.

Like I said, October could be a good month.  I'll go to bed tonight with that optimism. 

Happy birthday on Tuesday Mom.  I miss you!

NS

Philosophy of Life

When was the last time you truly found a breaking point in your life?  A chink in your armor so to speak; a weakness you didn’t think you had, or that you had hoped deep down didn’t exist?  It isn’t a happy place to be, but this was where I found myself last week.  We have had some significant changes at work in the past month (just google Dean Foods earnings release to learn more), which have manifested themselves into a much more stressful work environment than we had before.   This time of year always gets tough with next year budgets and end of year targets that need to be achieved, but this announcement has had a significantly larger impact than even I expected.  In short, it has created an amount of additional stress than I just didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with as I was trying to build and peak for Xterra Nationals.  The stress and workload from work by itself is manageable, but in conjunction with the expectations that I put on myself to perform well at nationals, in addition to some big bets that Jaime and I are making with our clinic and the stress that comes along with that, I found that I had overloaded the systems drastically.  This was not a gradual increase.  Honestly, it hit like a sledgehammer.  I had to adjust.  I sacrificed the one thing that could be sacrificed, which was my goals and experience at Xterra Nationals this year.  It is a decision that is sad, but one that I can’t really regret, as I didn’t and still don’t see another option.   

I am a person who can deal with a lot; A LOT.  I nearly double majored in college in finance and math.  I like it when people say things like “this is really hard” or “it can’t be done”.  I take it as a personal challenge that must be overcome.  I saw this situation as a challenge to overcome.  Sometimes though even the most experienced and respected mountaineers abandon their summit approach when it becomes clear that to continue to pursue the goal blindly will lead to unfortunate outcomes.   I came to that conclusion a little over a week ago.  I found out that I had a chink in my armor.  It is apparently not as strong as I thought it was.  It was a week ago Thursday that I finally decided to pull the plug on this season.  I had missed every workout after the previous Saturday.  I was working long hours, and finally on Thursday when I actually had time to get a workout in, I had no motivation to do anything.  I was mentally beaten down.  You see, these days at work are not only long, they are intense.  To create an analogy to training, these are LT workouts all day long at work.  They will leave you spent if done too many days in a row without a break.  This is where I find myself now. 

This place I’m in now, and where I will be in for the foreseeable future…  The real question is, does this type of life make sense for me?  Is this what I want in life?  Can I accept these types of interruptions in the life I want to live, whether they be 2 weeks or ½ a year long?  Can I weather these in the name of a “comfortable” living?  I think it may be more of a philosophical question than one of practicality.  Can I do it?  Yes, of course I can.  Will I be happy with myself if I keep sacrificing the things in my life that make me “me”?  What is the benefit of this type of living?  I can become a better “consumer” and buy more shit that I don’t need or want.  Sure, and the GDP will be thankful.  But will I become poorer because I have sold my soul for pennies on the dollar?  I will be asking myself these questions until I find balance in life again with myself and my job.  Honestly, I like what I do.  I couldn’t ask for a better company to work for, and even more so, I couldn’t ask for better people to work with.  Unfortunately, the nature of a job in Finance, at least in my experience, is that it will many times challenge your work life balance.  To be clear, my balance is really quite difference from most of the people I know.  I consider balance being able to train for an hour in the morning and the evening, working 8 hours a day, and spending the rest of my day taking care of the small things around the house, maybe doing some reading and having good conversation, preferable with my wife, family, friends, neighbors, Tucker, or maybe as a last resort the tree if that is the only thing that wants to converse with me at the time. Honestly, I know the answer, I just don’t really know the solution. 

I haven often described this situation as a trap (my mind immediately goes to that crappy kids game mouse trap where you set up the most elaborate trap that hardly makes any sense, but it actually does work).  When you have no financial commitments in life other than just making rent and buying groceries and paying a few bills, you have “one wall” of the trap built.  When you have debts of any kind, you have 2 walls built.  When you get married you have 3 walls built by the simple fact that you have someone else that matters in your life enough to consider them in the financial equation.  When you buy a house that is a dramatic change in your debt profile, so I count that as wall number 4.  When you have kids, you get the top put on your trap.  That means you really are trapped.  You’ve got to keep slaving away at whatever you are doing in order to provide for your family.  The only way out is the trap door at the bottom.  That is a philosophical discussion for another day.  It may be an overly simplistic way to think of things, but you tell me if you see it differently.

I hope I can find the answer to this dilemma.  Until then, I apologize, but this blog won’t have any posts about epic training sessions, ridiculous gains in fitness or even good paleo eating.  It will most likely be deeper in philosophy about life, and whatever I need to get off my mind and onto “paper”.  Ironically, I often write these posts down with good ‘ol pen and paper because I like to actually write.  I do hope to not become completely detrained and out of shape, but it most likely won’t be worth talking about.  Until the next post, good luck at nationals to everyone going.  Keep the rubber down and go until you blow!

 

 

 

 

 

Where exactly does this rabbit hole go??

Today's post is a total stray from the usual.  No training talk, no paleo recipes, no race reports, but...culture and introspection; specifically around music.

Music...it is a big part of my life, and always has been.  I'm the type of person who likes to have a soundtrack playing for just about anything I do.  I grew up playing the piano, and I really want to learn to play the guitar if I can find some time; hopefully this winter.  I can't think of a time when I'd rather have the TV on than have music playing in the background while I'm doing stuff like cleaning or cooking, or doing work.  When I'm at work I can't make it through the day without pandora, even if it is against company policy to stream internet radio.  When I am training alone I always bring music with me unless I'm on trails.  In the car, the music is cranked up.  My musical tastes span just about the entire spectrum with the exception of overplayed top 20 garbage and club/autotuned rap.

Lately I have been listening only to singer/songwriter, somewhat folk-type music (generally seems to fall in that category, but not a prerequisite).  This is a drastic change from what I would call my usual soundtracks, such as the Foo Fighters, Audioslave, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, any other hard rock, etc.  I don't know what my sudden draw to this type of music is stemming from, but the beat, the simplicity, and the lyrics just seem to strike a note with me (pun intended).  It started with Gregory Alan Isakov, who I've mentioned in this blog before.  As I have devoured all of his albums and started to find other artists, I have found myself continuing down this path of discovering music that is so un-mainstream, but ridiculously good. 

I discovered Gregory Alan Isakov by watching the Ride The Divide documentary about the Continental Divide mountain bike race from Banff, CA to the Mexico border.  His song called The Stable Song is in the movie.  Maybe it is the visual and emotional context that the song is presented in, or vice versa, but I find that the connection between the song and the wide open spaces along with the personal reflection and inner challenges that are such common themes in the movie have created a really powerful connection in my mind.  They have awakened a previously dormant need for this peaceful place in my mind that I seem to now always be longing to get to.  I find that this type of music and the feeling of being in the outdoors, living simply and for the day, go hand in hand in my mind.  They aren't necessarily what happens in my day to day life, but it is what I work so hard for at least 5 days a week with the hopes that I can achieve it for the other 2.

So who are these artists that I've been following down the rabbit hole?  Well, other than Isakov, I've been listening to Iron and Wine, Ray LaMontagne, Alexi Murdoch, the Lumineers, Ryan Adams (thanks to a good reco), Joe Purdy, Brandi Carlisle, Ingrid Michaelson and too many others that Pandora or Spotify play.  Do you know any others?  I'd love to hear about them!

Here's to discovery in whatever form it takes for you

NS

Getting ready for Xterra USA Championship

Sorry for the long time between posts.  Things are still busy at work and honestly updating this just took a lower rung on the priority ladder.

So, quick recap, the asian slaw was delicious (check the twitter feed for the recipe), I took a bit of a beating at Beaver Creek (vs. what I had hoped), had an easy week off to recover, and have now buckled down big time for the Xterra USA Championships (more on that in a bit) which is on Sept 22. 

I love the Xterra Nationals race.  The whole week leading up to it is a great time for me and the course is super fun.  We will leave on Wednesday, drive the 8ish hours to Ogden, UT and set up camp right on Pineview reservoir.  I think there is just something about camping and racing that is more fun.  I guess it is the total unplug from regular society, the computers and tv and blackberry and responsibilities and all of those other things that get in the way of just beign outside and enjoying life. 

We'll run the course Wed night, ride the course on Thurs, do a prep workout on Friday and go balls to the wall on Saturday.  Then those of us who didn't make it to Worlds can celebrate another fun year with the Xterra crew after the race.  Nothing like beers, a campfire, stories from the battle, and some of the most fun, laid back people I know.

Last year I put in some big weeks in the month between the Beaver Creek race and Nationals.  It seemed to work well, so I figured lets do it again.  So, I've put a couple of 17-18 hour weeks in with one more big one to go.  My body is absorbing the training well, and I'm having a good time really testing myself.  I guess that is why I love this sport so much.  It isn't where I place in a race, or how fast I go that really matters to me, but it is how much and how hard I can push myself and resetting where my limits are.  If I go faster or place better, well, that's cool too.  I'll try to put some stuff up about these big workouts when I can, and if I can remember to stop and take a picture of some of the great places these long rides and runs take me then even better.

Keep breaking down your barriers....and keep on living the good life.

NS   

2 great weekend getaways! (This isn't a travel ad)

Well, we have been away for a couple of weekends for weddings, so I've fallen behind again updating this little hobby.  A week and a day ago, we were at our friends Jason and Alexis's wedding in Crested Butte.  The wedding was beautiful and everyone had a good time.  Jaime cut a rug and I had fun watching.  Every time we go to Crested Butte it reaffirms just how much it is my favorite place that I have been.  I somehow need to figure out how to move us there permanantly.  It wasn't all wedding activities that weekend though.  A few of the guests, including the groom, raced in the Fat Tire 40.  Talk about a fun race!  Probably my favorite race that I have done.  Also the toughest.  40 miles of sweet Crested Butte trails, and tons of climbing and technical descending (5,000 ft by my garmin, or 7500 according to the website).  I've never done a mtn bike race that long so I paid for it.  I had some really bad cramping at mile 32 and suffered up the last long climb before finishing on the downhill course, which was just rad.  I ended up 19th in the Wildcat class with a time of 4:27:39  I can't wait to get back there for a training camp to ride some more trails.

Deer Creek Trail - part of the Fat Tire 40 course:  Courtesy of www.singltracks.com, user bonkedagain

This weekend we were at our friends Maija and Adam's wedding.  Another beautiful wedding outside with the splendor of the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop.  We had a great time meeting their family and other friends.  On Sunday we drove over to Beaver Creek to get a pre ride and run in on the Xterra course.  More climbing climbing climbing.  The legs didn't feel great today, which always makes you question if there will be there on race day.  Things will lighten up with some race specific workouts to keep sharp in the next couple of weeks, so I'm not too worried about being ready.  This week should be a quiet week at the office with lots of people taking advantage of the mid-week holiday and taking the rest of the week off.  Hopefully I can get caught up a little be there and maybe get ahead of a few things so the week leading up to Beaver Creek is less stressful.  As it looks now, that week could be a rough one. 

Last year my times at Beaver Creek were:
Swim:  22:51
T1:  1:21
Bike:  1:34:43
T2:  :40
Run:  46:48
Total:  2:46:31

This year my goals are
Swim:  22:30
T1:  1:20
Bike:  1:30:00
T2:  40
Run:  45:30
Total:  2:40:00

On a non-training note, I found a good recipe for an asian coleslaw that looks to be paleo friendly that I can't wait to try with some salmon tomorrow night.  I'll be sure to put the recipes for both up if it turns out good.  That's all for now.

Train smart