Posts Tagged ‘triathlon

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21
Mar
12

N = 1

By Feerlessfood 11 Comments
Categories: Dinners, Eating disorders/ recovery, fitness, Motivation, Nutrition, Races, Recipe and Workouts
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An experiment of one.  What works for one person may not work for another.  People are different and thus respond differently to different stimuli.  Some may be incredibly healthy on a vegan diet and some may thrive on a paleo style diet.  It’s all about what makes you look, feel, and perform better.

So beginning last week, I have been seriously trying to be better about my eating plan the my nutritionist has helped me design.  Yes, Chuck, embracing eating a little more and seeing what my performance does.  Now, granted, I’ve only been doing this for about a week, and my sleep hasn’t been on point, but I have felt good, especially amid a big training week.  I have been focusing on workout recovery, even when it comes to the times when I know dinner will be coming soon after the workout, I am still eating.  And it’s good, because it always turns out the dinner never actually occurs soon after the workout, ha!  Why does it take me so long to prepare it every night?  Damn squash fries…

The  biggest changes are just working on being more consistent, even on lower volume days, knowing that I’ve created a deficit during the big days.  I’ve been reading a lot from some of the top pro athletes who have experimented with optimizing recovery and eating more, better, quality foods.  We’re not talking Snickers bars that I’m shoving down, but sweet potatoes, coconut milk and oil, grass-fed meat, chicken, etc…. even all natural, organic bacon! (Yes, me!)

As Robb Wolf says, “try it for 30 days” and if I don’t like it better, I can go back to the way I was before… but we all know that wasn’t getting me anywhere.  I’m RACING this weekend!!

Will be the Rockin The W in my new kit and helmet

And I’m determined to focus on eating appropriate calories during this race so that I perform optimally.  I usually just try and eat “just enough to get me through” so that I can “save up” calories for my post-race dinner.  This is moronic.  If I want to be great, I need to fuel that, plus that deficit is going to be so big all of it will be used (including that dinner) to fuel me and help me recover.

Speaking of previous race, I’m realizing that I’m good, but I’m not great.  I’m stuck maintain habits that have kept me “good” as well.  I have a world champion coach with 16 years of experience who is asking me to change a few things.  If I want to be great, wouldn’t listening make sense? Clearly, my way is adequate, but not ideal.  So embracing this, I am ready to move forward.

Look at the new toy Felipe got me... thanks. Yay.

We had a great training day at Fort DeSoto this weekend and it was a lot of fun to just hang out and enjoy the beach afterward.  Can’t complain about having this in my backyard:

North Beach at Fort DeSoto

And speaking of good food—here were some delicious, however, not very appetizing (and I’ll admit to that) meals from the past weeks!

Coconut milk cheddar cheese sauce

Meatloaf topped with the cheese sauce! Like I said, not really appetizing from my iPhone camera, but so delicious

So I can’t wait for the half ironman Sunday!  Wish me luck!

  1. Have you made any big changes in your life lately?
  2. What’s your n=1 for 30 days?
  3. Anyone racing this week??

Get it

 

06
Mar
12

So I looked at my buddy and said…

By Feerlessfood 6 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Race time!

“…I’ll bail if you bail?”  We both gave a fake laugh, and both knew it. There was a shared feeling of “F that, it’s time to throw down.”

We were waiting at the start line of Gasparilla Half Marathon in the dark with a light mist and wild winds.  It was 5:50AM and had been mid 80s the day before, but about 45 minutes before the race started, a mini monsoon rolled through Tampa and let down a 10 minute torrential downpour bringing 60 degree temperatures and gusty winds.

I needed this race.  I needed to know where I stood in terms of my training, my readiness for my half ironman in 3 weeks and for the Boston Marathon in about 6 weeks. I needed to mentally know that I could still overcome feelings of not wanting to run and vicious cycle of sleeping all weekend.

The gun sounded and we were off.  It was very windy. The first 3 miles were good, running with a neutral wind onto Davis Island, my usual short bike ride route, but the back side of the Island was right into the wind until about mile 5.  From there, it was a straight, probably 4.5 miles, directly down Bayshore.  Then turnaround and straight shot to the finish. There was a lot more into the wind on the backside though, which I was not expecting.

I pushed this race pretty hard and could always tell when I hit wind when I looked at my watch and realized I was about 10 seconds off my goal pace.  I had been running with a guy for about 6 miles, but as we hit the backside, he started to drop off and I to commit to maintaining pace on my own.  When it came down to the final mile, I was kicking as hard as I could. Always fun when you realize you have farther to go than you think… which is probably good because it forced me to hold that pace for longer.  I didn’t gel during this race- didn’t need to- but nor did I have any water or Gatorade at any aid station… I was too focused on trying to break the goal time we had set for me.
This was my first race a Wattie Ink Athlete and was rocking my W tats- but they ended up being covered by the sleeves I ended up wearing lol. I got pictures afterward though.

Rock the Wattie Ink W

I would say the “Coach Felipe no-taper taper” worked pretty well.  I was pretty stiff on Saturday but I loosened up by Sunday morning.  Felipe has had me swimming a lot as I mentioned before and I’ve had to put my faith in him, and rightfully so, that his plan would still have me fit to run. It did.

The winners time was about 1:12:00 I think, so I ended up 48th overall of 4,747 and 9th of 282 in my age group. I did a 1:26:57 and was 13.19 miles by my Garmin.

Medal, Award, and Rock the W tat!

This was not a PR, about 20 seconds slower, but I was very happy with the result and more faith than ever in my coach and myself.  Overall it was a great race and it was fun to see a lot of people I know or seen on blogs, out there running.

So thanks for reading and thanks for inspiring me!

Remember to send any podcast questions soon as we are recording this week!

  1. Do you have a race coming up?
  2. What’s your go to pre-race meal?
  3. Favorite post race meal?

Rock The W

22
Feb
12

Flipturns

By Feerlessfood 4 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
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I have a new outlook.  It came from my coach this week.  We were on our way to a ride in Ocala (more on this later…) after swimming and I was beginning to think I might bail on the ride.  I was planning to go to a hockey game that night and didn’t want to be late, and, of course, by going home, I could make sure I had comfortable foods to eat and just ride where I knew I would get a good workout.

Felipe was in the car in front of me and I called him to discuss this and he really let me have it- brutal honesty in the most beneficial way it can come.  And it plays to so many factors in my life.  He basically said “I’m trying to help you, but you keep finding ways out of it and being sketch.” This was true.  He brought up the example of doing flipturns in the pool.  Right now, I don’t (didn’t) do them because while I can do it, I’m not great at it and don’t like it and stick with my comfortable “quick-touch and go” method.  But, he has told me many times to do exclusively flipturns.  If I don’t start, how will I ever learn to do them or really break my fear of them?  I never will.

Then he said something that sort of blew my mind—“it’s better to do the right thing wrong than to do the wrong thing wrong.”

How true!  This is so relevant to anything in my life—unless you buy in and bite off that piece of success, how do you expect to get better?  Instead of knowing there is a problem and then looking for excuses of how to get out of it, why not proactively face them and discuss them with someone who can help?  Instead of hiding my fear of flipturns, Felipe told me tell him!  Say, “Felipe, I’m not good at flipturns and they scare me—how can we work together to overcome this problem?”

Face your problems head on—don’t run from them—get comfortable with being uncomfortable.  That’s how you get better, in love, life, sport, or anything—it plays true everywhere.

And well, speaking of Ocala and our ride there… let’s say it was quite and adventure ; ) …

Ocala is the HITS half Ironman course that we will be racing in March.  The goal was to ride the course and do a time trial on the back end.  I ended up going ahead of the friends I was with and just thought, duh, I’ll right turns at every dead end and then make all the left turns coming home.  Problem with this logic is that you have to remember where those left turns are, since they aren’t dead ends on the way back!  So after 23 miles, knowing I had to be back for the hockey game, I turned around and began heading back to the car.  It’s funny how one wrong turn can ruin a ride…

Another 25 miles later and I was totally lost.  Turns out I had looped back and was almost back (unknowingly) to the place where I had turned around.  Since no one wanted to stop and help me on the road, I wound up at a gun range with a bunch of “country folk”… after some bargaining and figuring out where the F my car was (about 18 miles in the other direction) I finally convinced a “feller” there to drive me back for $15.

When I got back to the car I found Jess and Felipe waiting, very worried, and also learned that the police helicopter that had been circling the park was actually looking for me…  Ha, we then called the sheriff and let him know to call off the search and then he came and made sure I was in fact alright.  Well, my adventure wasn’t yet over as I had to go back to the gun range and get my bike. Then just head south and drive straight back to Tampa right? Wrong- try being on the long split of the highway and heading halfway to Orlando… LONGEST DAY EVER!

When I wasn’t being lost the ride felt great—I felt strong and fast and even though I haven’t been riding a ton, this was really promising!  My speed was good and my heart rate seemed like it was a solid spot. Just got to up the mileage a little bit now.

So take those lessons this week—it’s better to do the right thing wrong, than to do the wrong thing wrong. And then, what Felipe thought may possibly be my last words to him—“real men eat the banana peel.”

So do flipturns and eat the peel.  Words to live by.

  1. How was your weekend?
  2. Send any sports/training/nutrition questions you have–we are recording the next podcast this weekend with hopefully a pro triathlete!
  3. Anything fun going on this week?
15
Feb
12

Rants and Raves

By Feerlessfood 14 Comments
Categories: Chicken, Dinners, Eating disorders/ recovery, Motivation, Nutrition, Podcast, Races, Restaurants and Vegetables/ Vegetarian
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I know I haven’t done a written post in a while, but that’s because I’ve been putting together some podcasts that I hope you all can listen to!

First I want to talk about a few things that have been awesome lately… and then a couple rants I have- one being really important.

So- things I’m loving:

  • As I’ve said before, that my computer can read articles to me–but this time, the WAY it reads some words. My favorite is “Paleo”, which it reads “Pahh-lee-oh”.  Also, if anyones types “xoxo” it reads it as “Sockza”  Haha, explain that to me.  And just to let you know, I imagine you all in real life sounding like a computer robot since I have the computer speak your blog posts lol.
  • Brussell Sprouts.  Really! I love vegetables and they are a new way to incorporate more variety.
  • Full fat coconut milk: Check it out- here I mixed it with spaghetti squash and cinnamon… so bomb:

Coconut milk, spaghetti squash, and cinnamon

  • The fact that I still got some high-intensity workouts while I was traveling to Nashville last week. Also met up with my man JC there, who owns www.JCDfitness.com.

Inside of the Gaylord Hotel in Nashville

  • My swims the week before last–I swam over 15,000yds! Hoping to repeat that this week
  • I signed up for 2 races next month- The Gasparilla half marathon on March 4th and the Ocala HITS Half Ironman triathlon on March 25th!  I really need these to test my readiness for Boston so I’m really looking forward to it!  Not thrilled that I have to race against my coach though… but at least he’s not in my age group!
  • FEARLESS NUTRITION RADIO! The podcast I have started with a friend of mine.  We did our bios in the first episode and had an interview with expert Sean Croxton last week.  Pretty cool that we’ve been able to line up some VERY acclaimed and esteemed guests to interview!
  • I ate bacon.. no really!  For the first in my life and all on my own!  Here I made bacon wrapped chicken:

Bacon?!

  • I went to Disney last weekend and rode the Rock n’ Roll coaster for the first time… fun picture:

Ahhhh!

  • New threads: Fly?
  • I downloaded Instagram

First picture My baby

  • Joined Pintrest.. not a bad way to collect recipes and workouts I want to try

Now a couple rants!

  • First, I don’t know if any of you have listened to the podcasts!  We haven’t had many questions come on or any comments.  These take a lot to work and I really want to bring you guys a lot of benefit!  Please let me know if you have any questions that we can answer and guests you’d like to see.  I’ve got nutritionists, pro athletes, and health gurus lined up and I really want to keep this up!
  • Next- I was watching the show “Fat Chef” on Food Network.  I love Food Network and I appreciate what they are doing but it just highlights again to me how many (I didn’t say all!) “Registered Dietitians” really have no idea what they are doing.  The nutritionist wanted to put a 340 pound woman on an 1,800 calorie diet. Clearly she had no idea about the actual laws of thermogenisis where that woman’s metabolism is actually going to be HIGHER than an average-weight person. Not to mention she’s probably burns twice as many calories as the average person as rest due to the fact of supporting and moving all that weight around and the calories needed to maintain it. The right way to do this is to lower calories below maintenance, but this is still going to be a significant amount of calories which will slowly be tapered down as the woman’s weight decreases proportionately.  Sorry, but that just drives me crazy, same with the Biggest Loser, that these “Celebrity dietitians” don’t know things such as this.  Sorry.

Ok, if you read one, read this one.  My dad sent me an email last week asking if the changes I had made in my life lately were truly benefitting me.  And he was asking completely earnestly.  I took this back to my nutritionist as she has been helping me with a lot of things- prioritizing nutrition, sleep, and all that etc. Basically, she called me out real hard.  I had to be honest with myself and my dad and to her!  Have I done any of the plan that I’ve time, money, and focus on doing?  NO!  Not really.  Yeah, I’ve changed my diet for the better, but what good is that if I am not sleeping enough and not making the lifestyle changes that will allow this better, healthier paleo diet to actually work!

How can I expect to increase my testosterone, beat the iron deficiency that has caused me to become anemic, and to release my fears and comforts with foods if I don’t take the first steps to get me there? So basically, I need to harden the fuck up and step it up.  If I can focus so hard on the other things in my life like working out and eating, why can’t I put the remaining piece of the puzzle into place? I am committing to do (I’m sure you’re laughing and saying “gee Chuck, you’ve only said that a MILLION times!”) but now, the harsh reality that my nutritionist has brought to light has got me focused.

Thank you all for reading.  Now go listen to my podcast!

Questions:

  1. What questions do you have for the podcast?  What guests would you like Max and I to have on the show?  We really can get some “famous” people on there!
  2. Do you have any tasty recipes or ideas using coconut milk?
  3. What are you ranting and raving about this week
07
Feb
12

Fearless Nutrition Radio: Episode 2- Interview with Sean Croxton!

By Feerlessfood 2 Comments
Categories: Motivation, Nutrition, Podcast and Workouts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey guys!  I know I haven’t done an actual post in a while ( I NEED TO) but I’ve been busy working on the podcast and getting guests lined up!

This week Max and I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Croxton of www.Undergroundwelness.com and he had tons of amazing information to share!  Takeaway: How can an old school food cause a brand new disease? #JERF Just Eat Real Food

Listen in iTunes here!  Please leave us a ranking so that I know you are listening and please leave a comment on the blog if you listened and what you thought!

itun.es/iSg4w9

Remember, if you have any fitness, health, or nutrition questions you would like to see discussed on the show, leave them a comment here, or send us an email at fearlessnutrition@gmail.com

Have a great week everyone!

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