Lightweight Eats

As we've worked meats and cheeses out of our diets—flavors that often stand alone—Dan and I have developed our flavor palates significantly. Creating tasty vegan sauces is the key to creating tasty vegan meals.

In our trials we've noticed two things that consistently improve meals.

If it's savory, add sweet. If it's sweet, add acid.

For example, we use sweet soy sauce (similar to a molasses and soy sauce combo) instead of regular soy sauce to season our tofu. Salt + sugar + fat is delicious, and your taste buds will make sure you know it.

Maybe you're trying to cut down on sugar; we decided to do that by not eating brownies and cake and ice cream instead of trying to eliminate a teaspoon of sugar from our stirfries. It's up to you, but your taste buds might thank you.


Of course, taking away ice cream and cake and brownies means that suddenly, even a fruit smoothie tastes cloyingly sweet. We've taken to fixing that by throwing in something acidic: a peeled lemon or lime, a hunk of ginger, orange/grapefruit sections, etc. It helps brighten the whole affair, infusing it with life and making it dance on your tongue.

The same goes for sweets: topping your pancakes with powdered sugar and lemon zest is highly recommended; adding chunks of crystallized ginger to muffins is also lightweight approved.


What are your go-to methods for making any meal tastier?

"Individual workouts will rarely be perceived as exceptionally difficult or bordering on impossible. It will be a challenge to perform day after day..." - The Wolverine Plan

At some point during my training, I crossed a threshold—the point where I was no longer limited by my fitness but by my ability to recovery between workout sessions. This never happened in college, perhaps because our coaches were clever enough to keep our training volume relatively low to account for our otherwise hectic lives. It only happened when I began to train for 3-4 hours a day, week after week, month after month.

Eventually, as the quote above explains, rowing for 20 kilometers didn't seem like a particular challenge. The challenge was then spending 90 minutes lifting weights in the afternoon, just to come back and do another 20 kilometers the next day.

And that is why, although I spend only 3-4 hours a day with my heart rate in the training zone, I spend more than 40 hours a week training. My days between workouts are filled with stretching, ice baths, extra sleep, good nutrition, meditation, education and more.

This article covers the basics of post-workout recovery, including a 10-step protocol for recovery taking 3-4 hours, including a 1-2 hour nap. I find that incorporating all 10 steps daily is not realistic for me, especially not twice daily. Instead, I try to do more of these on the days when I have particularly tough training sessions.

For example, after a 10K run and 90 minute endurance weight session, I will take an ice bath while drinking a smoothie immediately after training, followed by 30 minutes of stretching. This prepares me to perform better on an afternoon training session that I may have otherwise been too fatigued to execute well.

There is also some science that shows certain foods aid recovery, like tart cherry juice. On particularly tough weeks, when I need to get extra calories anyways, sometimes I add these types of foods to my diet.

Finally, I make sure to under-schedule myself. I've found that I can commit to no more than one additional activity per day—going grocery shopping, dentist appointment, weeding the garden, running laundry. It's frustrating at times, feeling like I should be able to go out and have lunch with friends or take advantage of all the great activities. But ultimately, those things will directly affect my training and my success, so I've learned to limit myself.

Recovery isn't only a daily task, though. Each training season and year should have recovery periods built in as well. This may be the week or two you take off after running a marathon, followed by a month of unstructured easy running. Or it might be specifically scheduled volume reduction provided by a training plan. A lot of scholastic athletes get this break during the summer season, when, even those with the best of intentions, tend to slack off on their training a bit.

Our training schedule at CRC emphasizes not only periods of decreased volume but periods with lots of cross-training—from erging to hiking and biking to beach golf, we use these months as an opportunity to refresh our brains and our bodies while maintaining and even increasing fitness. When we come back, we've had a month or so to forget our bad rowing habits, which makes for some big technical gains in the first weeks back.

For clubs where the water freezes in winter, this is almost an automatic procedure. At CRC we've had to plan the rest period into our training schedule, which allows us some flexibility. This year, I'll be taking my off-water season travelling up to Oregon and cross country to Connecticut. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to break the routine!

What are your tricks for recovering between hard workouts? What do you sacrifice for your fitness?

August 18th was all set to be a spectacular Sunday. After squeezing in an erg session in the morning, Dan and I headed out to San Francisco with our bicycles. We both meant to grab our iPads for reading in a café, but forgot in our rush to get out the door.

We spent the morning cycling over to the Fort Mason farmer's market, where we chowed on tasty hummus, bread and veggies, met up with a friend and even caught one of the sailboat races in the Louis Vuitton cup. We cycled around the city, and made our way over to the Ferry Building, where we sat for a while with our feet up and enjoyed the view.

It was brilliant.

Hungry, we hopped on BART and headed back across the bay and up the hill home. That's when things started to get weird. Our gate was unlocked and open. (It turns out, it was having trouble latching properly.) Ever the optimist, we walked around back and started to lock up our bikes.

Then I hear, "Ho-ly fuck."

I looked over towards Dan to see our back window in pieces, shards of glass everywhere. We called the police and my mom and went inside to survey the house.

They took a lot. (We know it was a pair, because our neighbors saw two random people come scout our house.) They took our computers, our iPads, Dan's camera, and more. The list is really just depressing, and frustrating, and disappointing.

And parts of it are amusing, too. They ripped the two dollar mirrors off of the walls, presumably in the hopes of finding a hidden safe or some sort of secret stash. They took a bowl that can't have been worth more than $25 brand new (and certainly was not worth the weight of carrying it.) Clearly, these guys were stealing things for a reason—it seems they may not have been clever enough to do much else.

Insurance will help us recover most of the financial loss, although dealing with insurance companies is never fun. What we definitely can't get back is the feeling of safety.

The whole break-in really made us consider our situation. We are living in this beautiful area with so many great opportunities and things to enjoy, but it's too expensive to live someplace safe and we don't make enough money to enjoy many of the opportunities. Money is definitely a source of stress. And flying across the country multiple times a year for racing is not making the situation much better. Within hours, it became clear that Oakland was no longer our home—it was time to move on.

And so, Dan and I are starting the next phase of our lives. We've called Oakland home for two years now, and made some great memories here. But, on November 1st, we are packing our bags and starting out on a great adventure. Our route hasn't been decided yet, although we have a date for the Oregon-Oregon State Civil War game in Oregon on Thanksgiving weekend. And ultimately, we will make our way out to the great state of Connecticut, out on the right coast of the good ol' US of A.

There are a lot of things we will miss: mild winters, seeing family, diving in Monterey (ok, only Dan will miss that one), bountiful organic produce, vegan options in restaurants, and much more. But there are also a lot of things we won't miss: getting cat called every time I walk outside, crowded neighborhoods and sidewalks, bone dry summers, TV spoilers on Twitter (just kidding!), to name a few.