Training Update

Okay, I haven't posted much, but quite a bit has happened.

Last time I posted, I had just finished my boot camp class. Since then, Jenna went in and did her Fitpoint with Gilles and then I had my first session with my new trainer, Rosa.

I was wary of having a woman trainer, probably because I'm a big sexist jerk and a bad person and someone should kill me with rocks, etc. Still, I went in and gave her a fair shake. She was nice and gave me a good workout, but we just didn't really click. Part of it is because I have a few very specific things I want from a trainer.

I want a trainer to teach me how not to need him/her anymore. I don't want someone to take me from place to place and tell me to do this many reps of this exercise and then go to this machine and do this many reps at this weight and then I get sweaty and go home. I want someone who will take me to a machine and tell me what it's doing, how it differs from the other machines that purport to work the same muscles, why I should use it as opposed to something else, etc. I want to learn. I want to spend a couple months with a trainer and come out of it knowing how to diagnose my own needs, how to design a workout to fill those needs, and how to track my progress towards my goals.

Also, I want a good, functional workout. I can go in and pound on machines all day without any help. I want a trainer who understands my goals and shapes my workout to help me reach them. I'm looking for a very generalized fitness, but with certain specific major parts to it. I want excellent cardio endurance. I want excellent strength to bodyweight ratio. I want excellent muscular endurance. I want to be able to do just about anything with my own body. I'm not super concerned about being able to bench press a certain weight, but I would love to be strong enough to do 10 pullups in a row. I'm not as worried about having 6-pack abs as I am about being able to carry 100 pounds up a flight of stairs. See the theme? I don't want to be a gym rat, and the workouts I want to do may well end up being non-standard stuff like ring dips and kettlebells and all.

So anyway, that all leads me back to this. Rosa was very nice and I was certainly worn out by the end of our session, but I didn't feel like I learned much. She tried to tell me a few things, but it felt very much like she was repeating words she'd heard rather than telling me stuff she really understood. I could be absolutely 100% wrong about that, but that was how it felt. Also, it turns out that the 6:00-7:00 in the morning workout is just not feasible. I thought I could make it work, but by the time I get that done, drive home, get some breakfast get showered and get out the door, it's after 8:00. For waking up at 5:15 or so, that's not ideal. So even though I really like working out in the morning, it seems more practical to work out in the evening. Add to that the fact that Jenna would also need to find a trainer for herself who she liked and you could work with her schedule, and the whole thing just really didn't work very well.

So, while talking with Gilles, he proposed what i think is the perfect solution. Instead of two private trainers, Jenna and I both work with him in one joint session twice a week. It'll cost the same as two trainers, but we get to work with a guy we know we like and we get to be together, which you know is a major plus for us. So there you go, then. Problem solved, with a solution I didn't even know was an option. I couldn't be more pleased. Our first joint session with him is tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Sample Boot Camp - 4/4/11

Lifetime is offering Boot Camp classes for free this week for people to try them out. Kristie and Chris invited me to come out and try it and I thought it sounded like fun, so I did. Here's some background. My trainer, Gilles (who is not going to be my trainer in the future, unfortunately) recommended against doing boot camp classes until I get my form and my stability muscles all worked out. I believe him and I don't think I'll be doing this regularly, but it was really fun to try. He was totally there last night though, so I had to be all "Boot camp? After you told me not to? No way, man. That's crazy talk. I'm here for...Schmoot Camp." It was awkward. But I'm glad i tried it, because it confirmed for me that I have a lot of strengths (namely power) and a lot of weaknesses (cardio and muscular endurance, specifically on pushups) and it helped me realize that I will be better served by doing the work to get my foundation stronger and then going and doing the boot camp thing.

So, that said, here's what we did last night.

Those two big circles on the right are big tractor tires. The red dots are cones and the smaller circles are weight plates (45 for boys, 25 for girls). The course is maybe 30 yards long, I think. I'm really bad at estimating distance. We were split into two teams of four (the other team had 5 because they can't follow instructions), and then sub-split into guys and girls. The two guys took one tire and did two flips each and then switched off all the way down and back. I think the women did the same thing. The other team took plates and held them straight overhead and jogged to the cone, set the plate down, then did lunges back. The other guy on the team then picked up a plate and ran it out to the next cone and lunged back, and so forth. While the one guys is running and lunging, the other is back at the start, doing bicycles or doing raised-leg crunches with the weight plate.


After we finished flipping the tires, we switched places and did the other side. We just lunged out and then ran them back until the tire flippers were done. We took a bit of a break and switched back. This time, we had to flip the tire until the guys on the other side got all the weights moved out and then back. That took much longer. Honestly, flipping the tire was the easiest thing we did. I think it was harder for other people because they're smaller in relation to the tires. Being a big dude helps in some situations, for sure. After the other side finished, we switched over and had to take the plates out and back. The lunges really started getting to me after a while. I can do them just fine for a while, but that was a heck of a lot of them. Bit of a break for some water.

This one is sort of self-explanatory, except that it also involved the weight plates again. You start at the bottom and lift it over your head. Jog out to the first cone, set it down, do 10 burpees (without pushups) then pick it back up and run to the start. Turn back around and go to the next station and do 20 twisters with your plate. Twisters are like v-ups because your back and feet are both off the ground, but you add a weight and you're twisting your torso from side to side. We did 20 of those on each side. Then up with the plate and back to the line, then back to the next cone. Put the plate down, and do "No Hands" pushups. I haven't even seen these before, but i can see what they're doing. You go all the way down to the ground and rest your chest on the plate, then lift your hands up slightly. This absolutely forces you to go 100% of the way to the floor, obviously. So we did 30 of those. I got a little ways through it and had to drop to my knees to finish the rest. I can pound out a decent number of pushups with good form (a good number being like 30, maybe) but after all the other stuff we'd already done, I was simply not getting anywhere with them. Even from my knees I had to keep stopping and resting. It took forever and completely wore me out. Then up with the plate and back. Repeat the same three exercises, only with 40 burpees, 50 twisters and 60 pushups this time. Even the burpees weren't that bad. I had to do five and then breathe for a while and then do 5 more, but I was hanging in there, pounding them out pretty well. It was just the darn pushups that got me. this is where being a big dude really bites you.

So anyway, that's it. No idea how many calories I burned, unfortunately, as I forgot my HRM in the car, but Kristie said hers said she burned over 600, so I'm guessing I was around 1000 due to my greater weight. That may be all the way wrong, but it doesn't much matter in the end since I don't count calories in anyway. I just know I was all the way worn out and it felt pretty darned good.

First Personal Training Session - 3/31/11

Had my first personal training session at the new gym. It was awesome! Did mostly bodyweight exercises, worked myself really hard, and learned a lot. I feel like I have a much clearer picture now of where I am, where I want to be and how to get there. I'm really glad that I'm doing this to develop a strong foundation before I start going nuts with the training. I need a lot of work on technique and my core before I'm ready to work as hard as I'd like without injuring myself.

Here's some of what I did:

6 minutes on a treadmill at about 10 min/mi to warmup
Stretching my glutes, hamstrings and calves. They are crazy tight and that's one thing I really need to work on.
Back on a treadmill to get my heart rate back up. Started at 3.5 mph, incline of 2.0 and increase incline by 1 every minute. By the time I reached 15, I was really huffing and puffing.
Did some circuit work. Pushups for 30 seconds, then plank for 30 seconds, then bicep curls for 30 seconds, then jumping back and forth over a rope for 30 seconds, then hold a v-up for 30 seconds while catching a medicine ball, touching it to the right and left twice, then throwing it back, all without letting my feet touch the ground. Then rest. Then all that again, plus a sort of half squat low row thing for 30 seconds.
Weighted squats on a machine. This was partially for strength and partially a diagnostic so the trainer could see how my technique looked and see if I was forcing my body to do weird things to compensate for muscle weaknesses. I did pretty well with it. 12 reps at 50 pounds, then 12 at 100, then 12 at 160. After the last set, the headrush and leg wobbliness almost put me on the floor.
After that, we did a balance exercise. He had some foam rods cut in half and had me stand on one (flat side up) with one foot for 30 seconds, then switch. Then do it again, but then he bounced a medicine ball to me and I had to catch it and bounce it back to him without touching. After the squats, this was really tough,
Finally, stretching again. The same stretches to cool myself down a bit.

I think I remembered it all. It was a heck of a workout. Even the strength training stuff kept my heartrate high. He said that every workout should incorporate four elements: Core, Strength, Cardio and Stability. We hit all of them to varying degrees, and it's cool to have a guide to be able to start thinking about what to do for my own workouts. I also got to use my Garmin HRM for the first time during a real workout. I'm going to have to see how that worked out for me. I still don't really understand the workings of that thing very well.

More soon!

Fitpoint - 3/29/2011

My wife and I joined Lifetime Fitness last month and have been going pretty regularly about 2-3 times per week. It's a beautiful gym, incredibly well-stocked and staffed. It's still shiny and new and they keep it very clean.  They have free weights, weight machines, yoga, pilates, treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical machines, stair steppers, a rock wall, basketball courts, racquetball courts, squash courts, an indoor turf field, three separate swimming pools, saunas, locker rooms, a cafe, a spa, and a freaking water slide. Seriously. Everything. There are classes in just about everything, and the vast majority of them are free with your monthly membership.

One of the benefits of membership that immediately caught my eye is something called a FitPoint Assessment. here's what it is and what it means. They test your body to see where you are on a variety of fitness issues. You see your test scores and you get to talk with a trainer to figure out how your goals can best be reached given your current status. It's not another one size fits all kind of plan, and it's not based on arbitrary numbers like the BMI. It's based on your actual fitness and your actual goals. It really appeals to me, as you can probably guess. I love data. I love objective tests and being able to measure myself against certain standards. What I love even more is having a way to test myself, establish a plan for improvement, and then continue testing to track my progress. Did I mention that you can take this test as often as you want? That's right, totally free. It seems silly to take it more than once a month, so that's my plan. Every four weeks, I'll go in and check my progress.

I just took my first one last night, and I'm going to post my results here as a bit of an accountability measure for myself. I'm going to be updating this blog more often with my meals, my workouts, lessons learned, etc.

Here are my results from last night, followed by an explanation of the tests involved.


Height: 6'3"
Weight: 245 lbs
BMI (which is crap): 30.6
VO2 Max: 45.00 (estimate)
Bicep Strength: 118 lbs curl
Sit and Reach: 5.0"
Body Composition: 22.4%
Overall Fitness: 56/100

Height is self explanatory, as is weight. BMI is a bogus number cooked up by some Belgian jerk a hundred years ago for some completely unrelated purpose which has since been co-opted into the mainstream fitness psyche for some unfathomable reason. Have you heard about the obesity epidemic in America? The reason we have one is that we use BMI to decide who is obese.

This guy is obese, according to BMI. That's dumb. I also happen to think he looks a bit like a freak, but he's not obese by any definition ever devised for the word. The same holds true for a lot of fit men and women. Really, it only describes the most average, unfit person very well, and wildly over-represents the number of obese people in the country. Do we have a lot of legitimately overweight people? Heck yes we do. Is it 50% of the population or even 30%? Not even close. So we don't pay attention to BMI except to talk about how stupid it is at every possible turn.

VO2 Max is interesting. Here's a rundown of what it is: VO2 Max Essentially, it's a measurement of cardiovascular efficiency, or cardiovascular fitness. It's how quickly your body can get oxygen where it needs to go. It's as good a measure of cardio fitness as any, and it's very important to know where you stand on it. You can be lean and ripply and still suck at cardio. You can have a big belly and be awesome at it. The way Lifetime tests it during the FitPoint Assessment is by estimating it on a treadmill. You enter you age, weight and sex into the treadmill and walk 5 minutes at an incline of 5% at whatever pace you're comfortable walking at. When you're about 4 minutes in, you take your heart rate. The treadmill uses the info you put in to calculate your VO2 max. Mine came out as 45.00 which is maybe on the high end of average. Not ideal, though. I'd love to see something in the 60-70 range for myself, and i think I can get there with a lot of work.

Bicep strength is pretty obvious, but the testing method is interesting. They have a bar hooked up to a load cell and you just crank on it for all you're worth. You're not actually lifting a weight, you're just exerting force on this thing and it tells you how much force you exerted. Mine said I put 118 pounds of force on it, which put me into the excellent category. It was easily my best category. There are a lot of other muscles and lifts that could be tested, but that's what they use and I figure it will be as good a gauge as any to see whether I'm increasing my overall strength.

Sit and reach is something you may recognize from your middle school days. It's a box with a slider on top. You sit with your feet against the box and your legs straight and you lean forward with your arms out and push the slider as far as you can. This tests your flexibility. Again, there are many different kinds of flexibility, but this is as good a gauge as any. I got 5.0" on it, which ranked me as poor. It was better than I expected, though. I thought I'd be lucky to reach the box at all. I'm really hoping to improve my flexibility over the next few months, as that has always been a very weak point for me.

Body composition is the real number we should be using to decide whether someone is obese. It's the measure of the amount of fat in your body versus lean tissue. Lean tissue includes organs, muscle, bone, and basically anything that isn't fat. There are a lot of ways to test it, but the most accurate ones are hydrostatic weighing, x-ray scanning and the three-site caliper test. The first two are prohibitively complicated and expensive and the caliper test is very very close to their accuracy level. It's best performed by someone trained and experienced to make sure they're getting consistent pinches and such. My pinches were something like 19 on my chest, 18 on my thigh and 40 on my stomach. Obviously, I know where I store my fat. The trainer said it's a common thing to see in ex-athletes. I don't think of myself as one, but I suppose that's as good a description of me as any. Once all the numbers are added up, they're calculated against your age and sex to give you a percentage of body fat. Mine was 22.4%. That's definitely higher than ideal. Fit men should be in the 12-18% range, and the lower the better. You do have a certain amount of bodyfat that you need to run your organs and that's why people can never really get below 2-3% even for serious bodybuilding competitors. Some things to avoid with regards to body fat testing are the electrical impedance machines and scales that claim to calculate body fat. You grip them in your hands or stand on them with your bare feet and they are supposed to be able to tell you your body fat percentage. From everything I've heard and read, they don't work very well. It depends heavily on hydration and a number of other factors that you can't really calculate out.

Overall fitness is a derived number specific to Lifetime and I can't say for sure how they get to it. Basically, 0 is the worst, 100 is the best, and you fall somewhere in the middle. I fell at 56, which is the high end of average or the low end of good. That's something I really want to increase.

So there you have it. a complete rundown of my FitPoint assessment. Now, because this blog post hasn't gone on long enough, I'm going to give you my goals.

In 12 weeks:

I will have lost 20 pounds of fat without losing any lean body mass.
I will have improved my flexibility by at least 3 inches.
I will have improved my VO2 max by at least 15.

I'm guessing that I will also improve my strength, but I'm not as concerned about that right now. I also don't have any idea how much stronger I can conceivably get over a period of 12 weeks. Maybe add 5 pounds to my curl? Maybe 20? Heck if I know. Anyway, by reaching these goals, I will get my body composition down to about 15% which is a huge step in the right direction. I will have increased my cardiovascular fitness and my flexibility which should help me avoid injury and keep running for longer. It also won't hurt to look in the mirror and see 20 pounds less fat than I do right now. I've got a big frame, but I think taking off 20 pounds will be a pretty dramatic change even spread out.

One of the great things about starting a 12-week plan right now is that it ends very nearly on June 26th which is the date of the Tough Mudder. I'm doing it, so are a bunch of my friends, and I kinda want to be awesome at it. It's an 8-mile course, with an elevation change of 4,250 feet. It's also held at altitude, starting at 8,100 feet and peaking at 11,440 feet. There are tons of obstacles involved, too, including climbing over walls, swimming through freezing water, carrying logs up and down hills, crawling through snow, and running through a bunch of electrified wires. Sounds kind of amazing, doesn't it? It's probably going to be one of the hardest things I will ever do in my life, and I want to be ready for it.

That's it for now, please stay tuned for more posts. I'll be going into nutrition as I learn more, talking about different lifts, different stretches and exercises and giving updates on my progress. Thanks for reading!

Cheddar Bay Biscuits (or muffins)

So, if you've been to Red Lobster, you know about their biscuits.

They may well be the best thing about the restaurant. If you go onto redlobster.com you'll be able to find recipes for a lot of their food, but the biscuits are specially mentioned as being a secret recipe. Well, after some research and some experimentation, I have some that are extremely close if not perfect. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 cups Bisquick
1 pinch kosher salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (more to taste)
2 tbsp butter (or margarine if you like DYING FROM CANCER)
1/4 tsp garlic powder (or fresh garlic if you're a legit cook or something)
1/4 tsp parsley flakes (I don't really use these much, but you can if you like them)
1/4 tsp Old Bay seasoning

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400º

2. Combine Bisquick, buttermilk, cheese, garlic and salt in medium bowl (I used my new mixer)

3. Divide dough into 12 portions and spoon onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. You can also spoon it up into a little mini-muffin tin which is what I did the second time I made these. Your cooking time will change, but these little guys pack a big flavor punch. having a smaller serving size is kind of nice.

4. Bake for 18-20 minutes for the big biscuits, 10-11 minutes for the mini muffins. You don't want to cook these for too long, as the texture will get too bready and not biscuity enough. Pull them out right as they start to brown very slightly.

5. Combine butter and Old Bay in a bowl, melt butter

6. Brush this mixture onto the biscuits when you take them out of the oven

7. Sprinkle with parsley if you want

Okay, here's the way this whole thing really goes down. The original recipe I found didn't have the salt in there and they tasted a little too bland. The salt livens them up. I may even recommend a little more after I experiment a bit. Also, the original recipe suggests putting the garlic on top of the biscuits instead of inside. I don't like that as much either. The recipe also doesn't include old bay which I think is criminal. So there we go. This is how this got modified to my liking.

I didn't take any pictures last night when I made these, but I definitely will next time I make them and I'll update this post. So far, these have been a huge hit with everyone. Let me know if you have questions!

Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

I make eggs a lot, as I'm sure I've mentioned. I've tried every variation of cooking eggs that you can think of. Some leave them undercooked, some end up overcooking them, but only one makes them perfect every time. Keep in mind this recipe was born and raised in CO, so it may not work for you low-landers.

Take some eggs. Put them in a pot. Cover with water. Cold or hot doesn't seem to matter but I tend to go with cold. If you want super amazing perfect eggs, you can prick the bottom of the shell with a sewing pin. That opens up the air pocket inside the shell, so the liquid can expand fully when the eggs cook. This gives them the full egg shape instead of the truncated shape your normally get with boiled eggs. it also releases the air so it doesn't have to expand inside the shell while it cooks, so you should theoretically get fewer broken eggs. I haven't done much experimenting with this, so I can't speak to it from personal experience.

Now, put your pot of eggs and water on the stove. turn to high until the water reaches a rolling boil. Turn down to medium high and set a timer for 15 minutes.

During this time, you can hang out, relax, read a book, etc. Often, I'll spend it getting my other ingredients ready (beets and pickling juice for pickled eggs, food processor and whatnot for deviled eggs, etc). You can also use this time to fill a bowl with ice water if you like. I used to do this until I stopped having ice, and now I don't. The eggs don't seem bothered.

When the timer goes off, pour off as much of the boiling water as you can. If you have a bowl of ice water, you can move the eggs over with a spoon or tongs or whatever. Otherwise, just start filling your pot up with cold water, letting it sit for a few seconds, and then pouring it off again. The water will pull the excess heat out of the eggs, which will stop them from cooking and will also shrink the albumen (so I'm told) which will make them easier to peel.

Once the water stays pretty cool after a few minutes of eggs sitting in it, you can just let them rest in there for a while. I'll often let them sit for another 10 minutes or more just to make sure they're cooled all the way through.

Now you peel. This should be significantly easier than you may be used to. Often the shells will come off in one or two large pieces. You'll still get a few stubborn ones now and again, but the majority should be nice and easy. To peel, if you haven't used the pin trick, the easiest way to to whack the egg lightly on the fat end. Since there's an air pocket there, it'll give you a good place to starting peeling. Whack on a flat surface, not the corner of anything. You don't want to drive shells into your eggs or anything. At this point, it's pretty basic. Just peel the eggs, rinse them off and put them in a bowl or whatever until you're ready to use them.

I used to cut open one or two at the beginning to make sure they were cooked because I was doing one of the other methods (the worst of which is to bring the water to a boil and then turn off the stove, letting the eggs cook for 10-20 minutes or whatever) and I often got undercooked eggs. I haven't had an issue with undercooked eggs since I started doing it this way, so I'm not in the habit of checking my yolks anymore.

So there you go. Finally, my full egg cooking method for all to see. Let me know if you have any questions or anything and I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks for reading!

Warrior Dash 2010

Hey guys! I know this blog is a little sparse, but I do have some worthwhile things to post on here. I recently (8/22) completed a race called the Warrior Dash that took place up at Copper Mountain. It was really fun and challenging and very much the sort of thing I would like to do more of. Road races are all well and good, and I'll certainly keep doing them, but interspersing the running with challenges or other tasks really appeals to the generalist in me. For reference, the generalist in me is about 95% of my mass. I really don't like to specialize. I would rather be able to run, bike, swim, climb, scramble, crawl, lift, pull, push, and jump pretty well than to do one of those things very well at the cost of doing the others poorly.

So, the race. It was a beautiful day. Right around 72º or so, and sunny for the most part. The resort is at 10,000 feet (roughly) and the race was 3.27 miles long. There were a number of challenges, but I'll go through those as we get to them. I was running with some friends, and we were planning on taking it pretty easy. The goal was to finish, not to go super fast or anything. Here we are at the beginning of the race:

Look how puffed up and manly we are.

So anyway, we moved up to the starting line and started seeing some really strange folks.

There was a costume contest and people were dressed up in all sorts of weird things. Maybe next year, right?

My wife was taking the pictures for us and only some of the course was visible from the main area, so she didn't get images of a lot of the challenges. I'm hoping to find some pictures that other racers took but so far no dice.

Now, for the race.

We started out on asphalt and continued a little ways down the road until we got to two pairs of cars pulled onto the track. This was the "Junker Jump" and you had to scramble over these cars to continue. I wish this had been a bit farther along in the race, to be honest. We had all just started so everyone was pretty bunched up. it made it so you couldn't really run and scramble over them, you just stopped, waited your turn, and then gingerly picked your way across. It was a little lame. Still cool because you don't get to climb all over junky cars very often, but not really what I was hoping for. i ended up jumping over the hood of the pickup truck which apparently caused the whole thing to shift and threw my friend Rob off balance when he was in the bed. Oops!

More running, then we had to climb an embankment on a wooden ramp with ropes hanging down. Still early enough in the race for the field to feel a bit crowded, but starting to thin out a little. This wasn't difficult enough to be considered an official challenge, I guess, but it's certainly not the sort of think you see at the Bolder Boulder.

A little bit more and we got to the "Hay Fever" challenge. It was a big pile of hay bales that we had to climb up and over. They'd been damaged by the people on Saturday (and probably plenty of people on Sunday, as we didn't start until 1:00 PM) so they weren't so much like blocks as they were like big piles of hay stacked on top of each other. It was pretty easy, though. A quick scramble up and down and I was back on the trail.

The next challenge was a series of tires known as "Knee High Hell." They were all laid out on the ground and you had to high step through them. I was really tempted to jump on top of the tires and just bounce my way across but I did it legit. It wasn't too tough and I didn't see anyone tripping or falling or anything.

The next part was the real killer. The official title is "Mountain Climb" and that's pretty much what it was. Just back and forth across the mountain. Here's the picture my wife got of the trail:

Yep, just back and forth at a slight incline pretty much forever. It wasn't so steep that your legs started burning or anything, it was just steep enough that it was much nicer to walk than to jog. I did jog, though. I would run as far as I could, passing people on the wider stretches when possible, and walking when I got tired. I think the vast majority of people walked the whole way, and I passed most of our wave right here. It was hard, but I'm glad I pushed myself. Remember when I said that our goal was just to finish, regardless of our time? Well this is where I just kinda ran without paying attention to where my group was. I felt a bit like a jerk for leaving them, but the spirit of the race just grabbed me. I wanted to push myself, at least a bit. I wasn't going to run until I puked or anything, but I was certainly going to run until I was gasping for air. At altitude, that isn't very hard to do, but there's just that feeling you get when you muscles are working and your heart's pumping and your blood is rushing in your ears. You know? It feels damn good.

The map of the course is a bit off, so I'm trying to remember how all of this happened. I believe the mud pit was next because I distinctly remember all of the other obstacles being covered in mud. So there's this big mud pit with barbed wire strung over it. It wasn't strung too low or anything, so some people managed to get through without getting too dirty. Here's a pic of it I found:

From here, it looks like this is down near the bottom of the mountain, which is totally not what I remember. I distinctly remember being covered in mud almost the entire time, but that may be my mind playing tricks on me. in any case, this was fun. I just dove in and crawled on my hands and knees for the first part, then really got down in the mud to get under the last few strands of barbed wire. Warrior Dash calls this "Muddy Mayhem" and it seems an apt name. The mud was pretty thick and sticky, and it made my clothes heavy so I had to start maintaining my waist band after this point.

I remember the tunnels next, so this is where I'm putting them. "Tunnels of Terror" they're called, though "Tunnels of Mud" would be pretty accurate, too. The tunnels were thick cardboard tubes and the mud from all the racers going through them made the bottoms really slick. I think this was the toughest challenge as far as actual difficulty goes. It wasn't the most cardiovascularly challenging, but it's the only one I was worried about not being able to finish. The tunnels were tilted slightly upward and you had to kind of press your hands to the sides to get any sort of grip. I must've held up a bunch of people because I was very slow getting through that one.

Next (or maybe just before, I'm bad at this) were the "Warrior Walls" which were three small walls that you had to vault over. They were almost low enough to hurdle over, but I was tired and heavy with mud, so I vaulted. The top of each wall was covered with a thick layer of drying mud, so that was a little weird to grab onto. There was a photographer there taking pictures of people leaping over the walls, but we were all so covered in mud that they couldn't identify us by our bib number. Oh well.

After that was the "Cargo Climb." It was a pretty straightforward cargo net climb up and down. Fatigue had certainly set in by this point, so everything was a little harder than it would otherwise have been. I've never understood why people have such a hard time with cargo nets, and this was pretty much the same thing. Granted, I wasn't trying to a land speed record or anything, but still. The cargo nets are so much harder when they're at a flatter angle then when they're mostly vertical.

"Walk the Plank" came next, and it was just some planks strung across a ravine. If I'd been going full speed it may have been a challenge, but "full speed" at this point was basically a plodding jog. At plodding pace, this wasn't very tough. Just more of putting one foot in front of the other, which was hard enough.

The second-to-last challenge was "Rocky Mountain Splash" was supposed to involve a "Dash down stream" according to the Warrior Dash website. It was more of a "dash across a stream" to be honest. I was a little disappointed. I was thinking that running down the stream would be sort of neat and not something you get to do too often. Running across the stream was just sort of meh. Oh well, they can't all be winners.

Last challenge! This isn't me, but the is the best picture of the "Warrior Roast" I've found.

A couple piles of duraflame logs maybe 2 feet high and 3 feet wide. Apparently some dude di a forward flip over one of them, so that's pretty badass. I just did a normal jump, which was about all I could manage at this point. It was pretty cool, though. Definitely a neat way to end the race!

So there's the whole story. Now here are some pictures of us during and after the race:

Oh, wait! I almost forgot the best (worst) part! The showers after the race were seriously some of the coldest water I've ever been in. I say this, having been baptized in Lake Loveland in February with snowflakes falling and ice on the edges of the lake. These showers were cold like that. The water hit my chest and I couldn't breathe. It was honestly the hardest part of the day. i wasn't out of breath, I was simply unable to breathe anymore. It sucked.

Can you see how cold I am? I stayed in there for way too long trying to clean myself off with minimal success, and then we went and got some food. We came back later to clean off our legs, since most of us hadn't done a great job of it the first time around.

Whee...

Okay, so that's really it now. Traffic was a pain on the way back down, but we managed to talk and have a great time. It was cool! I'm really glad I did the Dash and I'll be looking forward to it next year!

Ren Faire!

Well, I have some pictures I thought I'd share and this is sort of my place to do it. We went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival on Saturday to celebrate my cousin's birthday, and had a really good time. I wasn't expecting to have much fun since I've sort of gotten over my Ren Fair stage in life, but it was very cool. I got to meet a friend I'd only known through Facebook and had a great time chatting with him. Also got to wear my kilt again, which is always a plus.

In any case, here are the only three pictures I took all day. Why only three? Because it started raining and three of us took shelter in the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program's store and didn't have much else to do.

First, my cousin looking rather dashing. This is the only day all year you will see him wearing not-black.

My lovely wife in her gypsy costume. The rose was a gift from Dave who insisted I recite some poetry to her when I gave it to her. The best I could come up with?

Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

I'm such a romantic.

Ugh, I'm a mess. The boots are my WWII boots which is completely wrong. Unfortunately, the only footwear I have from a time period earlier than that are my Roman sandals. Given that this is less than 1000 years off, it's the better choice. The rapier isn't really a great option either, and I should have a sporran (pouch in the front) not to mention some kind of hat. Still, it was fun and I inadvertently showed up in a kilt on Celtic weekend at the faire. Who knew? There were a ton of folks in kilts around but I have to say that mine (of the non-great kilts) was one of the nicer ones. I'm very pleased with the purchase still, and will have to keep working on finding new and interesting ways to wear it throughout the year.

That's about it on that front.

We also played some Shadowrun with our friends and that was a very good time. It's the first real chance I've had to play the system and we really enjoyed it. My character is a "Face" which means he's the talker of the group. Normally I play characters with very limited social skills, so this is a big departure for me. I have to tweak him a bit to make him a more focused and effective part of the group, but I really think we're going to enjoy the game.

Okay, that's all the exciting stuff that's been happening of late. Thanks for reading!

Vacation

Well, I just got back from a week off of work. My wife and I went up to Breckenridge for a few days to relax a bit and then went to a 1940s-themed dance with some friends. Overall, it was a really great week. I got to spend pretty much 24 hours a day with my wife for a full week, and that was awesome. I think that's really the thing that recharges my batteries, even more than getting away from work or the house.

So, I have some pictures for you all. Here's the place where we stayed in Breck:

It was really nice. We had a great room and the staff was really helpful. We were taking this week to be as relaxed as possible so we didn't actually do much. Mostly we slept and watched Battlestar Galactica in the room. It was the most vacationy vacation ever. We got up there when we felt like it, went home when we felt like it. We stayed up or slept in as we wanted, ate food when we got hungry and avoided any kind of schedule at all for the whole time we were up there. After about 3 days, we'd had as much as we could handle of such shenanigans and wanted to go home. Still, it was a great place to just hang out. Here's the room:

That couch is where we spent most of the week. We watched a lot of movies we'd been wanting to see, put together a puzzle, and finished BSG, which was a great show that we'd been wanting to finish up for a long time. The room also had a bit of a kitchen in it:

Not a big kitchen, but enough for us to make some toast, some coffee, and keep our leftovers in a mini-fridge. That's typically one of the worst things about going on vacation in a hotel. You go out to eat all the time, but you have nowhere to bring your leftovers and then to heat and eat them. This was perfect, and we made full use of it.

Look how cute we are. Mostly her.

 This is a view of the mountain from main street. It was really beautiful all week, with clear skies and warm weather. If we'd been in any mood to go hiking or something, it would've been a great time for it.

We also lucked out in that we were in Breck at the very end of their slow season. Apparently they're busy in winter for skiing and then get busy again in summer for rafting and mountain biking and whatnot. being there when we were, we got to take advantage of the 2 for 1 deals most of the restaurants were putting on. This was a really nice place called the Briar Rose. It was seriously fancy, way moreso than we thought it would be. The food was amazing, and they had the 2 for 1 entree deal going. It was still an expensive meal, but that's what vacation is about, right? It's one of the only places I've gone where their steak was better than what I make at home. Not to brag or anything, but I make a good steak and most restaurants can't really compete (especially if you take cost into account). This one was excellent, though. They also made really tasty whipped Yukon Gold potatoes that I tried to recreate upon our return, only to fail miserably. They had some of the best crème brulée that I've ever had. This was our only real fancy dinner out, and we were really pleased with it.

We got Jenna a 6-pack of Vanilla Porter from the Breckenridge brewery and then went home. All in all, it was a good vacation. When we got home, we had some friends over and I made steak (it was very tasty) and potatoes (they were miserable) for them and we watched Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. The next day, we were headed to a Wings Over the Rockies museum dance thingy with Neil and Melissa. I had ordered my costume before we left and it arrived and was waiting for me. Here it is:

I really dig on this uniform. The kilt is extremely nice. I know because I looked at a lot of kilts when we were in Scotland, and many of them cost twice as much as this to get this weight and all. This one still wasn't cheap, but it was a much better deal than getting it over there. The boots are also a really great deal. They're hobnail WWII combat boots. I'm wearing them right now, actually. I'm trying to break them in a bit more, just in case I actually do need to wear them to go do some WWII reenacting. That's really why I got this. First off, I've wanted a kilt for a long time, second, I think reenacting may be a lot of fun, and third, it's just another really great costume to wear for stuff. People really notice a man in a kilt, I've found. I had a lot of people coming up to me and wanting to take pictures or just talk to me. It was pretty neat. One of them was a 90-year old lady from Scotland who wanted to know if I was actually Scottish. She was really sweet and we told her about our honeymoon over there and she told us how much she loves Colorado. Pretty cool, really. Here's where I got the uniform: What Price Glory? This is called the Briotish Highlander Walking Out Package and it came with just about everything you could need for the uniform. It came with a different jacket, actually, one that's made of wool and doesn't work well with the kilt. I got the Scottish cutaway jacket in KD (khaki drill) to match the kilt better and also for comfort. It's much lighter than the wool and also isn't scratchy.

Here's what my lovely wife wore for the dance:

She's adorable, and only slightly larger than a tire. She spent a lot of time on her hair, trying to do victory curls and such. I think it turned out really well, but she wasn't too pleased with it. She'll get better with practice, I'm sure. She has some pretty 40s-looking dresses already so she didn't get anything new. I know she wants something that's much more decisively 1940s style, so I think she'll be getting something before too long.

Here are Neil and Melissa in front of the B-17. They were the ones who told us about the dance and we had a great time hanging out with them. Neil has done WWII reenacting in the past so he's been sort of inspiring me to look into it. As those of you who know me will be aware, it isn't very hard to get me interested in a new hobby.

Here we are doing a little bit of Charleston. The hobnails on my boots make a cement floor a tricky proposition so we didn't attempt it for long. We relly need to get back to our dancing, for sure. I can't even believe how much of it we've forgotten. Thankfully, we have a pretty decent-sized space in the kitchen right now where we can practice to our hearts' content. I want to get back to feeling really comfy with the basic Lindy and then start adding back our various styles and moves that we learned in our classes. We knew enough to have a great time at a dance, we just didn't practice enough to really lock it in.

This is the B-17 that sort of inspired the whole night. It's a pretty amazing piece of equipment.

Here's the turret ball in the belly. It's incredibly tiny in there.

This is the tail gun. There are so many freaking guns sticking out of this thing, it sort of boggles the mind.

We also saw a few other cool planes:

This, I believe, is a P-51 Mustang. It's supposed to be one of the best warplanes ever designed. Here's another shot:

Very cool plane. Apparently they had these out and flying at some point during the week, but I'm not sure when it was.

There were also some cool land-based vehicles:

Woot! I guess a lot of the guys who have these vehicles also do reenactment, so they'll actually take these original planes and jeeps and trucks and whatnot out into the field to add to the realism for the reenactors. Very cool stuff, I think.

So that's about it, really. Not too much else worth noting. Really, just a nice week off with my wife. It feels good to be home, but significantly less good to have to be away from her again. Seems like we got married for a reason or something.

Hiatus

It has certainly been a while since I posted here.I've been doing mostly house stuff, so it made sense to update the house blog and not this one. However, I have also been doing some cool stuff aside from the house recently, so I wanted to mention that as well.

The biggest thing is that I ran my first Bolder Boulder on Monday. The race is 10K (6.2 mi) and I finished in about an hour and twelve minutes. Not as fast as I'd like, but I finished and that was my main goal. The strange thing, something I really didn't anticipate, was that I would end up running so much more than the race distance. Doyle (my running buddy for the race) and I both had our iPod Nike+ things set up to see how far we actually ran. Mine isn't calibrated properly, I think, but his was pretty good. His said that we had run 7.38 miles by the time we crossed the finish line, mine said more like 7.9 miles. Trusting his, that means we managed to add another 1.18 miles to our total distance over the course of the race. It seems like a lot, but if you add in all the diagonal and horizontal running we had to do to get around slower people and to get to the water stations and all, it doesn't seem unreasonable.

Counting just the race itself, we had a pace of about 11:30 minutes per mile. That's pretty slow and we were actually keeping up a good pace. If you count the 7.38 mile distance, we were running at about 9:40 minutes per mile, which feels a lot closer. That's easily the longest I've ever run at a stretch, and certainly the best pace I've maintained over time. Running outside just feels easier to me for some reason. I ran a mile about a week or two ago in a little over seven minutes. Doing that on the treadmill pretty much wore me out immediately. I'm not sure what it is, but it just seems easier to run faster and for longer times without getting tired. It may be that I was using a very slight incline on the treadmill so I was pretty much always running uphill and in the real world I'm running up, down, and on flat surfaces. Whatever it is, I just feel like I can run forever out on a trail. It's pretty exciting, especially since we have so many trails near our new house. I'm working up some trails at different distances based on various loops I can map out on Running Ahead with their course-building tool.

That's about it, really. Just trying to get myself back in the habit of running regularly. I'm also going to try to start mixing up my workouts. I'd like to be doing some cardio every day, so I may jump rope on my off days, and then maybe row once we get a rowing machine. Lifting needs to get in there too, so I'll figure out how best to fit that. Gotta keep making progress, right?