Mark

nail breakfast and I am pretty good for lunch. The key for me is what I call supper. I eat 4 equal meals a day four hours apart. 8, 12, 4 and 8. The last meal at 8 I will probably eat at 6:30 or 7 with the kids if the family is eating. The key, as I said is that 4 o’clock meal. If I don’t eat a full meal at that time, then by the time dinner rolls around I am starving and I am going to eat way too much. I am also likely to go into the kitchen before dinner and snack on about 300 calories of crap.
If I eat the 4 o’clock meal then I still have another whole meal ahead of me, which takes away some of my anxiety (I hate to admit I have anxiety when I think of going a long time without food), and by the time I sit down to dinner, I am hungry, but I am not starving, and by preventing my hunger reflex from taking over my brain, I stay in control. Give it a shot and good luck! 8 months ago

There is no reason not to do both if you can find the time. The truth is you will become fabulously toned if you find exercise activities you like, at the gym and at home. 13 months ago

I really appreciate the birthday wishes! How are you doing? How are your goals going? 13 months ago

and I guess freedom means whatever you want it to… I think that would inspire me to think about it and as such, try to achieve it. I think I am going with this quote in my tattoo… que es mi dios la libertad

M. 13 months ago

It made it out of the box, but unfortunately I haven’t cycled enough to be able to take around the added weight of a camera ;)
I will have to get on this, thanks for the reminder.

M. 15 months ago

I passed on my Kiva loans to my children as gift cards. I hope they can learn about compassion, the power of the human spirit and a little geography while realizing that they can impact the world… 16 months ago

Lets see if that helps. I also got the 20 pull up app and the 200 sit up app… Maybe they will work better together…. 17 months ago

Ankle healing as fast as I had hoped, but I wonder when I will be able to look back and remember when my ankle was sore… 17 months ago

I am still blogging on the weight loss site : www.youarenotafitperson.com and I haven’t quite figured out which direction to go for my new site.
1. Politics,
2. Kids art
3. Kids math,
4. Just me…

Maybe 2012 will answer that, but the blogging has been fantastic! 17 months ago

and it looks like I have found it.

This is a resolution that I took seriously, which to tell you the truth, surprised even me. I thought that by putting this down into a resolution, the gods of resolutions would mock me, like they are wont to do, and I would have ended up on this day looking at my resolution and wondering why in the world I ever thought I could do that. Strangely, this isn’t the case at all. I stuck with this one and used it to guide my actions… Wow… I wonder what has changed.

So, the recap,

I began the year signing up for the Yeti snowshoe clinic. I convinced a friend to join me and we did weekly snowshoe runs. Each one was about 5k and it was extremely hilly. Still, it was great to get out and do what was essentially a brutal 5k trail run every week in January and February.
I also got out and X-country skiied several times (once totally by myself because I couldn’t find anyone to join me). This is so contrary to my nature I can’t even come close to describing it. It was a lot of fun and I am hoping to massively increase my x-country skiing this year, getting the kids out at least a dozen times, maybe even a few times before this year is over.
So, I did the Yeti Enduro race. It was 2 laps and the second lap nearly killed me. It was about 10k and it was one hell of a difficult snowy race. I loved it!! The next week I did the grouse snowshoe grind race and came in 2nd for my age group, something that has literally never happened before in my life.
I did the odd run, through spring, running about 10k a week, and cycled further than I ever have in my life this year, working up to some 70k rides. For about 2 months I rode every weekend and I even did the ride up Cypress. This was quite possibly the most brutal thing I have ever done.
I did the grouse grind about 10 times this year, at least a match from last year and maybe a little more.
I joined crossfit and progressed amazingly. I was RX’ing a bunch of workout and lifting pretty big weights when my shoulder became injured. It slowly got worse and I took 2 months of to rehab it. This has worked out perfectly as it it back to being totally unhurt. I swam further than I ever have (although I only did one season of masters swim class out of 3 in a year), 3km and did several 2k swims, including a race with Jason early in the year. He crushed me.
I am back to crossfit and just lifting lighter weights, but so excited to be back. I love it!
I did 2 half marathons, which is a tie for my previous fittest year. That year, I rocked one of the halfs 2 years ago at 1:49, a speed I haven’t gotten close to since, but I did the Fall Classic both years, getting 2:22 2 years ago, and 2:07 this year. So although I was at my fittest most likely 2 years ago, I am ending this year much fitter.
I also did my biggest event ever this year, a half iron man triathlon. That was huge. I struggled with an olympic triathlon 2 years ago, and this is double, and double in fitness isn’t just double… I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment for having done that and I will probably go up another level, either next year or the following year.
Finally, I took the kids out to play field hockey with them a number of times this year, including a summer drop in game. I played with the kids so that they felt comfortable playing (a lot of the players are adults so it was understandable that they felt intimidated). I sucked at the game but my fitness level was high so I could keep up. In any case, I was talking with another dad who was playing (after I brought my girls, a lot of the girls who dropped into field hockey brought their parents and there were a bunch of us dads playing), and he was suggesting that we join the recreational field hockey league… I didn’t even know there was one, but now I am officially playing a sport, I have a jersey, it even has a number. I am practicing once a week and playing games once a week. I SUCK, but I make up for some of it in the fact that I can run all out with any player for an hour… That counts for something I think. I am getting better and practicing on my own every chance I get.
So, that sums up my fitness into late November in my fittest year ever! I am thinking of challenging myself to top this next year, but maybe I will just try to match it. I feel great about this years activities, I am having so much fun. A big part of this though has been the philosophy of the movie Yes Man.
From the snow shoe clinics, to the field hockey team and crossfit, whenever an opportunity that I would normally have been scared of or intimidated by comes up, I have said Yes. It has paid off in ways I never imagined and I am loving my life! 18 months ago

I hate race reports… They are so self centered, and I don’t mean in a bad way. It isn’t like a race report should be about anything but your experience during the race, it is just that the minutia that goes through your head that you would benefit from jotting down is voluminous but trivial in real life. Yet when you are doing another event, you become re-aware of it during the event and may have benefited by jotting it down and reliving it before the event. In any case, my race report will miss most of that because I am writing it a month after the race and I have already forgotten most of those thoughts…

Thought number one is that the bag system that the Ironman uses for transitions in multiple locations is so complicated that you need a course to master it. I got it right, but that was nearly a miracle.

Thought number two, if I can’t warmup before a swim I am in HUGE trouble… find a way no matter what!

Thought number three, 2 km of swimming is long, it just is, and no matter how physically trained you are for it, you need to get mentally tougher.

Thought number four, get good at biking because you will spend a lot of time on the bike no matter what.

Thought number five, running in the rain is the best. The heat was goddawful and had me worried I was going to pass out. It was nearly unbearable. Running in the cold icy weather back home is nearly as bad and leads to tightening up of muscles, etc. Rain is perfect because it is cool but not cold. Never complain about rain again!!

There you go, my half iron man in 5 thoughts. Seriously though it was a grueling miserable experience. I need to get better at biking for the next time I do this.

To anyone reading this entry, please, when someone you know says they have done a half iron man, do not, whatever you do, say, ‘I know someone who did a full iron man’. The half is just an unfortunate naming thing, it doesn’t imply that the person is going to do a full, nor does it mean that they are half the person who does a full…

M. 18 months ago

Apparently they aren’t accepting submissions… http://drunkard.com/submissions.htm I tried to buy the editor a drink to woo him to my story line when I was in Denver last, but I never heard back from him… I would have sworn he would never turn down a free drink or three… oh well, I should still write the stories and then see if I can find them a home. I will start on this shortly… I have Beijing to add to the mix… It was a good night of drinks… 19 months ago

That I keep lending out. I really like Kiva, everything about it to be honest. I recently showed my kids and had them give out some loans… I think they liked acting globally and discovering a little about how economics works and how you can build wealth in an area when you have hard working people chasing their goals… In any case, I will keep doing this and mark it as done. 19 months ago

Jason and I are terrible organizers, but we were smart enough to order 2 bike boxes for shipping our bikes. We went with the Air Caddy and it turned out great!! It was huge and brought on no shortage of shipping cheese jokes, but we did almost no bike dis-assembly (just taking the seat out, loosening the handlebars and removing the front tire). It took Jason and I 3 hours and a bottle of wine to assemble both of the boxes and put the bikes in the aircaddies, so I am guessing it should only take about 20 minutes to an hour for a normal person to do one. We were being OVERLY careful to make sure that we didn’t screw anything up. When we packaged up the bikes to come home from Austin it took about 10 – 15 minutes to pack up the bikes (and that included all of the additional tri gear that I packed in the box). I don’t know if you are supposed to pack a ton of gear in your bike box, and I don’t know if I care, but I filled it with everything you could need to do the tri: Shoes, goggles, helmets, wetsuit, clothes, you name it. I don’t think the wheelkit that you can get additionally, and we did get additionally, is designed to handle this extra load, but I will follow up with the air caddy people.

Packing the boxes in the car was a bit of an issue too and I think it was good that neither Jason or I overthink things before we have to (you could read this to mean that it is good that we stupidly didn’t think of getting the bikes to the airport or from the airport to the hotel), because both bike boxes fit in the back of an SUV and luckily, they fit sideways in a van style cab with room in the back for 2…

So, I can’t recommend the air caddy enough if you need to travel with your bike. I think the smaller plastic boxes might be better if you know how to disassemble your bike and are concerned about size, but the price is great for these bad boys. All in all, they were $150 bucks including wheels, which is what they charge for shipping a bike on a plane 1 way.

Otherwise got everything packed up the night before the night before and was as ready to go as possible. 20 months ago

Included a practice sprint triathlon on Saturday that went off without a hitch, but at the standard speeds of 15 minutes per 750m swimming, 45 minutes for a 20k bike ride and 30 minutes for a 5k run. I have done NO speed training so speed is not going to be my thing, just finishing. The following day, Sunday I swam 3k in one hour. Exactly on pace and other than the mental issues with swimming continuously for one hour, it wasn’t hard. Endurance swimming may be the only thing I really can do… This is the only part of the Ironman 70.3 that I will have done more than the race day amount every in my life. Never biked more than 70k and never run more than a half marathon. On Monday, a holiday, I did the North Shore Half Marathon. It was a miserable rainy day and there were so many omens of bad luck, knocking my schedule off so badly that I didn’t get any breakfast before the run (a critical error in any event) nor any energy sources during the race (thank god for a bunch of goos at the aid station). In any case, it was a slow and slogging 2 hours and 20 minutes… pathetic for time, but I felt good the whole way, no issues.
So, after that it was tapering, with a 20k bike ride on half flat tires the following week… and then the big event…. 20 months ago

for the advice. You are right, I know it, but I rarely do it. I went down to the store and got myself some electrolyte replacements tablets and gel’s and trained with them throughout the my training sessions.
The gels I have always used during half marathons, but the electrolyte tabs are new. Nutritionally everything went wrong for me in my half marathon 2 weeks ago, but I was still fine. Being out of town I should do better with my breakfast for the half iron… I hope!
Thanks again for the great advice. What is the weather doing in Austin by the way?
M. 20 months ago

and swimming going well as well… I have run a 15k and a 16k over the last 2 weeks. Everything feels fine, so I think the run should be fine. I have a half marathon to run in 2 weeks and then I will begin tapering for Austin.

I swam 1.5k in my first swim back. Definitely felt my shoulder but it was stronger afterwards. I will continue to do long slow swims over the next 2 weeks, hopefully get up to 2.5k so that I am comfortable on race day. My goggles were broken ironically so it felt a lot more like an ocean swim than usual!

I need to get on the bike trainer for 3 and 4 hour sessions just to get my bum ready. I will also do some brick training sessions this week, small but still bike to run…

I also need to start training with replenishing fluids and snacks… 20 months ago

So, some complications on transferring a ride entry and it looks like I am out on the Granfondo… Still possible, but I already signed up for another event that day, a 14k run… I will be more ready for that and I need to get working on my running, so I think this should be fine. I am going for a 10k tomorrow and I should be ready for the 14K next week.
Jason and I signed up for the Austin 70.3… We have hotel, airfare and event entry… Just need to prepare to ship the bikes with us and we will be in. I will have to do some long rides in the next month, probably next week, along with another couple of shorter runs. 21 months ago

I think right now this is #1 or #2 on my list of currently unsatisfied needs. I saw this blog online this morning and now I VERY, VERY much want to plan this trip. Maybe 10 days… could be fantastic. Now just need to start putting it together.
#1. Figure out the best time to go to Rio.
a)Don’t care about huge Mardi Gras type celebrations, but don’t want totally dead season either.
b)Would like to have good weather, ie. avoid the rainy season.
c)If there is a spider season, I would like to avoid that one.
#2. Start to put together some itinerary. Some would definitely be playing it by ear, but some plans are always great.

Any tips anyone has about Rio de Janeiro, Angra Dos Reis and Trinidade… please send them my way!

This was the blog that got my attention. 22 months ago

This is the ride from Vancouver to Whistler… 120km give or take along the sea to sky highway. Being prepared for this should give me the strength to complete training for the half iron man. I will have my bike component in place and will need to work on my running and enjoying some long slow swims… I will have a month to get my running distance up…

I went for a long ride with Jason this weekend. We rode out the typical route to UBC, but we did an extra lap of Stanley Park on the way out, adding 10k and then we just kept going after Shaughnessy Golf Course, cutting back through the west side to meet back up with our route at Kits beach and home.

Turns out the route was only 61kms, but I am beginning to doubt Google Maps again… 22 months ago

I have had 3 huge rides (huge for me), consisting of 2.5 hours, 3 hours and 3.5 hours. I rode up Cypress Mountain this last weekend and that was HELL… I had no idea a) if I could do it and b) that it would be sooo miserable. I have also gone for about a 10k run. This is in addition to the Crossfit that I have been doing on about a one day on, one day off level and the weekly grouse grinds.
So, I am behind schedule but this goal is still very doable and will be done… Have a very long, slow ride planned for this weekend, some small rides this week and some runs planned. I will keep at the crossfit and the grinding and get my overall workout times up to the 5 to 6 hour range. 22 months ago

and give yourself some extra motivation to get over the tougher weeks. There are some pretty tough weeks on C25K, but once you get to the other side, you have some easier weeks too, so find a way to push through. Create a great reward for getting through your tougher weeks and set a date for an event. Sign up for a 5k run now. Give yourself an extra 2 weeks plus the program and find a 5k for that week. Sign up and tell all of your friends and everyone on here.
Do that and you will be rocking 5ks in no time! Good luck. 2 years ago