Packing list passes test

I tried out my packing list last weekend and successfully exhausted myself with a night of camping and two days of exercise. The only thing I forgot was shampoo, but the lake wasn't full of stringy green stuff so rinsing off felt clean enough.

I have absolutely no idea how I fit enough stuff into the backpack to travel around Europe for 4 weeks even if I did wear the same clothes about every other day.

Extreeeem packing

The triathloning is going well, barring my slight inclination to skip long bike rides by sleeping in.

This weekend is a training weekend, including camping, and next weekend is my crazy back-to-back race days, also including camping. I'm sort of happy to be camping this weekend because it will help me gauge the impact of sleeping on rocks in extreme humidity on my performance.

It's sort of terrifying however to look at the stuff I have to pack.

Race/workout clothes:
swimsuit
tri-shorts
2x exercise shirts (Sat/Sun)
2x socks (Sat/Sun)
bike shoes
running shoes

Race/workout accessories:
swim cap
goggles
sun glasses
2x water bottles
helmet
garmin+HRM
cell phone
sunscreen

Postrace/workout clothes:
2x shirt
2x shorts
2x underwear
sandals

Camping:
tent
sleeping bag
pillow (unless the backpack gets too full)
bike light/flashlight

Other:
towel
shampoo
deodorant
toothbrush/toothpaste
sunscreen (on list twice for a reason)


Can you see anything obvious I'm forgetting? There's almost no way I won't end these two weekends a little burnt and very dirty (mmm sweating for hours after swimming in a lake!), but hopefully it will be fun as well.

Weekend Plans

I realized this morning that I've made some pretty ambitious commitments for this weekend, and am feeling a little pre-exhausted in anticipation.

Friday: I was browsing a discount ticket site for DC and saw a re-make of some ancient Greek plays opening this weekend, so I've gotten a cheap preview ticket.  I'll totally pay $15 to see something I may not even like. But, I have to pick up the tickets at the discount ticket place before 6pm Friday, so that means going over to DC straight from work. Then I'll head over to Dupont for dinner before the play. The play is at 8, so I'll probably get home around 11, with metro and walking time.

Saturday: I'm going to do an open water swim and run with Team Z and have a zipcar reserved starting at 6am. Gah. I'll probably get up a little before 6 to have time to get ready and eat some breakfast, then pickup my carpoolers and head down to Gunston Manor.  Group bbq after the swimming and running, then drive back up to Alexandria to get some much needed groceries.

Saturday Part 2: Then Saturday evening I'm going to take some jumbo sized rice crispy treats to a "Big" bbq, where there will be big beers, big chips and big hamburgers.

Sunday: At 8am, I'm meeting up with some people from work who are doing a training run for the Army 10 miler. I'm planning to ride around on my bike carrying their water bottles.  Supposedly, I'm biking 40 mile that day too for the triathlon training, but I think that depending on my energy levels, I might round that down to 10. :-)
Then, home to do laundry and collapse in an exhausted lump

Monday: After work, I'm meeting some people for takeout food and an outdoor movie (X-Men!!!). Somehow I have to actually manage to stay awake until the movie starts, which will be at like 8:30, since it has to get dark first.


Besides that stuff, I went to a track workout last night, and my group was doing "speed" work. My GPS watch told me that I actually moved quickly for my 2 20 second sprints, and then also managed to go at some peoples normal jogging speed for the two 1/2 mile sets. The difference in tiredness from going my usual pokey speed and the trying-harder-approach-an-actual-jogging-p

ace was incredible. I don't think I will ever love track workouts that include these interval thingys, but it will be a nice way to measure improvement.

 

 

I got fruit this week in the CSA box. I ate two peaches right away, dripping juice down my arm and onto the cell phone. Lucky person who got to listen to me slurping up extra-ripe peach :)

I cooked up the beets with last weeks beets and will probably eat them and most of a zucchini tonight. Then I have two cucumbers to enjoy also.

Looking at my CSA photos from previous years, I remembered the awesome peach crumble that I made over and over again my first year. Next week, if I get some tomatoes, I'm totally going to re-make this meal

Disgusting glop

I made the beet green risotto, and it executed like it should've, but I sort of forgot that beet greens taste a little like dirt to me, so I'm having a hard time making myself eat it.

However! This is by far not the most disgusting thing I've cooked for myself. I used to have a list, but I can't remember them all anymore:
1. Attempted Spinach Saag with farm spinach 2 years ago. So foul.
2. "Spanish" rice while hostelling in Europe -- somehow the liquid refused to cook off. Gloopy and flavorless, while still tasting bad.
3. Chard when I tried to cook it with onions, apples and apple vinegar. ewww
4. Scrambled eggs one summer in college that wouldn't set. They may have been old as well.

I think that this beet green glop doesn't make that list, but until I remember something else that turned out icky, it's #5

It is, however, beautiful. If it tasted better to me, I'd save the recipe for a valentines meal. As it has sat in the fridge, the greens have been turning the rice pinker and pinker.

CSA week 4

Yay farm. We got some vigorous beets in the box this week, and they included this recipe in the weekly email:

Risotto with Beet Greens and Spring Onions
5 cups chicken stock

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 cup thinly sliced spring onions

1 1/2 cups uncooked Arborio or other short-grain rice

1/4 cup dry white wine

3 cups coarsely chopped beet greens

1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmeasan cheese

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

6 lemon wedges  

 

Bring broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan.  While broth is simmering, Saute onion in olive oil until tender.  Add ride and cook 1 minute stirring constantly. Add wine and stir 1 minute. Reduce heat to low and stir in greens.  Add 1/2 cup of broth at a time and stir until each portion is absorbed before adding the next.   Stir in cheese and pepper.  Serve with lemon wedges.

I've never done anything risotto like before... This may be a ridiculous question, but can I do this with sushi rice (which I have in my cabinet) or should I go get some more risotto-ish rice?

I'm excited about eating the beet greens. Previously I'd just cooked them in olive oil with green onions, and if I run out of cooking enthusiasm, I'll probably end up doing that again. It's fun because even the beet greens leak beet juice.

Besides the beets, we got broccolli for a third week, some very happy green onions, snow peas, and some herb thing. I think it's thyme.

Recovery Week!

So it's only been two weeks with the triathlon club, but I think with all the meeting new people, new longest bike rides, and meetings to learn stuff, I've earned this recovery week. The two weeks on/ one week recovery seems like it will be nice because the next recovery isn't *that* far away.

After a nap yesterday, I was able to perk up enough to make the collards and onions dish I made last year to use up my greens from last weeks farm box. Then I ate a third of it for dinner, along with a giant strawberry milkshake. I'm soooo lucky to have a stomach that doesn't hate me.  The strawberries were from the farm too, so maybe it was like a family reunion in my stomach.

The hardest part of the bike ride this weekend was in my head (if this link works, this was the course we rode on). I just got the clipless pedals (and the cute sandals that I linked to in my previous post), and that meant that when I was riding, there was a constant low-level fear of falling over whenever I slowed down. After about 12 miles, we took a break and I was very happy to get all the way off the bike and re-set my brain a little, but towards the end of the ride, I was barely holding it together. I felt like crying at how nice the ride leader was being for hanging back with me, I felt like crying at how scared I felt when there wasn't anything scary going on ... There was probably some low blood sugar going on in addition to the brain meltdown, but I sure look forward to not being mentally done before the ride is over.

I had to walk the bike up a hill when my breathing and mental freak-out got the better of me, but the people who were keeping me company were able to ride as slow as I was walking.  That was pretty awesome to watch, and gives me something to work on.  It would be great to be so sure of the bikes handling that you could keep churning up the hills like that at such a slow speed.

Tomorrow, I'm riding to work which is an easy ride, and I'll use the pedals and shoes, and I'll be happier about it, or else. Then after work tomorrow, I'll take my new veggies home and then ride my bike to the pool to go swimming, and it will be a delicious summery day, except instead of leaving my bike on my friends front lawn, I'll be locking it with a U and cable lock and then paying to swim. Whatever.

exercise blah blah blah

I've been all kinds of sporty since last updating.  I thought I'd been running around and biking a fair bit before joining the triathlon team, but I sure didn't reach this level of tired.  I woke up on Tuesday thinking it was Friday and happy that the week was almost over -- unfortunately, that obviously wasn't true.

Our training group had it's kickoff meeting on June 13 and after looking at the different "tracks" of training and seeing how much faster Track 2 ramps up the running than Track 1, I decided I was pretty much a Track 1 kind of exerciser.

There are 4 tracks for each of 3 training programs.  You can train for "Under 70.3" (Sprint and Olympic distance races), 70.3 (half-ironman distance) and 140.6 (ironman distance), and then Track 1 is for beginners/much-improvement possible people, Track 2 would be people who have done a race like that before, or can go some significant fraction of the required distance, and then Track 3 and 4 are for people who are too strong, aerobic and speedy for Tracks 1 and 2.  At least that's how I understand it.

The Track 1 workouts aren't necessarily individually challenging so far -- they aren't really supposed to be -- but all the exercising and going to the newbie clinics where they are telling us lots of useful information is tiring.

Last Saturday, there was an open water swim about 30 minutes south and a group run afterwards.  It was super-extra humid, but when it finally started raining, it felt so good to be standing around getting rinsed off by the warm rain. The Sunday there was a group ride.  I went out with the 30 mile group and felt awesome after 10 miles, pretty good after 20, and tired and ready to go home after 25. Unfortunately, there were still 8 miles to go since the 30 mile route was actually 33.  It was a new longest ride ever for me, and my average speed was 13mph.  That isn't a fast speed compared to more in-practice people, but it was a great speed for me.

The coach set up his grill after both of the weekend group run/ride events, which was awesome.  Both days last weekend I ended up stomach-growling hungry during parts of the exercise, so I need to carry some snacks on the bike and/or eat more breakfast.

I'm probably going to buy some of those "clipless" pedals for my bike this week.  "Clipless" in quotes because these are the pedals that you like click your bike shoes to and then you are attached to the bike, and it seems that that would be a clipping system if anything was, but the old kind of shoe attachment mechanism was "toe clips" where you stick the front of your shoe into a cage of sorts on the pedal, and since the new pedals don't have toe clips, they are called clipless.  I'd been hesitating on switching to these pedals on the bike because then I would have to wear bike shoes to ride it and would end up clomping around the grocery store and stuff, but I've been doing some research, and it looks like there exist bike shoes that aren't velcro (making it look like you can't tie shoelaces) and have the attachment bit recessed (so you don't clomp as much).  The sandals above are about as un-dopey as bike shoes get.

Besides exercising, I've been enjoying my farm vegetables, but have already had to throw some out as they withered from neglect in my fridge.  I couldn't get excited about most of the spinach, and had some lettuce give up on me also.  This week, I got some sturdy collard greens, so I'm going to make the cheesy collard and onion dish that I did last year.

I made a batch of strawberry jam too -- third year in a row of jam-making :)  I hadn't tried any in all this time, I'd just been giving it away, but the other night I was hungry for dessert and didn't want to eat marshmallows (the only sweet thing besides semi-sweet chocolate chips I could find in my kitchen) so I had bread and jam and, wow! it was good! I'm looking forward to finishing the jar and then trying some of my blackberry jam from last summer.

Finally, the cat with his stupid-expensive teeth seems to be doing well. He was doing a weird thing with his food the other day -- taking a bite and then walking away from the bowl to eat it, then walking back to the bowl to get another mouthful of food, etc -- but he is eating and active and his shaved forearm looks mostly normal now.