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Easter Brick Ramblings

April 7th, 2007

Big day of training today… yep, I let the week slip by (almost) and had only completed 7 hours of my target 13.5 hours of training this week. And with Easter tomorrow, the family is expecting Dad to spend the day with them doing Eastery things. So after a little negotiating with the wife last night, it was determined that a long training day on Saturday was the preferred solution. So… let’s see, I need to do a 15.2 mile long run this week… how about a ride around Lake Washington and then a half marathon and then some for a brick. Let’s see… 53.5 miles + 15.2 = 68.7 miles… What’s that, 98% of a half-ironman… Sounds like fun right?

Here comes the rambling part….

This morning for breakfast I decided to try something different. My typical breakfast is an “egg sandwich”. Basically whole wheat bread, a couple of servings of egg whites (or egg substitute which is really just egg whites with some yellow food coloring in it), a couple of slices of turkey or chicken deli meat, a slice of cheese and maybe a little mayo. I eat this pretty much every day. But this morning I decided to try some hot cereal. I was kind of inspired by Karl McCracken’s recent adventures in nutrition, and so I dug through the cupboard looking for something specific.

Ahh, here it is… Quinoa… “the Ancient Harvest”. What is Quinoa? Well… according to the box… “The Inca called this grain Quinoa or “the mother grain” in their language. So important was quinoa to their diet that the mighty Inca King planted the first row of quinoa each year with a solid gold spade.”

This was a product we purchased during our Wheat Free/Gluten Free years in our house, when both of our daughters were suffering from a gluten intolerance. I won’t go into all the details of that ordeal, or into all the details of why wheat could very well be harmful to all of us, even if we don’t seem to be suffering. But I will say that as an endurance athlete, one of the sure issues related to wheat and other wheat contaminated grains typically used for hot cereals (many supposed non-wheat grains have had genetic cross over with wheat through the years so much so that they have the same effects of wheat on many people who suffer from intolerances) is that they have a high glycemic index. So finding wheat free alternatives can’t be a bad thing.

But there’s more… how about this bit of nutritional puffery also found on the box…

Quinoa stands alone as a complete protein grain. It supplies all the essential amino acids in a balanced pattern. Here is a nutritional analysis of quinoa compared to other grains, and an amino acid breakdown of quinoa, wheat, and soy compared to the ‘ideal reference pattern for evaluating protein’ as compiled by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United States.

Anyway, I have no idea what all this means… maybe one of you can tell me, and frankly, I’m not convinced that the manufacturers of this cereal actually knows what all this means, but apparently they think it’s a good idea to promote these features. I made myself a bowl full and added some bananas, peanut butter, brown sugar, butter, and milk. Yum… it was good.

I also made myself a peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich, and a turkey and cheese sandwich, both of which I brought along on my bike ride to practice some ride time eating. For my run I mixed some Powerade with a little soy powder, as an experiment, and some Espresso Love flavored Gu with a little water (a splash of coffee) and some more soy powder… and of course some water+nuun. I wanted to try mixing the soy powder with my liquid calories to see if the protein would help deliver a more even calorie supply. That’s the theory I’ve heard behind the protein added energy drinks… so I made my own.

All in all, I’d report my nutritional experiments as successful. The sandwiches on the ride are great. I’m 90% convinced I’m going to do this on race day. It may seem awkward, but for me, a sandwich has more of a “solid food” vibe to it that seems to beat the hockey puck style energy bars. Although I am very curious to try out the Good Eats home made protein bar recipe. The soy powder added to my liquid calories for the run was fine. I don’t know if it helped per se to have protein in the drink, but as for taste and texture, it was fine. There was a little bit of a grit to it, but not too bad after the first sip.

My ride was good, although slower than I would prefer… I averaged 18.4mph rolling, but my elapsed time was even slower. Basically traffic was horrible. And the weather turned on my 20 miles into my ride, and although I had brought a rain coat, I lost it around mile 15, and so I stopped at a local bike shop to buy a new coat.

In addition to the weather, traffic was crazy. I was actually stopped twice by funeral processions. This is actually the third weekend in a row where I’ve been riding and been forced to pull over to the side as police escorted funeral processions drove past. Of course I don’t know the actual details, but based on the makeup of the mourners and the area of town this occurred in, I suspect that all of these funerals have been younger African Americans. It does give me some pause to consider the tragedy of these young lives being lost. Kinda a bummer… but then again, what do I know… maybe these were people who had lived long full lives… I’m just assuming.

My run was good… 15.2 miles, I didn’t try to run slow, but I also wasn’t pushing for race effort. I stuck to a run 1 mile, walk about 10-30 seconds to grab nutrition and fluids. I ended up with a 8:47/mile pace, 145bpm avg HR, and supposedly 2950 calories burned. So with the supposed 2955 calories from my bike ride, apparently I had nearly a 5000 calorie deficit after my workout… yeah right! Of course armed with this information, I will probably eat easter candy with reckless abandon tomorrow.

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Diet, Weightloss, Ironman, Running, Cycling, Marathons, food, cooking, exercise, science