MMMM Granola

Granola is probably one of my favorite foods (other than peanut butter...btw, what is your favorite peanut butter?). I have been trying to make my own on and off for a few months. Some batches come out good, some....edible, but not something you'd crave. My favorite store bought is Nature's Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Granola. It is just so good. So, I'm trying to duplicate it, but not having the luck yet. If I get something that is good, I'll be sure to post the recipe.

Along with trying to make granola, Jaime and I are starting a garden. I think we are going to have lots and lots of home grown organic produce this summer. We just have to get the plants to survive the transplant. We've got lots of beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, cucumbers, and onions in planters, and quite a few of them have already started coming up really well. Our peas are about 3 inches tall already! Now we just have to get them in the ground!

So, along those lines, things have been pretty busy. We are really close to closing on a house! Hopefully we'll be there by the 23rd. Needless to say, in all of our spare time we have been packing stuff up. I kind of like it because it means we can also throw stuff out or give it to goodwill, so it works like a good spring cleaning too.

Last week was back to hard training after a good recovery week. I had a really solid week last week and the weather cooperated nicely. In all, I put in about 14 hours total, split into 3 hours swimming, 3 hours running, 1.5 hours strength, and 6.5 hours biking, which translates into 8400 yards swimming, 107 miles biking (Close to 6000 feet of climbing included) and 22 miles of running.

This week is almost finished with just a strength training session tomorrow, followed by a 3 hour bike/4 mile run brick session. The idea was to get the brick in today as 1.5 hours on the mtn. bike, and 4 miles trail running, since that would more closely simulate Xterra racing, but the weather turned pretty foul at the end of the mtn bike. Normally I would have still done the run, but it was 50 and raining, which sounds like a recipe for a head/chest cold, so I scratched the run after. Live to train another day.

More packing, and a bigger week coming up next week. I'll post details about what that week looks like soon. If you are looking for a little extra motivation to work out/train, check out www.plus3network.com. When you sign up you choose a sponsor/charitable cause combination, and as you log your workouts, the sponsor will donate money to the charity. Win/win situation if you ask me. It is really fun to log all of your activities for a week and look at how much money you raised for your cause, just by working out and spending a few minutes entering the data.

NS

1st MTN Bike of the year

The last workout of the week was by far the most fun. Jaime and I went up to Marshall Mesa this afternoon. I mountain biked for an hour and while I was out Jaime hiked around for an hour. It was great to get out and enjoy the beautiful day. A lot of other people had the same idea, so it was a bit crowded, but in all a great first ride. Here are some pics.





Next week I'm back to hard training again. 3 weeks of increasing volume plus the 4th week as recovery, with some higher intensities than the previous 4 week block are on tap. This is Joe Friel's Base 3 if you follow his periodization plan. This week will be 13.5 hours with 3 swims, 4 bike rides, 4 runs, and 2 strength training sessions. This is where the training starts to get fun to me. I'll be getting hill work in to develop my strength biking and running. I'll also start to put in some more work at threshold intensities on the bike and run, and extend the durations of the threshold work in swimming. Swimming will have more strength work as well, with paddles and drag sets added. This part is hard, but fun. I find it fun because some of the workouts each week will challenge my ability to hold some hard paces, which hopefully will lead to better speed. That is what it is all about isn't it?

I'll try to keep up with the posts a little better than in the previous block. Hopefully more of the training will happen outdoors and some pics will be loaded as well.

*The first few steps are always the hardest ones*

Big Training Week, a visit from friends

In my last post I talked about how I had just finished up my first week of base 2 training. Since then I've had two more weeks of increasing volume with last week being the biggest week I've done since probably mid-summer last year. The totals from last week were 3.5 hours of swimming for 10,200 yards, 8 hours of biking for 136miles, and 3.25 hours of running for 24 miles, plus 2 strength training sessions. All in all around 17 hours of training.

I was pretty spent by the end both physically and mentally. 5 and a half hours of the biking was inside on the trainer, which is just no fun. It is useful though because the quality tends to be high; no stoplights, no downhills, etc. Luckily Sunday's long ride brick was outside, or honestly, I probably would have skipped it. To add to the mental exhaustion, we have been searching for a house to buy. So, there was quite a bit of shuffling workouts around to make everything happen for that.

We had some good friends in town last week as well. We spent a night up in Dillon with a bunch of friends, so that was a nice relaxing time to get away from things for a night.

Back in Denver

Welcome back from the holidays! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Festivus, or whatever you may be celebrating at this time of the year. It is always good to get away from the daily grind and visit with friends and family. If you're like me, there will never be enough time to catch up with everyone, and this year was no different. So, if I didn't get to see you over the holidays, my apologies. Here's a quick re-cap of the travels.

Jaime and I traveled back to PA on Tuesday the 22nd and got back to Denver Sunday the 27th. It seemed like a pretty fast trip, except for the travel days, which were long and tiring. We celebrated with some friends on Wednesday night, then Jaime's family on Christmas Eve, my family on Christmas and Jaime's family again on the day after Christmas. My dad made some excellent lasagna on Wednesday for everyone and our traditional Strata on Christmas day. Jaime and I cooked for the day after Christmas. She made her famous meatballs and we both put together 3 pizzas. I think just about everyone went back for some seconds, so I guess the food was OK!

The Christmas week capped off a month of lots of parties, and eating and drinking, which is never good for body composition. All told, from the end of training in October to now, I've put on about 3 lbs. I'm hoping at least 1 pound is new muscle since I have been back in the gym. Still, it's time to shed those 3 back off (the fat ones anyways). Every pound of fat lost can shave up to 3 seconds per mile off of your running times (I'm sure at a certain point there is diminishing returns, but the lesson remains)! So, 3 pounds is potentially 54 seconds in a 10K if my math is correct. That is about the same amount of time that I missed getting top 5 in my age group at nationals last year. No problem finding the motivation to drop those lbs! I'm sure that running while I was home definitely helped keep some weight off - probably almost 1 pound. I'll be honest though, the running wasn't too much fun. It was about 25 degrees for a 9 miler on Wednesday, then it rained for my short 2 mile run on Christmas, and the run on the day after Christmas (8 miles with 4x1 mile repeats at 5K pace with 1/2 mile recoveries) was in a 35 degree rain. The important thing is that I got the runs in. No swimming, no biking and no lifting, and I actually kinda enjoyed it! I'm hoping my body spent the week with the extra calories and reduced volume by recovering.

This week Jaime and I are both back at it. It is time to get a little more consistent, as this is the beginning of the "prep" phase. More on that in the next post, along with some tips, lessons learned, and things of that nature for those of you who are doing your first triathlons this year, or stepping up to a longer distance. Thanks for reading!

NS

Great Weather, good running

It's been awhile since the last post. So, what has been happening? Well, we had a huge October snow storm here last week. Over 1 ft in Denver, which is very rare. Unfortunately the mountains didn't get too much. The snow was Wednesday & Thursday, and by Sunday it was all melted. This week we had 2 or 3 days in the 70's. Just can't beat the weather here. Offseason training is going well. Nice to not have too much intensity, and lots more free time. It gives me time to do some cooking, catch up on some reading, etc. Read on for training details and a good butternut squash soup recipe.

2 weeks more of training for the half are in the books. So far, so good. I'm just following a stock plan from runnersworld.com. It is basically an easy, short run, a tempo or track workout, and a long run. As the weeks progress, the mileage goes up and another short easy run gets added. Next week is the first recovery week. I'm finding that my Garmin 310XT is awesome for this; especially the auto lap splits at the miles. It shows me that I tend to run the long and easy runs too fast, and the tempo runs too slow. So, basically, I was spending all my time in the "gray zone", which is not really where you want to be.

Other than the run training, there have been 2-3 easy swims and 2-3 easy bikes each week. Overall volume is very low in both; around 6,000 yards swimming/wk, and about 2.5-3 hrs biking at endurance paces. Strength training is starting to come around, which is a positive sign. I can't believe how weak you become when you stop strength training to focus on the endurance specific training. Next season, I'm going to have to figure out how to keep at least one day of strength training in the plan.

As promised, here is the butternut squash soup recipe. Super easy (even I can do it) and delicious. http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1854009