vivalasvegans

Thanks, John. I'm planning on it. You do the same! Your progress is seriously inspiring. RC, Ed's thing does look fun! I have a lot going on Saturday, but I might be able to pop by for a bit. It would be great to see you! Jan 3: 36 mile ride, stayed mostly chill except for a couple hills in heavy gearing. Focused on pedal stroke and my hamstrings were toast. I think spending so much time running over the past couple weeks did that.

i think it's hard to eat right on rest days too. i'm glad i got mos of the holiday junk out of the house. let's do this.

Hey, you too Lobster! I hope this year is full of surgery healing for you! jan 2: should have made this a full rest day, but i just took it easy. 1 hour trainer ride 5 min jumprope 3x50 stability ball sit ups my legs hurt today from the speedwork yesterday. not doms, just hurting. i think i prob would have benefited from a full rest day, but i just couldn't do it. i'll take a proper rest day closer to the end of the week. i have to find some time and identify some target races for this year so we can come up with a great training plan. i just need a few minutes to focus. i'm so busy!

January 1st: Had plans for a new years hike today, ended up waiting 'til 2 to go for a run. It should have ben a rest day, but H kept pushing me, so I did hill sprints and speedwork for about 3 miles. Then I ate mostly black eyed peas and spinach, and a little bit of rice dream and 2 applesauce/flax muffins. Totally stuffed. I'm looking forward to getting back on the bike so much that I'm even thinking about riding up to that lake I dislike so much! Now that the holidays are over, I can get back to focusing on my goals. It's funny how the structure of way overbooked work days and work weeks can actually be such an asset to training because I can put my workout schedule on autopilot and just make it happen that way.

Right on! Awesome consistency! Like a good protein shake...

So awesome that your brain is working on things subconsciously even when you're not thinking about it upfront. Yay!

Yeah! Way to stay on it! So inspirational! Do you have any tips for not getting bored on the treadmill? I could really use some. Have you noticed your recovery times improving? Do you have any goals for running in official events? What keeps you so motivated? Does envisioning this guy help you to run faster? Congratulations, John!

Back in the gym 2x this week, bad roads precluded me from riding outside and I just could not bear to set up the trainer. I need some good movies or sufferfest videos or something i suppose! My upper body strength is diminishing, which is to be expected. It's ok, because I'm going to re-set and focus on very specific areas now. Injuries are still troublesome but there are definite work arounds. Also, full-on warm up is more critical now than ever. I had some pretty good fun this year, looking forward to an even stronger season in 2012! It's gonna be a good year.

Beforewisdom is a smarty. I agree with everything he just said. I am guessing that if you were so dependent on soy, it had something to do with fake meat and convenience foods... which means you were probably dropping some cash on your diet. For relatively easy ways to shake up your protein choices, try buying canned beans and making dips and spreads. Combine all different variations of beans, veggies, and nuts/seeds in a blender with herbs and spices and you'll have some good stuff. Garbanzos, lemon, sesame and garlic = hummus. Black eyed peas, onion, walnuts, veganaise and celery = pretty good mock tuna salad. Peanut butter, ginger, tamari and a little garlic = thai peanut sauce. And it's super quick. Fake meat made out of seitan is tasty. Nutritional yeast has some protein and is pretty good. You could add hemp protein to your oatmeal to spike the protein and change the flavor. Or you can make your own custom protein powder blend at trueprotein.com. You can do this if you put your mind to it.

The next big thing: http://youtu.be/k9yuXFejtXc

You're over halfway to cast-off time! You're almost there. Your pt might be able to give you ideas about how to work around your recovering foot to train other stuff the way you want. One thing I did that I hated HATED was the arm bike. But it's a means to an end. omg that frickin' arm bike. Hey, what if we got you one of those things that goes around your neck that the cocktail girls used to sell cigarettes from. You can fill it up with lettuce and kale and stuff and be like a hobbling cornucopia of vegan kitchen goodness.

That's a really good attitude! I need to remind myself of that too.

It's going to be fun!

Everything Chewy said. I hate taking rest days but I'm always so happy after I do. In my experience, a full rest day, where you just stay away from any physical stress to your body, helps you recover in all systems. Like, the immune system benefits from a day off because training hard taxes it no matter what kind of training it is. Beyond the purely physiological, at least for me, it gives me a chance to reflect on recent training and integrate it in a way that I can't do if I'm training every single day, even if I'm switching things up. Active recovery days are important too, but they're different from full on rest days.

nice work on the arms. i was wondering if you have any plans to get back to the marvelous things you were doing with push-ups in the not too distant past.

5k is a long swim! maybe you got too hot? what kind of wetsuit did you wear? have you ever tried eating a gel in the water? do the stinger chews contain honey? how can you even deal with sitting on the trainer for 3 hours? do you want to move to southern spain with me this winter? can i ride your cervelo when we get there?

Great weather this weekend for racing and riding!

Good luck if you have to swim in the hurricane!

That occurred to me too. Still, to me, the overall point is a good one. If I was trying to explain the concept of protein in plant foods, I personally would not choose to explain it to meateaters like that because it is misleading. The chart I posted from that now broken link lists the protein per calorie of foods. There is not more protein per calorie in celery than fish, in green peppers than turkey, in dandelion greens than chicken. Along with that, it's true, broccoli does have a high % of carbs. And even though the steak in nutriondata.com is lean, 44% of its calories come from fat... I wouldn't mock my patients like that. I definitely would not do it with specious arguments like that either. I think it does more harm than good to any info that's subsequently presented.

Btw, here's a chart that lists the protein per calorie for a lot of different foods. It seems like a pretty good resource, not sure about the accuracy of the original source. www.ideal-weight-charts.com/.../calorie ... er-cal.pdf

Ha! Nor rhabdo, Rob! I just needed to do a few days of hot and cold. Swam last night for the first time in a long time, because I just could not run or bike one more day. I trained pretty hard for a really challenging race, it was going well, but then I think I overtrained. My taper into leg openers, oooh, that sounds special, turned into something else. Well, lesson learned! Having fun, looking forward to getting back into the gym as the daylight gets shorter and the weather sets in. Hopefully my injuries will be more healed and ready to go!

Hey, nice race report! And nice race! I guess it's true about how a lot of times, just getting yourself to the starting line is the hardest part, eh? Really interested to know how the new taping works for your knee.

Duncan, I see your point. But I think Marcella has a mistake in her math there, if we're relying on the nutrition analysis at nutritiondata.com According to the stats on nutriondata.com, calorie for calorie, beef does have more protein than broccoli. Here's the math: Beef: 23g per 174 calories Broccoli: 3g per 31 calories so to hold the comparison constant per calorie, we find out how many g of protein broccoli has per 174 calories 31 goes into 174 5.61 times ::: 5.61*31= 173.91 so then we multiply the g of protein in the broccoli sample by 5.61 3*5.61=16.83 23g per 174 calories is greater than 16.83g per 174 calories therefore the beef sample has more protein than the broccoli sample with the ~174 calories I'll spare you the math steps, but if you do the comparison with the same nutrition data over 100 calories of beef and broccoli, the result is: 13.22 g for beef 9.67 g for broccoli holding calories constant more or less accounts for the variation in water in both foods. You get a similar picture if you just look at the caloric ratio graphs in nutriondata.com So, yes, it's just a mistake in math, or maybe she did her analysis on different samples. Please correct me if my math is wrong, which is entirely possible, I did this pretty fast. I do think it's important for us to remain faithful to accuracy if we are going to use science and numbers to make our point. Otherwise we risk damaging our credibility. edit: i didn't see at first that the passage in question is Marcella quoting Fuhrman

did your knee hurt on the uphill because of the difficulty or the geometry/angle of the hill?

time to write about what's been going on, so i can reference this in the future. got my ass beat down hard in a race a few weeks ago, well not that hard, it was mostly a strategy thing, but i think i should have been able to time trial myself onto the podium. anyways, it shook me, i never lost that bad before, and along with all this other fallout from my injuries, i lost my whatever mojo i had left after getting hurt. so of course i decided to train way harder, and stopped recovering well apparently. it got to the point where my legs were always always hurting and depleted, unless i was pedaling when i got some relief, and even then all i could feel was burn. i kept putting off rest days. finally talked to a friend about my issues and figured out a plan. no hot showers, only cold. regular icing and ice baths. adequate electrolytes. foam rollering. lots of protein, way more than i think i need. and today i am off the bike, for the second day this week. ran 4 miles and gonna swim a little later. next week im back on the plan. i do have to say, those 45/15 intervals are amazing at training slow twitch muscles, i can feel my blood shifting around when i do em. and i am doing better climbing and descending. life is great and i want a unicycle. had to stop training upper body, so i could heal more, i can't wait to get back to it. hopefully soon.