Thanksgiving Menu

I'm not a skinny runner. I come by that honestly. I come from a family of people who have struggled with their weight for years. And, I love good food, I love good drinks, and I love to cook.

Tomorrow, I'm cooking for my wife's family, and we'll have about a dozen total people here. I've been cooking our Thanksgiving meal since Saturday, when I started making stock for gravy.

Hopefully, I will get most of the knife work done tonight, and then tomorrow, after the turkey goes into the oven, my wife and I can sneak out for an 8 mile run. Here is tomorrow's menu:

Deviled pickled eggs
Goat cheese and piquillo pepper spread
Crackers

A selection of stouts, including Dogfish Head World Wide Stout and North Coast’s Rasputin XII
Gruyet Rose sparking wine

Citrus and herb stuffed Turkey
Apple-sage-bacon cornbread stuffing
Gravy and wild mushroom gravy
Mashed potatoes with parsnips and chives
Yams with brown sugar, butter and bourbon
Green beans w/ white truffle oil
Copes dried corn cooked with cream, eggs and cheese
Cole slaw
Cranberry preserves cooked with orange juice, orange peel, sugar and candied ginger

White and red wines – Sancerre and Vieux Telegraphe 1989 from magnum

Pies (made by my sister-in-law, a much better baker than I am)
Whipped cream and ice cream
Vintage Port – exact bottle still to be determined


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Short but intense workout

Ten minute warm-up, (one minute hard, one minute easy) times 10, plus a 10 minute cooldown. Forty minutes shouldn't feel so hard. But, it was a good workout, done by flashlight right at dusk last night.

Well, it did come a day after I did a very hard leg workout in the gym, so my legs had an excuse to be tired. The first eight repeats weren't that bad, but number 9 came on a steep uphill and I had nothing left for #10.

After the workout, my wife and I headed out to get our groceries for Thanksgiving dinner; I always cook Thanksgiving dinner for my wife's family, so it was a big shopping trip. After getting groceries, we stopped for dinner and I could just feel my legs complaining.

Today will either be an upper body lifting day or a rest day, depending on how work goes. I had to completely re-write a really important piece of code in the last 24 hours, so I have a lot of testing to do today. It's going well so far, so maybe I'll make it to the gym tonight.

It's looking like we might get a big snowstorm on Friday night. Normally, I'd be ecstatic, but my wife and son are headed to Boston on Friday to see The Pixies, and I don't want them traveling home in snow while tired. I may have to find them a hotel room near Boston.

My son is a huge, huge fan of the Pixies and he is beyond excited about this show. He's never seen them and wanted to go so badly that he bought his own ticket and his mother's ticket. He is also sick right now, so I'm hoping he feels better by Friday.

Once Upon a Time...

I was once a runner. I've run over 40,000 miles in the past 25 or so years. Lots of marathons, ultras, shorter road races - well in excess of 400 races over 25 years.

Last week, I ran once. I ran 5 miles, and it was a speed session, but it was only 5 miles. For the whole week. This year will be my first year with fewer than 1000 running miles since 1985, I believe.

But, I did three very hard lifting workouts last week. That's where I seem to be having fun and what I want to do these days. I don't want to give up running, and I'd like to continue to run ultras, but maybe after 25 years of focusing on running, I'm just ready for something else.

Friday night, my workout was focused on bench presses. My fourth set was a single rep where I was trying to set a new best (After being a runner and skier for years, my legs are strong, but my bench press sucks, at least relative to the other powerlifts).

I needed to get to 170 pounds for a new bench press PR. My wife was there to cheer me on. I had a spotter. I lifted the weight off the bar really well, pulled it down, started to push up, and suddenly, something tightened up in my lower right side - my back and hamstring. I asked for help and the attempt was over. But, I knew I could have nailed it. So, I waited three minutes and tried again. This time, I did nail it. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying lifting so much right now. I'm setting PRs there while I'm far from being in decent running shape.

Saturday, I had a full day of ski instructor training, although we had no snow. Talking about skiing when you'd rather be skiing isn't the most fun training, but it's good to get back to using the right words and thinking like an instructor after a few months away from the mountain. After training, I never made it out for the run I'd hoped to do. There's some critical mass of ski instructors that leads to people drinking beer after anything skiing-related, and that's what happened. It was fun, but not the choice a real runner might have made.

Yesterday, I lifted again, focusing on deadlifts. Regretfully, despite having a math degree, I made an arithmetic error in my workout and didn't accomplish what I wanted. I was hoping to lift 340 pounds - 5 more than my current best. On my single-rep fourth set, I thought I'd loaded the bar with 325 and the lift went well. So, I added 15 pounds and did one more rep. And later, I realized that 6 x 45 pound wheels plus a 45 pound bar was 315 pounds, not 325. So, my heaviest lift was 330, not 340. But, I'll get to 340 or maybe even 350 next Sunday.

Because the gym is closed a few days this week, I will run more than I have recently. I'm going to do a short speed session after work tonight. Then, I'll lift the next two days. Thursday, my wife and I will run 8-10 together, and then I'll rest on Friday before running a 5K on Saturday. If the current weather forecast is correct, I'll be running the 5K in snow.

I'm trying to think ahead to ultras for next year. I really am. My hamstring seems to be healing well and I think I'll be able to run long next year. But, I'm not going to kill myself doing big miles during ski season. So, by the time ski season is over, I will have had almost a year of reduced running mileage. Can I consider a 100 miler next year, even late in the season? My wife and I have discussed either Leadville or Grand Teton as a race/family vacation. But, I have to decide if I have the health and the desire to make it happen. And right now, I'm just not sure.

Unplanned rest day

My wife and I both had long days at work yesterday. Neither of us was really in the mood to go to the gym. So, my wife suggested going out for dinner instead. My son was tired from staying up too late the night before, so it was just my wife and my daughter and I.

We enjoyed some nice food, a nice bottle of Cakebread's 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, and my wife and daughter even had some dessert. It was an early dinner and I managed to get to bed before 9:00. After sleeping for 10 hours, I feel much better today.

Tonight, my wife and I will go to the gym to lift. The gym should be nearly empty because the college kids are heading home for Thanksgiving week. My focus tonight will be bench presses.

Tomorrow, due to the lack of snow, I'm going to spend most of the day talking about skiing with other instructors. We call it "indoor training", but no one is really thrilled by it, because indoor training means we aren't skiing.

Then, I'll try to sneak in a run before dark, and I'll watch the Penn State-Michigan State game a few hours after it's actually played.

My biggest plan for Sunday is lots and lots of guitar practice.

Oh yeah, I have to start cooking Thanksgiving dinner this weekend as well. It's a multi-day process when I cook a holiday meal for a crowd.

Not really exciting, but work is so intense right now that I'm really enjoying somewhat quiet weekends. In three weeks, I'll be teaching skiing every weekend through the end of March, so I should really appreciate these quieter weekends while I can.

Speed (ahem!) work

One easy, one hard, one easy, one hard, one easy. It sounded so simple. I was tired from my Tuesday weight workout, but not too bad. My first mile was a net uphill and it took me 10:35. No big deal. Then, my hard mile took 8:05! It was hard. It wasn't fast. My third mile was slower than my first. My fourth mile was slower than my second. And, then my cooldown mile went OK - 5 miles in 47:30, and I was whipped.

I've got a long way to go to get any speed back. But, the hamstring is letting me push again. If I didn't have ski training this coming weekend, I'd run a 5K that my wife and kids are running.

Upper body lifting tonight.

Work now.

Rest days

I should take four days of rest more often. I felt really strong in the gym last night and my first workout in the new program went really well. The focus of each workout for the next six weeks is one of the three powerlifts. For example, last night, I started with squats, and I was scheduled to do 6 sets, with the following rep pattern:

6
1
6
1
10-12
15-20

The goal is for the first six to be at a moderately heavy weight. Then, after a 3 minute break, one rep close to your max. Then, for the third set, you drop down, but not the whole way to your first set weight. Then, the fourth set is the "big" lift of the workout. After that, the weight drops and you increase the reps for the last two sets.

Last night, my second single rep went easier than I expected, so I added 20 pounds and did an extra single rep. My max rep last night was 245 and my best ever is 265. Considering that I hadn't gone above 210 since last winter, I was very happy with the 245 and it didn't feel like I was at my limit. So, next week, I'll probably try 265, which would tie my best. Then, two weeks from now, I can try to break my PR.

Tonight is a five mile run - one easy, one hard, one easy, one hard, one easy.

Oh yeah, as I walked into the gym last night, I noticed that my hamstring felt really good. Perhaps it was the rest days or perhaps the PRP is continuing to do some magic. I didn't notice the hamstring at all during squats or my other lifts and it feels fine today.

Lazy days

I was out of town over the weekend. I lifted Thursday night, and then had some stuff to do at the ski mountain before I left for a long drive on Friday. The weekend was busy and workouts just never happened. I got home late Sunday night and pretty much went straight to bed. Then last night, I had another meeting at Sugarbush. I know that ski season is getting close when I find my self at Sugarbush 2 or more times were week, even without my ski gear. I got home late last night, drank a beer, and fell asleep.

This was my first four day break from exercise since the four days right after I injured my hamstring in April.

I was intelligent enough to turn down a request to play some 3-on-3 football this weekend. I think I've learned that lesson pretty well.

Since the beginning of June, I've been following a fixed workout schedule that I purchased from a company called Precision Nutrition. If I'd stuck with eating well the whole way through the program, I think I'd have some good results to show. I'm strong right now, but I am no lighter than I was at the beginning of June. That probably has something to do with not drinking for four months, and then returning to drinking some beer once football season started.

Starting today, I go back to being self-coached, and I'm going to start a weightlifting routine called Strength 1 from a book called The New Rules of Lifting. I saw my brother over the weekend. He is 3 years younger than I am. His squat is marginally better than mine, my deadlift is marginally better than his, but his bench press just kills my best. I can look at him and see how much his strength has improved. I don't understand the difference between our progress. He and I lift about the same number of days per week, we both lift hard, and then I run on days that he takes off. Maybe running is the problem (if so, it's going to stay that way).

But, over the next few months, I'd like to make some good progress in the powerlifts, work on my speed on the treadmill, and start enjoying ski season. For now, we can still run outside due to the lack of snow, but daylight is certainly at a premium, so I'm starting to use the treadmill more and more.