Ankle crank

I was messing around with some Parkour yesterday and now my ankle hurts. ;(

To be fair to Parkour I was doing some ultra low speed pre-beginner Parkour.

As an aside, I thought people freak out when I do the unthinkable (put my kayak in the water at the parks) but they go into melt down mode when you start jumping up on rocks and maneuvering about park benches, trash bins, and brick decorative steps....they look nervous about it. Hahaha.

Anyway, I did not twist m ankle or have any awareness that there was a problem until 90 min after I was done frightening the neighborhood. I was making a cup of Chai tea and got hit with a pain out of nowhere....an injury pain not a sore pain. DAMN IT!!!

I can't dig on any leg injuries right now and my last shoulder injury lasted about 6 months and my last knee injury keeps me concerned still. I'm not sure it's 100%

I'm still walking on it just fine and only had 10min of limping so I might manage it ok. Guess I'll stick with core/kettle bell today, try to get the kayak on the water tomorrow, and save the stairs and 50# pack for later on in the week if my ankle repairs itself. Parkour, maybe in 4-6 weeks. :) Advil in the am, Fish oil in the afternoon, ZMA at night...see if I can turn it right around.

Injuries Suck

50#'s of love

I've been taking a 30#'ish pack with me on some of my short walks (approx 2 miles).

Today I decided to up the game a little bit and tossed my 50# sand bag into my big trail pack and hit it. It's a big honkin' multi-day pack so I'm sure it looked crazy (as usual for me) in my normal "suburban assault" mode. The uniform around here involves designer work out gear, blackberry, Ipod, and perhaps a little frufi dog or an off road baby stroller to push. Not me....I've got other plans. :)

Anyway, it was hard....hurt my neck holding up the weight after my legs and back just gave up an realized they were going to have to drag me around the lake. My neck was informed it was going to have to do more work than it is used to....neck objected strenuously. laying down on the ground 1 mile away form home didn't feel like an option I was going t take so neck had to get over it.

1/2 way around the lake I realized it was ON....I'm heading off for some unusual territory in the weeks ahead.

I'm trying to remember what weight pack I carried up Handies but it never felt heavy to me. It must have been around 20#'s or so. 20 is easy to carry man, you can't really feel it....I think I'm rambling.

It sure feels good tossing a 50# pack off your back.

On racing a Porsche

The set up

Era: sometime in the 80's.
Time: approx 3am.
Location: Detroit, MI 8 mile and Gratiot heading North.

A Porsche 911 Carrera pulls up beside me an invites a race. I am in a 71 Cutlass, Van Halen blasting from my ridiculously awesome speaker system....mullet just sitting there being a cool 80's mullet destined to be one silly hairstyle any second but in the moment it was cool....uhm, maybe you had to be there. :)

Anyway, the way it works is a car pulls up beside you, guns it a little and inches about 3" ahead of you and waits for your response. If you don't do anything when the light turns green he will peel out. You get to go back to doing nothing after calling him a jackass.

But if you pull up even 0.5" it's on.

I'm making the decision on what to do at the same time I am pulling up 1" ahead of him. I already know I'm beat by the way but it's not that easy. For one thing was that I was sitting in Detroit muscle....in Detroit and as such was obligated to to my best into a loosing proposition, it just had to be done. That and some other things...

Light turns green off we go. Long about 90 MPH I was pretty excited that I was able to hold his rear wheel At about 95 or so I started to catch him and when we got window to window he smiled a BIG smile at me, tipped his head a little and just like that POOF...he hit it and left me standing still like I was in a VW bug the whole time. He was just letting me buy into it a little is all.


Era: the present
Time 11:30 AM
Location in the kitchen of an endurance athlete athlete trainer/coach Shaun Taylor.

We are getting ready to get into the coffee of the day when he slides me a scrambled egg wrapped in a multi-grain tortilla. A few sprinkles of hot sauce and I am digging it because all I've eaten so far was a scoop of Whey protein and 4oz of milk. I have no idea where this is heading....

After 2 nice small milk espressi (is that right)? He goes for Vietnamese iced over some experimental double cream milk and as he slides one across the table to me he guns the engine and pulls the 911 Carrera a few inches ahead of me. "I'm going to work out in a little while you are welcome to come if you want". I have instant recognition but start trying to stall..when are you thinking about going I say and immediately it was pretty sad...I don't have a 71 Cutlass even right now, I am rocking a station wagon of some sort at best in this race....but high end supplements are coming off the shelf and when a dose of JP8 goes down the hatch my fate is sealed... help.

I could tell you the play by play but I won't. I developed a philosophy a while back when I was doing some seriously hard shit that if anybody wanted to see what it was about they would have to pay the price to see it first hand (just like I was doing) and so now this is my deal. Some things you have to do in order to know and everything else is a disservice to the doers of the stuff. The gist of it is we were doing things that required you to balance, stabilize, lift, move, twist, concentrate, and re-balance and stabilize the entire time or else you would fall down and bust your ass in a spectacular fashion.

So I tried to hold his back wheel as best I could but I know it was the Carrera all over again....damn fast cars. ;)

I'm not sure what the point of all this is other than to say that sometimes you have to get in a race even if you know you are outgunned. You have to get up to 95 MPH in Detroit blowing lights like you can't possibly get hit or pulled over in order to see that you won't. Sometimes you have to see the Porsche pull away with ease...you have to see it in real time because just knowing the Carerra is fast is too generic. You have to get in that race and get a taste of how fast it really is so that you can make informed decisions about future races. Maybe you work on your car a little and go driving a few weeks later at 3 AM to see if you can find him, or maybe you don't move next time...what do you do? You just can't know if you never take a race you knew you couldn't win before you ever took it.

20 something years ago I raced a guy in a Carrera that slowed down to let me keep up a little and show me what Detroit looks like at 95 MPH. Last weekend an athlete slowed down to let me play along a little (I like to pretend it was just a smidge) to see what that type of race looks like.

Thanks dudes!

Green

To my surprise my favorite smoothie so far is green.

I never expected this from a kid that only at corn growing up. Not exactly true because we ate plenty of things we had to "clean your plate before you can leave the table" but given my choices corn as about the only vegetable other than fried/mashed/salad-ed potatoes I would eat....oh and cole slaw..I did like that. Also my Austrian Grandmother made something with cucumbers sliced razor thin and soaked in a milky dressing for a long time that I absolutely loved (like all of her food) but nobody saved those recipes. :(

Anyway, green smoothie with a giant ball of raw spinach the size of a volleyball stuffed into the blender, water, blend, add an apple, banana, whey protein, ice, drizzle of agave nectar....it's a million times better than I thought it would/could be.

I realize not that going over different recipe ideas for blender smoothies is a waste of time because the long and short of it is that you can put anything in there. Anything at all you want of fruits, vegetables, additions like protein powder or almond butter..I'm going to try some 100% organic cacao with coconut later on....pumpkin is going into something... The idea is to take healthful foods and cram as many of them in as you can dream up and get a ridiculously nutrient dense meal or two out of it. I've got to do maybe 2 weeks or so of testing but it's downright freakish how much nutrition you can "power load" into your system like this. Peter at GCBC mentioned just using your God given teeth to chew with but I'm sure it would take some serious will power and grit to eat (by chewing) in a day what you can blend.

It's looking like a VERY useful tool to me right now and the spinach alone is unreal. You can consume a huge pile of spinach like this without having to use any salad dressing. You are adding fruits/vegetables and eliminating the less than great condiments that normally go on them at the same time.

It remains to be seen how long my interest in smoothies lasts but I think even if it tapers down to 1-2 per week it's still an awesome tool to have in my kit and I wish I would have done this sooner.

Cool stuff.

Blender Breakfast

I'm not sure why it took me so long to befriend the blender but after a few days of using it I think this thing ROCKS!!

This was my breakfast of 1 banana, handful of mixed berries like straw, blue, and rasp. :) some yogurt, whey protein powder,handful of oats, and about 2oz of milk.

It fits nicely in this glass and makes it very easy to eat this assortment of items.

While the new is on my blender I think I will make a few posts about blender foods as I explore beyond the breakfast smoothie category. I'm wondering about eating an entire day of things from the blender... What makes it interesting is how easy it is to literally "blend in" healthy foods that you otherwise have to find ways to incorporate. Like yellow squash. Last week we steamed up some yellow squash, zucchini and broccoli as a side dish. I like that but other than putting it in Soba noodles we normally don't eat it for finding places to put it. The blender takes care of that issue..Bzzzzzzzzt. :)

I'm going to explore some ideas and hopefully post up some breakfast, lunch , and dinners that I'll make and test out.

As for the above breakfast it was good. The strawberry seeds and oats give it a consistency/body that is pretty thick and fluffy.

I should have been doing this a long time ago!