Saturday, February 12, 2011

Broccoli for breakfast

Whoa! What a week! Last Saturday was a six hour ROGAINE with my buddy. For those of you who don't know what this is...it's an orienteering race. Basically, you get a topography map at 1/24,000 to scale, plotted with checkpoints that you must hit to gain points. The faster you make the course and the more checkpoints you hit (or the more you hit with higher points, the higher the points, the more difficult they are to get to) the better off you are. Some trails are marked, some roads are marked, but not all are. And many times, you have to bushwhack.

We had fun! It was wet and cold and we got rain, ice, sleet AND snow throughout the day.
Unfortunately, all that fun bushwhacking through briar patches left me with some not so pretty legs...

Guess it's a good thing that it's winter and mighty cold in these parts so they weren't on for show!

It also just so happened that I had a scheduled recovery week... that means only 11 training hours scheduled! And I needed that because it was also a week of Super Bowl parties, corporate sales meetings and a need a to take some time off the legs after 3 full weeks of pretty intense training.

But....just my luck, my legs were aching the couple days post race (my buddy is a sub-3 hour Pig marathoner, so we were SPRINTINg those last few miles)...and we had a major kick set at swim practice on Tuesday morning. I suck at kicking and I kinda hate it already, so 1k of kicking is brutal, even without the pain setting in. The first few times through the set, I took it easy. Then I realized it was kinda loosening me up (I am ALL endurance, so this shouldn't strike me as odd, but it always does) so for the last couple, I was right there. I just put my head down, kicked and got on.

The next few days are somewhat of a blur. I did train every day. But I also had two work dinners, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. And the start of dinner was close to my typical bedtime on Thursday, so I was out til midnight. Ugh!

After a cleanse, things like NY strip, beer, red wine, creamed spinach, cheesecake, well, let's just say they feel like poison to the body. Friday wasn't the best day I've had. But the good thing about having days where you binge on things you don't typically do, you regain some focus. And you re-ignite a fire for those things that are healthy. And you want to get fitter and faster. Not fatter.

So today, it was an early run, followed by broccoli for breakfast (see! I'm finally tying it in:)) And then oatmeal for lunch (instead of pizza that they ordered at the shop).  Backward? Maybe. But veggies tend to fill me up with the fiber, so I kinda like them in the morn!

And even though I'm working 6 days a week. And I feel INCREDIBLY guilty for leaving Clubby lots of times, I did find that the bike shop work was very gratifying today. I love the people I work with there. And I met lots of new people. Conversed with old friends. And people I didn't even know had an interest told me they're fans of the blog.

So, thanks for reading.

And, damn...it's still like 40 degrees outside. Time for an awesome four hour ride tomorrow!!

9 comments:

tri like mary said...

I love broccoli but never thought to have it for breakfast!

Signifying Nothing said...

The Rogaine race sounds like a lot of fun! Why is it called that?

Broccoli is yummy, but kale is the most amazing cleanse I've found. It's like taking a chlorophyll wire brush to your insides.

Tawnee Prazak, M.S., CSCS said...

You are a friggin rockstar :)

Hey, and I promise I'll email you back soon!

PS - That quote above my comment "kale is like taking a chlorophyll wire brush...." yea, it's amazing lol :)

Christi said...

I eat brocoli for breakfast almost everyday. Works wonders for keeping me full!

zencycle said...

See if they'll let you bring clubber into the shop.

Carolina John said...

Enjoy the big ride today! It's in the 60's here in NC. Beautiful.

Matty O said...

Wow... you ran through the woods in tights?! :( Not cool! haha.

Great job getting through that course though, I wanted to do the REV3 orienteering challenge they set up. Look it up... if you are interested I thought about maybe doing it next year with some friends of mine.

I won't ride outside until its 50 degrees. That wind bites.

Big Daddy Diesel said...

Nice job on the race, wasnt it the same conditions at last years race?

I dont get the late dinners? I know its business, but why do they want to eat at 9pm? Thats bed time for all of us.

The Sean said...

the warmth feels like a real treat now:) somehow so much easier to get out there when you can just wear shorts:)