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!

The life long journey

It's coming to me slowly now exactly what's going on.

In order to gain an extra 100, 200, or however may pounds represents "seriously" overweight a lot of things have to happen. In order to loose all of that excess weight a lot of things have to happen as well and no matter how well prepared I think I am for the next stage(s)of this journey I keep finding out that I'm not ready to simply step up to the next challenge, kick it's ass, and move on to the next thing, simple as that.

It's effing hard! There have been some tough lessons to learn and all I can say right now is that I'm learning them in "real time" and I find that the one thing becoming more clear with everything I'm learning is that this is a life long process. It's going to be a life long process. It's long.....it's going to take a long time as in a really really long time that will encompass the rest of your life....like forever and ever amen type of long.

You can loose 100 pounds in 1-2 years and it counts for shit the next day if you go back to your old habits.

I've made permanent changes in my eating habits to the degree that I do not think it will be possible for me to gain back all the weight I have lost so far but even with that it all depends on me maintaining those changes....those things have to be permanent life long changes or else my old habits will return and in 1-2 years I'll be another 100#'s overweight again like none of this ever happened.

With that being said I'm feeling very aggravated with myself right now that I've allowed a general blase attitude to creep over me the last few months and the result has been a lack of progress towards my total goal of 185#'s. I have not forgotten my goal, I have not gone back to Burger King lunches and Ben &" Jerry's late night snacks but I have not been "ON IT" either. Result ---- Nothing much to be happy about right now other than I can report lifestyle changes are the saving grace of long term weight loss. I can't stress this enough that if I had fallen back to old eating habits over the last few months I would probably be crying right now and in really bad shape instead of just aggravated. In fact I'm super motivated right now just thinking about how unmotivated I've allowed myself to get. If I had fallen back to eating the way I did 2 years ago I'd have been able to pack on an astonishing amount of weight I'm sure and that would have had a MUCH worse mental affect that might have even derailed me altogether.

I'll say it again lifestyle changes are the saving grace of long term weight loss.

This is going to take the rest of your life.

Loosing 2 months to lazy stupidity is disappointing and humiliating but it isn't life threatening. Loosing your resolve because you were surviving on willpower and resorting back to destructive patterns (because you have not eliminated then from your life and replaced them with other options)IS life threatening.

Today I'm simply going to shake myself, make sure I'm awake, refocus on the task at hand, be VERY thankful I started this journey with a solid foundation of permanent changes and not a temporary "diet", and set in intermediary goal of making 205 by 4th of July and making my end goal weight of 185 by Dec 31st of this year.

It will mean that from start to finish it will take me just under 2 years to make my goal.

I'm blowing out any/every other goal on my list and re-focusing completely on the next phase.

205# by 7/4/09
185# by 12/31/09 Final goal weight reached.

Weigh ins will be starting back up soon once I get organized and more updates now that I will have lots of info to update.....


Now I'm off to start figuring out the most bad ass drink I can toast with on New Years when I'm weighing in at 185<. :)

FAST!

13 min. is pretty fast for this race.

I don't like how they start this race at all with the cattle rush but obviously I'm leaving here and going directly to Google search stair races in the US. :)

2,160 and other numbers..

Did you know that there are 2,160 individual steps in climbing 120 flights of stairs at my private gym?

Did you know that it takes 40 min. to climb 120 flights of stairs if you go at a steady and deliberate pace?

Of course not because nobody climbs 2,160 stairs consecutively but that is what I was doing last Sat. It all started innocently enough talking with my pal Shaun....but athlete trainer/types have a way turning things that start off innocently enough into something that is all trainer-ish and athlete-ified. Thanks Pal. ;)

So that is how my routine I had evolved to approx 800 steps that I was going to add about 100 steps to over the course of the next few weeks getting up to about 1,200 as my regular work out turned into in instant challenge to jump from sub 900 to over 2,000 damn near instantly... Like this old football thing right, "get out there and give 110%"

The best part of this exercise had less to do with doing it (the physical) and prepping for it as the plan was to go "as if"...as if it was a 14er to include pre-nutrition, the mental game, etc.. I sort of had no doubt that I was going to be able to do it I just wasn't sure how hard it would be and I wound up going into it with something like a siege mentality. OK, it's only some concrete stairs I know but now I think it's very VERY effective to take a task like this and attack it rather than just doing it. I could have done the exact same workout without the added pieces of the puzzle and it would not have been as effective....at least I would not have gotten as much out of it.

Cool stuff.

I take requests

In an email chain going a little further into my 80/20/10 theory Paul says..

"This would make an excellent blog post"

Here it is. ;)




Here is the exact spot I started thinking about the 80/20/10 theory.

I sat for 20 min on this clearing and talked myself into acceptance with stopping here and turning around. The summit bid takes a dramatic turn for the most difficult portion of the climb right here and I "knew" it was going to be "impossible" for me to make it. After a long spell of thinking I came to realize this exact spot is a place I've been a thousand times in my life. It is so easy for me to outperform the bottom 80% it shouldn't even be fair to them.

You could put me on an island with 100 random people and give us all a task and bet you last dollar on the fact that I (at any point in my life) will finish in the top 20%. Easy money bet.

But that day was different I somehow became aware of the idea of how much of a relative cop out it is for me to always stop here. Like I said it's very easy for me so in a way I've done a lot of things that were ironically "equal" even the bottom 10%...they were not trying very hard either. :(

Not sure if it was the elevation or other factors but I slowly decided I could not stop here. I didn't really think going on would result in making the summit I just had to go further for further sake. I just really didn't want to be 80% guy anymore...I was getting pissed off to be honest, and not about this climb but past endeavors that I should have probably done better at. I had accepted besting 80% and giving myself a little high five all too often. I could have stopped at that clearing knowing that the story of climbing to 13,000 feet would be enough to get that normal 20% spot I was used to. Even the rare 10% of people I would meet up with would not be enough to bother me because I could still take comfort in performing better than most. That day I decided to just go further....that's all just further.

One thing led to another and I made the summit.

I'll say this much, and it's the most important thing I took from the entire experience:

I did believe in the clearing that me making the summit from there on that day was impossible. I was sure of that and accepted it as fact. An hour or 2 later I was looking down at the previously "impossible". That is the moment where something changed for me watching myself do the impossible. Had I thought I might be able to do it I could not have accomplished the same thing.

I believed it was impossible for me and then I did it anyway. Maybe is was all the senses working that amplified it and literally standing on top of it was more than symbolic.

So there it is...the start of my 80/20/10 theory.

14ers are not the thing of course it could have been anything, it was just my thing. 14ers are not EPIC events...it was just epic for me at that point in time. It's all relative.

New gym membership

Monthly dues: $0.00
Crowds: None
Equipment/ machines available: The "stair climber" is always open.
Parking available: Tons..it's in a parking garage (free parking).

I read that the best training simulation one Denali expedition crew uses is climbing flights of stairs. Above is a pic of where I will be spending many hours between now and next summers 14er climb. :) I've only made two trips to the stairs so far but in those short sessions it's obvious that I should have climbed a few thousand flights before my last 14er...under training was a serious mistake I made (won't make it again). I suffered more than I had to getting up.

I'm going into my next climb 20X's more prepared than I was for Handies. I will take the lessons learned/mistakes made and make the corrections necessary to take my climbing to the next level. When I step onto the trail head next time I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I'm prepared and that the glitches I'm aware of will have answers at the ready.

By the way if you haven't climbed 20, 30+ flights of real stairs lately, maybe go see what it feels like.;)

Paid with pork chops

Not exactly, it was more like a tip/gift but a customer gave me these pork chops yesterday from part of a MASSIVE pork chop cook off they were having. I tasted them but couldn't really dig into them at that time. No worries...around my house somebody will always be ready to eat and the chops found a happy home in no time. :)

Training is going well and I will be making a % bump up next week. I'm getting a lot stronger however the effort isn't. I'm starting to realize it's coming back to the mental side of things. The early stages are so much more mental than physical as you are developing new habits and learning to deal with the types of changes that can serve you for the rest of your life... Doing something like a 6 week cabbage soup diet is mentally easy...(probably physically hard with hunger, sickness, weakness, etc..)but it's a no brainer. You just follow the directions and you're done.

Re-learning how to eat in a healthy/clean way involves mental work on the first level of figuring it out as well as another less talked about level of changing your habits. Food is another addiction and you can't simply replace ice cream with carrot sticks for a "presto chango" instant healthy lifestyle makeover. There are some deep discussions you have to have with yourself.

I am finding the same thing with exercise/training. It does not get easier when you get stronger (for me anyway). It's about the mental aspect and I don't have the words for it yet. Words like acceptance don't work because they sound too much like a grieving process... I think what is happening is like other habits/rituals. At some point you stop thinking about the why or how and this is something you just do because "it's what you do". The notion of it getting physically easier when I got stronger/lighter/faster is turning out to be like youthful daydreaming or wishful thinking. It aint getting any easier and I know the further I go the harder it gets every time I take the next step. The mental joke is looking out a year ahead and calculating the increases.....uhmm yeah. ;O

I was reading a story about a rock climber who climbed a route called Magic Mushroom in 24 hours. The story details the climb but it goes in depth on the type of work this guy had to put in to pull it off. It goes over the exhaustive prep work and pre-climbing of sections he did. A team climb (as a test run of the route), his next failed attempt at it, and finally his successful run. They gave a lot of detail on the work it took and it was very time consuming and supremely difficult. These are the types of things people do that live in the upper 10%. When you make up your mind to get closer to the top 10% you have to realize what demands the universe is going to put on you to get there.

I've got a long thought process that goes over the bottom 80%, the top 20%, 10% theory that I've been working on I'll save for another day but the gist of it is this:

Getting the the top 20% of an endeavor is something I have found very easy to do in life. It doesn't matter what it is. The reason is that 80% of people are easily bested with near minimal effort. Most people don't like to admit it but they are pathetically minimalistic when it comes to doing things. They will do the absolute minimum allowable by the universe around them. The ABSOLUTE minimum. In many cases like a job or something if you just show up on time with a willingness to try/do/learn you will be outperforming people straight away.

I discovered at an early age that I could rise above most people in most endeavors by applying slightly more effort than them. With a little hustle I have always been able to become part of the upper 20% in the category. This elevated state was enough for me to feel a slight sense of accomplished. The problem with all of that is when you break it down I am still doing what the bottom 80% do.. slightly more, a little more effort...and stopping right there at the threshold of "better than".

The upper 10% are much different!

They seem to be operating amongst/against themselves. Slightly more and a little better do not enter into their thought processes. They are after the most, the best, the biggest. This difference in perspective shoots them far out above the 10% below them and into a different galaxy from the bottom 80%. These people are perceived as insane often because...well they are literally operating in a different world most of the time. This 10% world does not operate and revolve around the things most people take for granted as "normal" or the way things work.

Anyway...I'm rambling on, My point is easier is not something I see ahead of me from where I am now. I've traveled a fair way from back there to here, I see there is a longer trail ahead of me, and I notice some big hills ahead on the trail.....it's going to take more effort than before to get over those hills. I think over the horizon there are even bigger hills:

Bottom 80% would not have made it this far.

Top 20% would get over the next series of hills to get a big enough lead over the others to claim a victory and stop there with a comfortable lead.

Top 10% are looking forward to seeing what the trail will offer over the biggest hill they can see far off in the distance....what will be next after that? The are not looking where they are in relation to the 80% or even the 10% below them because nobody else but the top 10% are still in the game at this point. All they have is themselves and each other to high five over the next hill.


I've been a 20%er most of my life but I've got my eyes on the back of the 10%ers heads on the trail in front of me....I think I might be able to catch up to them if I keep at it. They are having all the fun up there.

67 is the new 50

Keep on rockin' in the free world Dominick!

9 mile style

Very good first half of the week...

I got in all my scheduled training and exchanged my basic core workout routine with the patented Staylor's Stability Sphere Success System aka 5S.

I had also been planning on some extra credit work today for my pre Thanksgiving workout and it worked out nicely.

The set up is this: In training for Handies I understood that it was going to be an 8 mile hike but for training I was doing a 4.5 mile hike.....sound stupid yet? :( To make it worse I was not wearing a pack in training and would need to carry a 17# pack on the climb. My reasoning was that I understood two things.

1)Half of 8 is 4...I trained the 4 miles to get up.
2)My desire to make it back home would assure me that making the second 4 was a given.

I gave no thought to the Pack other than I needed it and was going to carry it.

Well, in retrospect I under trained for Handies and determination accounts for a good 75% of my success there. One of the lessons I learned was that I didn't want to repeat the mistakes I made there because mistakes = pain on the mountain. My next route looks like it will be 7 miles with an 18# pack so rest assured I will train a minimum of 10 miles with a 25# pack long before I step foot on my next 14er.

Today was my first run of that type of training and I got up early and did 9 miles with a 15# pack. I would have carried 20#'s today but the pack I was using is insufficient for it. In addition to just hiking it I used liquid nutrition on the walk as well as follow up protein post workout. I'm working to make sure my nutrition is better for my next climb than it was last time. It turns out I suffered a lot more on the mountain than I needed to if I'd only taken the time to add a few scoops of powder into a few water bottles and done a bit more planning.....I'm working on that.