Lightweight Eats

If you're reading this, we've hit the road! After spending over a month in Oregon, visiting family and enjoying some downtime, Dan and I are en route to I-40.

Over the last month, we drove to both Portland and Eugene, celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas, and spent countless hours at the gym and in front of the fireplace. After a long and stressful year, it was what we both needed. We're leaving the northwest ready for adventure.

I've done some great training here in Oregon. I'm finally starting to see improvements on my erg scores—seconds are dropping here and there which is super encouraging. I'd like to maintain those improvements on the road, which is helping shape our travel plans.

I could certainly use a week of primarily cross-training to help keep me fresh, so finding rowing machines will be a low priority. We are bringing our bikes and I will also have running shoes, so I'm looking forward to doing some training in the nation's many state and national parks.

My primary concern is weight lifting. In recent months, I've really found my lifting groove. The gym here in Oregon has fantastic equipment, and a great (if male-dominated) lifting culture. It's been a blast squatting alongside guys doing 500+ lb deadlifts—it makes me want to continue lifting. I would like to continue to build on the strength gains I've achieved here.

We're planning to drive for 5-6 hours a day, which will give me enough time to get in double training days most days. I'm hoping to stop in at some gyms at take advantage of their New Year's special—I know a lot of gyms offer free passes in January to try to get people hooked. It will be a great way to keep expenses low while traveling. The weight equipment might not be exactly what I want and need, but it's more about doing something. The goal is to lifting something heavy every other day.

Because I expect it will be difficult to follow a strict training plan on the road, I've planned a general outline instead. Every other day, I'm planning to do some sort of long, slow, steady work and a lifting session. The alternate days, I will do a harder workout with some additional cross-training if I have time. This is similar to what we've been doing the past month, but without a strict schedule to follow.

Have any tips for working out on a road trip? Know any places we should stop along I-40? Row someplace in the southern half of the U.S. and want to host us? Let me know in the comments.

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I love spending time outdoors. But when I'm training, that often requires too much energy. But training twice a day, I need something to pass the time between practices. These are ways I stay entertained without expending physical energy.

Although our lives seem intent on preventing tradition right now, both Dan and I grew up celebrating Christmas on its Eve. Therefore, it seems appropriate to wish you all a Merry Christmas today.

Some fun and interesting reads to keep you entertained this holiday season:
The Introvert's Christmas from Northwest Edible Life
16 Winter Running Surfaces Explained from {never} homemaker
Live Like a Clock: How Routine Aids Performance from Competitor
Tree by Paulo Coelho via Medium
10 Ways to Train Like a Legend from Men's Fitness

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Have you ever cooked mushrooms for an hour? It's highly advisable. In fact, I fed them to two highly unenthusiastic mushroom eaters and got nothing back but praise.

Dan got me a Garmin for my birthday last year. It's one of the best presents I've ever gotten: it's been strapped to my wrist almost nonstop ever since. It's been incredibly useful with the heart rate based training plans I've been following. I've also had tons of fun learning my speeds both on land and on the water, and spent hours analyzing post-race heart rate data to see where I could gain seconds.



But there is something refreshing about leaving it behind and enjoying nature.




Every week, our training plan has time that is labeled as nothing more than cross-training, following by some number of minutes. Right now, we're doing two 60-90 minute cross-training sessions a week. I've gone on some great hikes in the rain, taken spinning classes, and explored the trails by Dan's childhood home. It's a great opportunity to reconnect with the joy of movement.


And in that spirit, I'm also taking the opportunity to disconnect from all the technology. Spinning bikes have nothing but your intuition telling you how hard you're working. And the only thing that makes you stop in the mountains is the end of a trail—no halfway timer or mileage alarm.

Testing out my raincoat in the most appropriate place: the Oregon coast.

During a winter season filled with erg splits and heart rate data, cross-training is a great place to leave numbers behind. I don't worry about calories burned, heart rate zones or minutes elapsed. Instead, I aim to enjoy the experience of moving my body. Usually, I don't test my limits or even push above 'comfortable'. But when I come back to the ergs and the numbers and the data, I'm ready for them. I remember why I'm moving in the first place—I love it.

There is definitely a lifestyle associated with training double days. Serious athletes know the routine: lots of showers, stinky laundry, 8PM bedtime and more.

We've had a cold couple of weeks up in Oregon! It doesn't usually snow (or freeze) this close to the coast. We got a good taste of what's to come.




Icy roads kept me at home instead of headed to the gym at least one day last week. I made up for it by heading out for a run, thoroughly bundled.

Three layers on top, two on bottom. Wool compression socks kept my toes quite warm!

When we visited last year, I was running in shorts.

Turns out, wool socks make great gloves—and they double as a tissue.

I headed out on my favorite trail, which starts a little over a mile from my in-laws house. The trail starts on the beach dunes, weaving in and out of evergreen trees and meandering past (frozen) ponds. After a few miles, you end up in the middle of cow fields.

Cows are huge.

The trail crosses under the highway and heads up into bigger hills and deeper forest. By the time I got there, the snow was obscuring the trail. I turned around early and finished my run on the snowy beach.


The run was beautiful and just tons of fun. My entire core was sore the next day from all the side-to-side jumping on the trail—great cross training!

How do you deal with training in cold weather? Any tips?

A few weeks ago, I was dragging my feet about heading to the gym for a 10K on the erg. All I wanted to do was anything but a 10K. So I looked at our workout schedule and found another workout in the same category: 4 x 2K, same speed, same stroke rate.

My first spring season, I dropped 36 seconds off of my 2000m erg time. My freshman year of college, I dropped 14 seconds from my 2km time, and almost 2 minutes from my 4km time. This season? I'll be happy if I drop 12 seconds from my 6km time.

What's changed?


Well, first of all, each second means more the faster you go. The erg, short for ergometer, doesn't actually measure how far you've got—it measures how much work you've done. (An erg is a unit of work.) The erg looks at how much work you've done in a given time period and tells you how much power you produce—your watts.

The erg then has a formula to predict, if there were 8 of you with perfect technique rowing an eight-man boat, how fast you'd be going. In fact, you can calculate your split for any given wattage: http://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/calculators/watts-calculator

So let's do that. My freshman year of college, I went from 1:56 to a 1:52.5 split, or 224 watts to 245 (9% improvement). Let's say I want to improve 9% on the watts again—that's 245 watts x 1.09 = 267 watts. That's a 1:49.4 split.

The first 9% improvement, I dropped 3.5 seconds on the split, or 14 seconds overall. The second 9% improvement, I only dropped 3.1 seconds on the split, or 12.4 seconds overall. The faster you're going, the more each second counts. And as I've gotten faster, my improvements seem smaller.


But that's not everything. In high school and college, summer was the off season and boy did I take it off. I was still getting back in shape at the first 2k of the season. Now, we train year-round. And while I may not be in peak 2k shape at the first erg test of the season, I'm not far off. In that regard, I would take a massive improvement in my time over the course of a season as a sign of failure—a sign that something had been sub-optimal in my prior training.

The same goes for weight-lifting. Although I might see some initial improvements when I switch from one lift to another, and there is some variance due to weekly training loads, I'm mostly just lifting the same amount of weight, over and over again.


So if you're not seeing the same massive improvements you saw your first season (or five) as a rower, don't beat yourself up. It's probably a sign you're doing something right!

Passionate about food, eating, exercise and health, I have been a casual observer of the obesity epidemic. From watching the HBO series The Weight of the Nation to devouring article after article discussing new research, I am learning, experimenting and watching.

Recently, I read this really great article called Fat City, basically a collection of thoughts on eating, dieting, obesity and health. The author, Karen Hitchcock, works as a physician in an obesity clinic. She talks quite frankly—touching on the feeling of moral superiority from being thin to the shame of overeating. Most striking to me, though, was a brief section on a man who claimed to be addicted to eating.

That's not possible, says Hitchcock. In fact, the man was poor and had no other sources of pleasure in his life. Food was the only pleasure he could afford, and so he indulged himself.

And isn't that what many of us do? We eat to infuse pleasure in the boring work day, or to curb the discomfort of exhaustion. It's no wonder sleep deprivation is linked to weight gain. The more I considered it, the more I saw this same pattern in my own life. In fact, as the first few days of the Live Below the Line challenge took much of the pleasure from eating, I found myself struggling to consume enough rather than overconsuming.

The Weight of the Nation seemed ever-ready to pin the obesity epidemic on junk food. And while I don't doubt its role, their arguments didn't seem to hold up in my mind. The documentary seemed to imply that the low prices of junk food were what drew Americans to over consume.

But that didn't make sense. First, junk food is more expensive than more nutritious options like rice, beans and other grains. Second, if finances were an issue, overconsumption would appear to be the last issue: how could one afford to over consume without financial resources to do so?

Instead, I'd argue that the real issue is the relationship between pleasure provided, calories and cost. Cheap, old carrots taste awful and provide absolutely no pleasure. Cheap french fries are delicious and pleasurable—their salt and fat comforting. Plain, cheap oatmeal versus plain, cheap pizza? It's hardly worth comparing.

Rather than eliminating fast food—a reliable source of calories—we ought to focus on infusing pleasure into more healthful fare. Fresh, market carrots are sweet, full of flavor and a rich experience. Heirloom tomatoes and tree-ripened peaches fill the aware eater with tingles and gasps. Garlicky, salty eggplant drenched in rich olive oil can give the unsuspecting tastebuds a moment's pause in delight. By focusing our efforts on the positive—rediscovering the joy of eating real, fresh foods—we stand to gain a lot.


Another viable solution is providing an alternative source of pleasure. Computers, television and the internet provide a wealth of pleasurable entertainment, but all of it is sedentary. Why not kill two birds with one stone and replace eating with activity?

Places to play, walk and bike could be the simple solution we are looking for. Is it really any wonder that Colorado is one of the nation's thinnest states? If a hamburger and a day hike provide the same amount of pleasure, and we can convince more people to fulfill their daily pleasure quota with the latter, we could make some real progress.

And this is why it's not enough to simply tell people to exercise for 30 minutes a day. Exercising, for most, is inherently un-pleasurable. Instead, we need to provide the resources to draw pleasure from activity—from bike-friendly shopping centers to walking paths showcasing natural beauty, from community gardens to recreation bowling leagues. Rather than encourage formal exercise, let's make informal exercise a part of our lives.

And who knows, along the way, we might make our cities and our country, a better place to live.

Like most families, we have some go-to meals. For example, we try to always keep black beans, tortillas and red cabbage on hand so we can whip up tacos with cabbage slaw. (Thanks to my sister for the slaw recipe!) Smoothies are another great option: we keep veggie scraps and bargain bin fruit in the freezer to blend with protein powder for a fast, easy, healthy dinner.

Another favorite is the stirfry. Every week, we buy two blocks of tofu and it almost always gets used in a stirfry.

When we first started making this, we usually ended up with soggy veggies and tofu crumbles. After much trial and error (and equal amounts of simplification), we now consistently produce crisp veggies, tasty sauce, and chewy tofu. Learn from our mistakes.

If you're super new to making stirfry, I recommend using one piece of advice per attempt.

1. Start your rice first. It takes about 30 minutes to make white rice, so this needs to get going right away. By the time everything else is ready, your rice will be ready. If it's done early, it can wait. Rice stays hot.

2. Use two pans—a flattish pan for tofu (non-stick is ok) and a higher sided, thin pan (one that gets really hot and tends to burn things) for veggies.

3. Once the rice is going, cut the tofu into bite-size pieces and pat it dry. Heat up your flat pan with a bit of oil; once it's hot, add the tofu—it should sizzle. Cook it until it's brown (2-3 minutes) and stir. Get at least two sides browned. Feel free to chop veggies during this process (or use pre-chopped). Set the tofu aside (or leave it on low heat, stirring every 4-5 minutes).

4. Use no more than 2 types of veggie. We love broccoli and carrots—easy to cut, easy to cook. Some other ideas: baby greens, shiitake mushrooms, canned bamboo shoots, green onion, celery. Any other suggestions?

5. Cook the veggies lightly over very high heat. Start with the veggie you'd least like to eat raw—in our example, broccoli goes in first. Then add the second when the first is almost ready to eat. When your veggies are crisp but cooked—don't try to brown them—add half of your sauce (see below) and toss together.

6. Make a simple sauce. Sweet soy sauce is a good stand alone. You can also buy bottled teriyaki sauce. Or, mix peanut butter, minced ginger and soy sauce.

7. To serve, assemble bowls with rice, browned tofu, veggies and a spoonful of sauce. Top with sesame seeds and chopped green onions if you're feeling fancy.

One of our requirements when we moved last year was finding a place with a washer and dryer. If I weren't training, and we produced just one mildly dirty outfit per day per person, a washer and dryer would be a convenience.

But the thought of lugging three or four outfits a day of often soggy and always smelly clothing to the laundromat was just soul crushing. Did I mention that we'd have been doing the lugging on our bicycles?

But we found that we were running the dryer through its full cycle two, even three times just to get a load dry. It hardly seemed efficient. With all of my spandex workout clothing—which really shouldn't be dried—and the inconvenience of checking and restarting the dryer, we decided to do what any Bay Area hippie would do: got a drying rack!

We still use our dryer. Cotton t-shirts, towels and jeans all go through the dryer. Sometimes, a load donates just two or three pieces of clothing to the dryer, meaning we can combine dryer loads.

We aren't keeping track of our savings. I'm sure we're saving some money here and there from running the dryer less. More importantly, my favorite pair of spandex will last much, much, much longer.

Of course, a load can easily fill up a drying rack; a crowded rack doesn't dry as quickly. What if things don't dry in time? Well, then I throw what I need in the dryer for 10 minutes to finish it up. There's nothing better than climbing into a warm pair of long spandex on your way to a cold, wet, windy row.

(Note: This post is re-published from Piquant Prose.)

I don't enjoy watching people come close to injuring themselves when they try to use one of these:

A rowing machine, aka an 'erg'

4. Fast on the drive, slow on the recovery
Rowers are pretty smart. We named a part of our stroke 'the recovery' for a reason—you're actually supposed to spend some time recovering from your incredible exertion on the drive. With a good rhythm, you'll spend about twice as much time on the recovery as on the drive.

5. Learn what the monitor means
The big number in the middle of the monitor can be changed between various settings, including watts, calories/hr and split. The split tells you how long it would take you to go 500m if you kept rowing the same pace; the lower it is, the harder you're working. I like this value because it has relatively small changes in value for a change in exertion, so it's pretty easy to try to maintain a consistent pace. If you're just starting on the erg, try for under a 2:30.

The other important number is in the upper right hand corner. This little number is your number of strokes per minute. Try to keep this number between 20 and 30—20 for long, slow workouts and 30 for short, fast interval work. This range will give you the best control over what you're doing and help prevent injury. During a give workout, try to stay in a pretty narrow range. For example, our steady state workouts are usually at a 20-22, and our faster workouts are usually at 26-28 or 28-30, and we try to stay in this range for the whole workout.
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I have a 100 more tips, but most of them you'll figure out just by trying it a few times!! If you're interested in using it, let me know and I can give you tips and workouts. If you use it right, you're really unlikely to get injured and you'll get in really great shape.

Have you ever read an article about all the foods athletes shouldn't eat? Sure, there are the obvious reasons: nobody should be eating chemicals and food dyes, especially not in large quantities. But what about sugar? juice? fatty foods? Should athletes really be eating whole grains, lean proteins and a heaping pile of veggies at every meal?

If you think so, I challenge you to eat as much as a heavyweight male rower for a day. You will either give up at lunch or put on a pound in a day. And do you know how much fiber is in 5-6000 calories or whole grains, lean proteins and veggies? More than most Americans eat in a week. Seriously, you're talking about 150-200 grams of fiber.

Even at a mere 3500 calories a day, I'm looking at 100 grams of fiber daily—even when I'm choosing a number of lower fiber options. What's the problem with that? Well, the short turnaround between meals and workouts doesn't jive with slow digestion. And there are no bathroom breaks in the middle of a 2-hour row.

It can also be challenging to keep up with calorie intake for a lot of athletes. Depending on the training load, I can have trouble finding the appropriate time to eat enough calories—this is even more problematic if I'm still full from my previous meal when I get an opportunity to eat.

So what's my solution?

1. Eat a basis of whole grains, lean protein and veggies.
Imagine what a non-athlete would eat in a day. I try to eat about that much in whole foods. After that, I give myself some leeway to eat white rice, snack on sugary crackers and jams, sip juice, or fried potatoes.

2. Pick high-calorie, low-fiber produce for heavy training days.
Bananas, mangoes, squash, pineapple, melons, peas, and beets are all good options on days when I'm burning through fuel faster than a Hummer. I use my 'off' days to eat the fibrous options: berries, pears, apples, leafy greens, etc.

3. Use a 'bad', 'medium' and 'good' system.
Oreos? Definitely bad. Kale? Definitely good. White rice? The jury is out, so I put it in the medium category. Soda? Definitely bad. Green tea? Definitely good. Juice? Unknown—medium. I eat less than one item a week from the "definitely bad" category, and more than one item a day from the "definitely good" category. Other than that, I don't worry about it.

The best thing I ever did for my diet was to trust it. Instead of avoiding this or eating that, and wondering whether it made any difference, I decided to just eat.

The ergs have moved and TVs have been added since this photo was taken. Now I can erg and watch football!

I joined a gym. It was $50 for a month, with unlimited 24-hour access and free fitness classes. I've been going twice a day most days, or sometimes once for 3+ hours, with a quick snack break between workouts. It's a nice change of pace.

The gym has a dry sauna, which is nice for post-workout meditation. There may be other benefits, but I just enjoy it because it feels good.

It's also been fun using a wide range of weight equipment. Our equipment at CRC was limited and generally oversized for a lightweight woman. The leg press was too heavy and I couldn't reach the sled. The bench for bench pulls was too wide and too high. We didn't have any dumbbells, so the lightest weight was a 45-pound bar: too heavy for 6x20 bench press. The selection of weight machines has also let me really push the weight for very specific target muscles.

All of that makes lifting weights a lot more enjoyable—which is great, since that is generally a huge focus of the winter season.

And, of course, there's the always amusing rotation of gym-goers attempting to use the rowing machine. Ten amusing minutes breaks up a 90-minute sweat session nicely.

"Why are you reading a book about traffic?!" my mom asked in disbelief. Assuming nerdiness isn't a valid explanation, I'd also like to point out that driving is the most dangerous thing most of us will do on any given day. Why did I think about that? Because I read Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt.

Since we got our first car (!) last month, I thought it would be wise to read about the wild world of roads. Tom Vanderbilt has changed me into a 10 and 2, cell-phone free, 55mph driver, and I'm totally ok with it. His book talks about how traffic works, what the most dangerous conditions are, urban design for safer streets, and you'll just have to read the book to find out the rest.

It's definitely an easy read, more like an extended magazine article than an extended essay with points and counterarguments. For those of you that like microhistories (history books about a very specific topic) or who have an interest in urban planning, I'd recommend checking it out from your local library.

Plus, this is a great book to read before the holidays: everybody has been stuck in traffic, so it's a wonderful conversation starter.

Last week, I drove from California up to Oregon to start our long cross-country journey.


Before we decided to move, we had Thanksgiving weekend plans in Eugene, Oregon, and we weren't going to miss them.

But first things first.

Thanksgiving Thursday, I trudged down to join the other dedicated gym-goers for a morning workout. I'd pushed pretty hard Monday through Wednesday so I could enjoy Thursday and Friday without 3 hours of gym time.

We left the coast by 10AM to drive to Portland-area, where we picked up Dan's Grandma Kate before heading to his Aunt Karen's for a Thanksgiving feast. Dan's family is incredibly welcoming, and had prepared more delicious vegan dinner options than I could possibly eat. As Dan's dad puts it:
"This isn't vegan food. This is delicious food that happens to also be vegan."

Post-dinner, we drove a few more hours south to Eugene, home of the University of Oregon.

Friday morning, I woke up so excited that I completely forgot it was my birthday until I watched the morning news over breakfast. What got me so excited? We had front row tickets to watch the Oregon Ducks football team face off against the Oregon State Beavers!



Of course, since it was my birthday, the Ducks managed to pull of a 1-point victory with the winning touchdown not 30 yards from our seats. Who cares if they go to a national championship? That game was a blast.



We also got a chance to explore downtown Eugene a bit, including vegan donuts at Voodoo. Yum!

Nomnom. Donut.

Saturday morning, we hit the road again, heading into Portland for some exploration, before returning to the coast.


Saturday evening, I was back at the gym with the post-Thanksgiving repenters and dedicated weight lifters. The rest of the weekend was spent working out, watching football/movies and grocery shopping—some of my favorite things. And although weekends are rather meaningless at the moment since neither of us is working, it still feels like we're back to the daily grind this Monday morning.