After my last long brick on Saturday (YAY!), kwokette, Carol and I headed down to the state fair for some good eats. I actually had a pretty decent day, all things considered. I didn’t eat nearly as much as I thought I might. I actually got full before I could do too much damage. Maybe my stomach has shrank? In any case, here is a photo tour of the trip (i.e. the food we had).

The ever popular “French Fries”. Nothing entirely special about these except that they’re cut in front of you from whole potatoes and lightly flavored with some seasoned salt. I saw a bunch of people putting some kind of vinegar over the top, but since we were sharing this batch between the three of us, I didn’t give it a try. Ketchup works fine for me.

“Hot Dish on a stick” - Minnesotans like their “hot dish” or what normal people would just call a casserole. I like them, but this was just totally over hyped and over rated. It was new to the fair this year. Really, it just tasted like corn dog breading - you couldn’t taste much of anything else.

“Aussie Fries” - Thinly sliced pieces of potato deep friend and the smothered with cheese sauce and ranch dressing. The first couple were OK. But really, I just liked the cheese and ranch dressing. The potatoes were just kind of bleh. I’d rather have had the sauce poured over the french fries above. That would have been better. Carol and kwokette had a couple. Between the three of us, we didn’t care to finish the plate.

“Big turkey sandwich” - This has officially become my favorite thing to eat at the fair. I think it’s just the meat from a deep fried turkey, but it’s ooooohhh so good. It’s salty and very juicy. I’m not sure if it’s from the turkey itself or from the oil, but it’s not all dry like post Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches tend to be. I had such a craving for this yesterday. I almost drove down to the fair, paid for parking, and paid to enter the fair just to eat one of these. Almost… they’re that good.

“Sweet Martha’s Cookies” - Sweet is an understatement. Of that entire cone, I think I had three cookies. I don’t have a huge sweet tooth and those were just total sugar overload. They were good, though. Hot, sticky, and gooey - just like I like em.

“Giant Spicy Beef Stick” - I think they’re supposed to be three feet, but it doesn’t look that long to me from the picture. It’s basically a giant, spicy Slim Jim. I should have gotten two.

“Strawberries and Cream” - I didn’t have this but the girls shared an order. I suppose I should mention that everything shown here are “single serving” portions unless otherwise specified. Meaning that I ate my portion and if the girls wanted one, they split an order between them. :)

“Pronto Pup” - A couple of folks were asking about them and now you know! It’s basically a corn dog. Technically, there is a difference between a Pronto Pup and a corn dog but they taste the same to me. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can enlighten us all?

“Elephant Ear” - I was craving something sweet. There was TONS of sugar on this thing. Not even all the butter they painted across the surface could soak it all up. Kwokette had a bite of this and I think Carol had two. I batted clean up.

“Pork Chop on a stick” - This used to be my favorite thing at the fair. It’s still good, but the original pork chop stand that I liked isn’t at the fair anymore for whatever reason. This is an OK attempt at keeping my previous favorite thing alive, but it’s just not the same.

That’s all for fair food. I ate like absolute crap yesterday too, which wasn’t expected so I may just forgo my second eating trip to the fair. I’ll weigh in on Friday and reassess the situation. :)

Oh! And again for Mojo… we passed by this while we were at the fair. I guess they’re not just a southern thang! :)

Have a great Monday, everyone!

Congrats to Mike and all you others out there who conquered Ironman Canada today! It looks like Mike really smoked the bike course. All that hill training he did with Steven must have done some good.

The day isn’t yet done and there are still plenty of other folks out there on the course. But I wanted to give a shout out to everyone that raced today! I can’t wait for the slew of race reports that will come shortly. It’ll be perfect reading to get me in the right mindset for Wisconsin in two weeks. TWO. WEEKS!!! Time sure flies.

It’s bad enough she decides to put a magnifying glass focusing the sun’s rays onto Madison for the past two years at IM Wisconsin, yesterday she was bored and decided to throw hail instead. BIG, FAT CHUNKS of baseball sized hail.

I was driving home on the highway when it happened and there really wasn’t any place to seek shelter. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was enough to do some decent damage. The picture doesn’t show it very well, but I basically have a bunch of little dents all over my vehicle now. The insurance is covering the damage, minus my deductible of course. Still, it totally sucks to have to pay an out of pocket deductible and nothing to show for it different than I already had that morning. Bleh.

To answer Mojo’s question… Yes! They have all sorts of deep fried goodness at the state fair. For sure they have deep fried candy bars, although I don’t know about the Twinkies? I’ve already compiled the list of what I want to eat for tomorrow. And that’s only a list of stuff I remember off the top of my head from last year:

• Cheese Curds
• Pork Chop on a Stick
• 3 ft. Long Spicy Beef Stick
• Deep Fried Turkey Sandwich
• French Fries with Cheese and Ranch Dressing
• Foot Long Hot Dog
• Pronto Pups
• Elephant Ears

And whatever I happen to walk by that looks appetizing. The above list is just the necessities, though. I’ve eaten pretty darn well for almost two months straight now. I deserve a little break, don’t you think? Not even my five hour workout is going to be enough to keep me in the caloric red tomorrow.

I love the State Fair. It truly is the only thing I look forward to in Minnesota each year.

Well, we’re almost half way into the first week of a three week taper. It doesn’t really feel like a taper yet. I’ve been reading and reviewing theories and protocols on tapering and everyone seems to have their own ideas an opinions to how much you should be doing of what. So, I’m trying to adapt and incorporate the best ideas from each plan and fit tailor them me knowing my strengths and weaknesses. The unifying theme throughout all the theories is to maintain intensity while you decrease volume steadily. After weeks of going long, the idea of backing off with a date with destiny just around the corner is nerve racking. Sometimes, you just have to believe…

So… yesterday was my final long run of the season. FINAL. LONG. RUN! For those of you who have tuned in for a while, I’m sure you know by now that my running is my Achilles heel. I tolerate it, but I don’t think that even after three years that I can say I like it. I like that I’m making progress. I like that it burns the most calories per hour of the three sports. But I don’t know that I ever get excited to be able to go out for a run, which is probably why it remains my Achilles heel. I’ll probably try and do eight or nine miles still for a longer run next week. That’s going to feel like a cake walk compared to the stuff I’ve been doing for the previous weeks.

I’m not entirely certain what I have in store for this weekend. Part of me wants to follow the “reduce 10-20% from last week” plan (ala Dave Scott from his most recent article in Triathlete Magazine) and ride 80-90 miles this weekend. Another source (Friel and Byrn from Going Long) says to do a four hour brick which would mean only 60 miles and an hour run afterwards. Hmmm… maybe 75 miles and a 45 minute run afterwards would be a good compromise? I’ll play it by ear and see.

I’m still feeling good and am in good spirits. I constantly have to remind myself to take it easy and that I’m supposed to arrive at each workout this week fresh and worried that I’m not doing enough. At this mornings swim session, there was a set of 6×175 on the 2:30 right at the hour mark of practice. That definitely an aerobic set, but probably harder than I should be swimming at this point. So I packed it up after 3 of them and got out, worried that I wasn’t doing enough. Tonight, I’m planning to ride with the tri club (if the weather holds up) or a date with the trainer for an hour. A hour on the bike? I normally wouldn’t even put on my gear to just ride for an hour. As happy as I should be that I get to relax a little, I’m bouncing off the walls on the inside.

Most importantly… the Minnesota State Fair starts tomorrow! Thank God I’ve already hit my goal weight. It is entirely possible that I throw down 10,000 calories in an afternoon there. If I can limit myself to half of that, I’ll consider the day a success!

Happy hump day, all! :)

“It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s SUP… oh wait. It’s just me.”

Well, I’m just about done here with my last BIG week. Tomorrow, I’ve got my final training century of the year and hopefully a six mile run afterwards. And then… ahhhh, the taper begins. *phew*

I’ve been feeling strangely good this week. Starting Tuesday, I did my last LONG run of the season. I think it was around 16 miles (although my Nike+iPod combo thingie told me it was 17). I got done and other than my stomach wanting to eat itself alive, I felt pretty darn good! I felt like I could have run more, and that may be the first time in my history of triathlon training that I can say that after a run of that duration!

I had good, 30 mile rides Wednesday through Friday. Thursday’s ride was the best. It was just one of those no-chain rides and I felt like I was pushing hard but my HR just wouldn’t leave zone 2 no matter what. By the end, I had averaged 20 MPH (I think for only the second time this season on a training ride) with an average heart rate of 133.

So the body is giving me good signals - very good ones. I almost feel guilty since I think I’ve worked harder in the past two years than I have this year. I think my running has improved largely because I’ve lost the excess around the mid-section recently; running is a whole lot easier not having to carry around a 12-pack of soda all the time (a 12 pack is 9.8 pounds - I weighed it the other day and I’ve lost more than that!). I’m sure the weight loss has helped my power to weight ratio on the bike as well. But I guess I’m finally starting to believe now that real progress at this long distance stuff takes years to develop. You read all the time of folks saying that if you want to go to Kona, it takes five years of commitment. Well, I’m not Kona bound and am only into my third year of this long stuff. But maybe… just maybe my body is starting to finally adapt? I don’t know. I don’t feel deserving to have a PR year since I haven’t put in as much work, but I suppose the past two seasons of work doesn’t just get erased because there is an off-season in the middle. I’m not saying that I’ll PR because you never know what you’ll get on race day, but I can’t remember feeling as good as I do now in seasons past. So… we’ll see! I certainly don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I’m in good spirits going into my taper.

One more century. It sounds odd to say, but I think I’ll miss these routine centuries on the weekends. At this stage, 100 miles is just another another ride. I’m going to miss being in this kind of shape in the months to come post Ironman.

With Ironman Wisconsin rapidly approaching, I suppose an update of where I’m at with my training is in order. I seem to have been posting about everything but lately…

So last week was a rather epic week of Ironman training. Well, epic for this season anyway. Despite having not one but two goose egg days, I still managed to get in 18 hours of training in last week. I normally give myself one day totally off from training, but my legs were just totally shelled midweek so I gave myself another full day before the weekend came so I’d be fresh for my long ride. Fresh, mind you, is a totally relative word at this stage of the game.

While Sara and Wil are off tapering, I am at summer school of sorts trying to make up for my miscalculation of how long I had left until the big day. So I still have a harder week this week - I’m going to do one last long run and one last long ride (or long brick) before I start decreasing the volume. And at anytime that I feel exceptionally tired, I’ll rest.

It’s a little strange that I’m four weeks out from the race and not really feeling stressed or nervous in the least. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’ve had a busy summer so am not really expecting a PR at Wisconsin this year (although I do feel that I’m in decent shape?). Or maybe with this being my third go around at the distance, the idea of traveling 140.6 miles in a day doesn’t seem quite as daunting. Whatever the case, in 26 days I’ll be back in Madison. Back to swim out to the start line and tread water with a mass of 2200-some odd athletes all waiting to do this crazy thing called Ironman.

Sure it’s a race, but it’s also a celebration of sorts. Soon, it’ll be time to cash in all those hundreds of hours and thousands of miles that you travelled while training earlier in the summer. A time where you can look back and can really utilize those things that you learned during training and know that when the going gets tough, that you have the strength to keep pressing forward as you’ve done it many times before. It’s a time for camaraderie and realizing that although you may have struggled for the last few months balancing training with the “real world”, that you’re certainly not alone. It doesn’t take more than stopping for just a second and to look around you to see that you’re entirely surrounded by people who went through the many of the same things as you have - all the aches and pains and all the hours sacrificed training when “normal” people were out doing normal things.

The unity of athletes is one of the things that I think makes Ironman truly special. That simple fact that everyone making the 140.6 mile journey has experienced similar events, both good and bad, for the past several months. And for that one magical day, you have 2000+ of your brothers and sisters out there with you. It’s been a long, hard journey to just get there, but they all know first hand how truly difficult it has been as they’ve been beside you all this time. They haven’t walked just a mile in your shoes - they’ve walked thousands! Suddenly, you’re not flying solo anymore, but are instead travelling with a family of 2000+.

So, for everyone that I’ll hopefully see in 26 days, don’t forget to take time to “smell the roses.” Enjoy the atmosphere of the few days before the race and take a really good look at all the people around you because come September 10th, your family is going to get a whole lot bigger.

Today, the scale confirmed that I’ve lost ten pounds since I got back from my honeymoon. I’m ahead of schedule and a little surprised as it has only been four and a half weeks since we got back. But it sure feels like longer than that considering the increase in training volume and the decrease in food intake! It’s been a constant daily struggle, that’s for sure.

For those crying foul, saying I’m “lucky” for having good genetics, and the like… let me tell you that those pounds certainly don’t come easy. Perhaps quickly if you say it was only a month, but definitely not easily. There would be times when I’d get back from a five+ hour ride and “treat” myself to one cup of pineapple and a 1/2 cup of cottage cheese. Or for example, on Monday after nearly four hours of working out I enjoyed a 1/2 bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal as my reward. I’d say on average for the past four weeks, I’ve eaten right around 2,000 calories a day and that’s including any nutrition that I take during exercise (although I only take fuel for workouts longer than 2 hours). That’s really not that much considering I’m doing IM type volume.

I think that we all tend to over-estimate how much our bodies really need for fuel, which is evident from how big we (Americans) are getting these days. Everything is bigger, fattier, and more processed. I’m sure many of us remember back when a McDonalds meal consisted of a regular hamburger or cheeseburger, a small fries (in the white paper container), and a large soda which was more like today’s medium. These days though, you have these monster sized burgers claiming to have in excess of 1,400 calories in the sandwich itself. And that’s not even including the “biggie” fries and the 32 oz. soda. No, it’s not our genes that are changing but our desires and thoughts that bigger and more are better.

I easily fall victim to that line of thought. After all, there is a reason that I’m 15 pounds heavier in the off-season than in-season. But I wholly believe that mental discipline is the only thing that prevents us from improving our body composition. It’s a matter of reaching for that apple instead of reaching for some snack crackers. Or knowing that just because you worked out for one, two, or three plus hours, that doesn’t entitle you to the all you can eat buffet or free reign on the dessert cart. And sometimes, sadly, there are social events that are just better avoided because you know that you’ll just get yourself into caloric trouble by attending them (sorry about the BBQ, Jon and Amy!).

Losing weight is hard work. If it were easy, everyone that wanted to be thin would be thin. It takes sacrifice to be out there and training and the double whammy sacrifice to neglect yourself from things that you want or feel that you deserve. Of course, everyone has their own individual goals and limits to what they’ll sacrifice to achieve them. But I’ve yet to see anyone that has walked a week in my shoes and have been unable to lose weight.

Another week or two and I should be back down to my IM race weight of the last two years. For now, Carol is enjoying seeing my obliques again. They haven’t made an appearance since sometime last summer.

(And no… those aren’t a picture of mine :) )

For your daily dose of inspiration…

This speaks to me in so many different ways. Perhaps more about that in another post.

Racing Towards Inclusion

For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines…

“It’s been a story of exclusion ever since he was born,” Dick told me. “When he was eight months old the doctors told us we should just put him away — he’d be a vegetable all his life, that sort of thing. Well those doctors are not alive any more, but I would like them to be able to see Rick now.”

A group of Tufts University engineers came to the rescue, once they had seen some clear, empirical evidence of Rick’s comprehension skills. “They told him a joke,” said Dick. “Rick just cracked up. They knew then that he could communicate!” The engineers went on to build — using $5,000 the family managed to raise in 1972 - an interactive computer that would allow Rick to write out his thoughts using the slight head-movements that he could manage. Rick came to call it “my communicator.” A cursor would move across a screen filled with rows of letters, and when the cursor highlighted a letter that Rick wanted, he would click a switch with the side of his head.

When the computer was originally brought home, Rick surprised his family with his first “spoken” words. They had expected perhaps “Hi, Mom” or “Hi, Dad.” But on the screen Rick wrote “Go Bruins.” The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals that season, and his family realized he had been following the hockey games along with everyone else. “So we learned then that Rick loved sports,” said Dick.

… (Rick) told his father he wanted to participate in a five-mile benefit run for a local lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Dick, far from being a long-distance runner, agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair. They finished next to last, but they felt they had achieved a triumph. That night, Dick remembers, “Rick told us he just didn’t feel handicapped when we were competing.”

They have been competing ever since, at home and increasingly abroad. Generally they manage to improve their finishing times. “Rick is the one who inspires and motivates me, the way he just loves sports and competing,” Dick said.

And the business of inspiring evidently works as a two-way street. Rick typed out this testimony:

“Dad is one of my role models. Once he sets out to do something, Dad sticks to it whatever it is, until it is done…”

Team Hoyt

Yes, the rumors are true. While on our tri club ride yesterday, I got dropped by none other than your very own Trimama. She’s a sneaky one! Don’t let her cute little stories about her tribe fool you. She positioned herself on the flats of Minnetonka and picked the first climb of the day to ATTACK! Of course, she had to taunt me as she passed:

“I’m totally going to blog about this.”

She said. A photographer in the motorcade snapped this photo of the incident:

Listen to nothing from Trimama trying to give me any credit as she is just being kind. She would be the only one to put me into the red zone yesterday. Like Shakira’s hips, my graphs don’t lie.

:)