Trader Joe's Love

• 1 can of TJ's Curry Sauce
• 2 cans of Chick peas (rinsed)
• 2 bags of TJ's Organic Brown Rice
• 1 Head of Dinosaur Kale

Simmer Chick peas in sauce for 15-20 min, toss rice in micro for 6 minutes and quickly saute or steam the kale with garlic and pepper.

1. Rice in Bowl
2. Curried Chick Peas on top
3. Kale on the side in the same big bowl

Vegan,Organic, Gluten Free and CHEAP Under $10 for the above and it fed my family of four

been a while

Its been a while since I have posted here and that is for the most part because I have switched jobs for the M-F gig and I have been brainstorming what I wanted to do with this space. Generally I am going to stick with using it as a place where I post about everything I love; all while keeping it local. I will also be posting updates to a new project that is in the works based on my passion for Vegan food and how it relates to a athlete. It is known that a plant based diet is the path of least resistance against disease but as with all diets when it comes to being an athlete the requirements differ. These requirements are not addressed in 99% of the current educational offering on going Vegan (or Engine 2, Kind, Happy Herbivore, Sexy Bitch et al). I am not a dietitian but I am well educated and have been in the nutrition and supplement game for over 13 years. Since the time my wife and I have went 100% plant based we have never felt OR performed better. This is not to mention my labwork and resting VS are phenomenal. There is a lot of non-sense out there much of it n=1 that is spewed as fact. My new project will address much of this and all be fact checked by independent outfits. In the meantime please subscribe to the blog there is sure to be a little bit of everything.

Run Focus

As the season creeps closer for me I am starting to work in more rides and will hopefully be doing some rides with my wife as well this Spring. However my focus is still with running and I hope it pays off. Having lost almost 30lbs since last season (combo of taking weight training from 3-4x/week to once per week and going full vegan as opposed to just no dairy) I am excited to see my run times come down this year. This is an unintentional weight (and muscle loss, I was a BB in the past so I put on muscle VERY easy) and know if I took out the ankle injury they would come down on weight-loss alone just continuing to run 2-3x/week. I really want a strong run base and have witnessed that this is the way to long term success and injury prevention. Not to mention focusing on the run will help to drastically lower overall tri times where last season I was weak on the run.

I have adopted what is referred to as the 1:2:3 approach to run training. You can start no matter what level you are at but what you need to be successful with this is patience and more patience.

You can use time or distance for this system. I used distance and I wish I had used time but at this point I am so far into the program and starting to add longer runs for 13.1 training. The 1:2:3 represents your six runs per week. 1= your one long run 2= moderate runs 3= recovery runs. All of the runs should be done at your training pace which is WAYYYY slower than you probably think. Your training pace can be found using your best and most recent race time at the McMillan calculator.

Your moderate runs should be twice as long as your recovery runs and your long run twice as long as your moderate runs. (EXAMPLE):

• 1mi easy runs
• 2mi moderate runs
• 4mi long run

Doing 1mile runs can be boring but follow the system to a T and it works! Another piece of advice I pulled from this philosophy, you should never be too sore to run the next day. If you are you need to lower your distances. The final 'rule' is not to increase distance by more than 10% per week. This is where patience really kicks in. There were so many instances where I was rehabbing back from the ankle injury knowing that I need to stick with the program and build a proper run base but after a 1-2mi jaunt I felt great and just wanted to keep on trucking. You have to stop, follow your cool down procedure no matter what the distance. I like to walk for at least a mile after any run and then do some hip stretches.

As you can tell starting at one mile it can take months to get up to longer distances. If you are running only 2-3x/week but are say running 4-5 or even 6 miles but having aches and pains and want to try a new strategy then you can hop in further up the program but you need to be honest with yourself and realize your body needs weeks and even months to make most physiological changes that will result in witness gains. There will also come a time when you start getting up there in mileage and that is when you can alter the long runs to focus on a certain event and use one of the mod days for a tempo run/track workout etc.

This comes with time, but I wanted to briefly touch upon how I have been scheduling and determining my run training since Jan 1 because I often get questions on why am I running almost everyday and how have a taken almost a full five min off my 5k in basically 3-4 months.

So you want to be a Vegan (athlete)...

I have been thinking lately about putting together a comprehensive post on nutritional needs of the athlete and how it relates to being a vegan. There are so many myths that are continually perpetuated in advertising and at the gym/online forums etc that I think there are some people that may hurt themselves trying to make this leap all at once without some nutrition 101. I have no formal degree in nutrition, I have taken college level courses on the subject however I am a sponge for the subject and have a great understanding of the physiology of the human body and how it functions (I am a nurse or murse as my friends would call it). This upcoming post is needed with Veganism coming into the mainstream much more and people seeing you don't have to have dread locks to want to eat with compassion.

I have witnessed one friend who is very athletic decide one day they wanted to be Vegan and then utterly fail at the attempt with results of not feeling 'right' and being told she wasn't getting enough protein in her diet etc. To be a Vegan is not to be a part of a fad or at least it should not be, if you want to be a Vegan just for health reasons you are bound and set for failure. Being a Vegan because it is the compassionate and common sense way to approach life as a lifestyle is a lasting support mechanism to help you through the hard times when you are put under peer pressure or you are having a rough day. The health benefits and the notion that it is a secret weapon by endurance athletes is simply a fantastic side effect!

More to come. In the time I have switched from voracious omnivore to plant based I have seen an INSANE improvement in my feeling of wellness, my alertness and my performance. My standalone 5k time has went from 24 and change to 21:12 in less than a year! and that is only on two and a half months of run training because I tore my L peroneal tendon last Fall. I expect to be sub 20 this summer.

Race Calender

I am looking for an easy to use and easily updatable app/widget to use for race dates. I race quite a few local charitable road races in addition to tri and it would be cool to meet some new people who may be doing the same races. I am a co-founding member of CRUSH Training Crew as well as a member of BayState Triathlon Team. My focus is really on developing CRUSH with a fellow athlete Marc S who is the other founder. Its not 100% about racing and training as most clubs are, it is about lifestyle, heath and charity.

As of right now I will be racing the following events: (subject to change:)

13 Relay- Cape (CRUSH Training Crew Team of 12)

Run to Remember Half Marathon

Harpoon Brewery 5 Miler

Escape the Cape Tri

Duxbury 4th of July Road Race

Carver 5 miler

Mattapoisett Triathlon

Jenny Grist Mill 5k

Hockomock Sprint Tri

Cranberry Olympic Tri

Duxbury Beach Triathlon

Mayflower Triathlon

Pumpkin Man 70.3 Tri

Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest Road Race

OBX Marathon

Thanksgiving Day 5k

Bye Bye Indoor Cycling!

Ahhh! so pumped that the days are longer and getting slowly warmer. I have am 110% done with any form of indoor cycling. Today I took my bike over to Spark, Bike, Run Sports in Taunton, MA to have it tuned up and fully cleaned. Spark is a new operation in the area and the owner Mike seems to be a great guy. Next month I hope to get over there to order a new Aero helmet for the 2011 season. I am starting to slack on bike training a tad because of the boredom from cycling indoors. I have been on a major run focus for some time hitting the streets six days a week, but more on that training philosophy in a later post.

26.2 Challenge- 1st try at being and RD

This fall a friend and I are the co-RDs for a new event; The 26.2 Challenge. It is a six person team marathon relay all running an equal split. So far it has been quite stressful but I certainly expected that and thrive well under pressure. We are still seeking sponsorship for the event and we are in full court press mode already with race promo. Check out www.262Challenge.com for details, the race is October 15th 2011 and part of the course goes along parts of Plymouth's most gorgeous beach views not seen by many.