Internal Mono(b)log

How many of you, when mixing your powdered sport nutrition end up with a slurry of clumpy, unmixed product glued to the bottom of the bottle, that seemingly won’t dissolve, no mater what you do?

Annoying? Yes! But I have a solution to get it into solution 🙂

There’s more than 1 of you frustrated souls out there I know it!  Because I used to be one.  Until I figured out this sure-fire method for mixing that hasn’t yet let me down.  I’m going to give instructions based on 1 bottle, but the process is the same for more (obviously).

1. Collect your water bottles and lids, powdered supplements, measuring devices, near your water source before you start.  Having a large time gap in this process almost guarantees problems.
2. Fill the water bottle 50-60% full of water (or whatever your liquid substrate layer is – I almost always use water, I expect you do as well)
3. Add 6 to 8 ice cubes
   

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4. Add your powdered nutrition, electrolyte, aminos, supplements, etc. quickly after the ice goes in
5. Once the powder and ice are in the water, get the lid on the bottle and shake vigorously.  The ice cubes act as an agitation aide in the bottle and help to get the powders mixed quickly without clumping.  Note, if you use a LOT of powdered supplements, you may need to do steps 3-5 multiple times with less powder in each step, than doing a lot of powder at once (which will almost guarantee problems again).
   

   This doesn't work very well...

6. Once the ice cubes and water have successfully dissolved the powder, you can top off the bottle with additional water

Enjoy!  This has worked flawlessly for me since I figured it out several months ago.  I find it much easier than shaking my arms off 1st thing in the morning when trying to get that last bit of product to dissolve.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you!

2011 Lazer Tardiz TT Helmet – Bike Gear – Bike.

Nice discount on a good TT helmet.

RoadID just gave me a coupon code to save $1 on any RoadID purchase in the next 30 days.

Feel free to use it and share it with your friends and social networks.

The coupon code is: ThanksRick5780106

If you don’t have a RoadID, I strongly encourage you to consider getting one, especially if you, like me, train solo frequently. Emergency medical personnel know to look for them and wearing one, with your personal information, may just save your life.

Dinner tonight, my 1st attempt at using Black Truffles was:

Grilled Jumbo Purple Asparagus and Grilled Honey Chili Tempeh on a bed of Quinoa w. caramelized onion and fennel, sprinkled with crumbled “Thunder Oak Gouda” and shaved black truffle with a side salad of lightly steamed fiddleheads in a balsamic dressing.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice.  It was pretty damn tasty 🙂

As many of you may know, a few years ago, before I started on my Iron Journey, I tipped the scales at over 250 lbs.  A strict medically supervised diet, followed by a lot of exercise and a changed relationship with food has brought me to where I am now (about 155lbs and 8% bodyfat).

When I was switching off the supervised diet and onto my own behavior management, I invested in a BodyBugg.  Bodybugg is a “personal telemetry” device that measures your body’s temperature, movement, galvanic skin response and determines your actual caloric expenditure with (according to their site) 95% accuracy.

Now, I’m all about data.  I’m a career geek and firmly believe that strong data helps make strong decisions.  Having data driven data about caloric burn just seemed a natural choice compared to the estimation data published everywhere.  Imagine my surprise when after a rock climbing session, where the tables say I should have been burning 800 calories/hr, I discovered that after 2 hours, I’d personally only burned 400 calories!!   Similarly surprising was that my caloric burn walking briskly was higher than that of cycling and because cycling was a fast mode of transport I’d get from A to B faster, but with less of an overall benefit as I’d expected.  I was hooked!  I was already weighing and tracking my nutrition now I could tailor my diet to my actual expenditure and completely dial in my caloric deficit to keep me loosing consistently without pushing my body into starvation mode! Win!

As I’ve started training more and generally being more fit, my relationship with the Bugg has evolved.  It’s rare now that I need to worry about eating too much.  Rather, these days, it’s much more the case that I’m concerned about making sure that I’m putting enough calories in my mouth to keep my energy levels high for the next workout and to provide my body the nutrition support it needs to repair and build.  The same disciplines are in use, but now, with an emphasis on making sure I get enough, rather than too many, calories.

So enough background.  Let’s talk about the BodyBuggSP:

I started with the bodybugg3 and wrist display and “upgraded” to the BodyBuggSP about a year ago, when it was released.

The BodyBugg3 and wrist display provided pretty much the same data as the SP, but the wrist display (like a watch) was cumbersome since I already wore a watch and it’s styling was really pretty utilitarian.  When the BodyBuggSP came out with it’s ability to display data on a paired blue-tooth enabled smart-phone (iphone or android) the “upgrade” path was clear for me and as soon as I could put my hands on an SP I took the plunge, sold my Bodybugg3 and bought the SP.

Well.. it’s been a rocky road for the BodyBuggSP.  In their desire to get to market, Apex pushed the SP out too soon and the software (especially on the Android platform) was, at best, in Beta.  It would crash, functions didn’t work well and most annoyingly, the “trip” functionality didn’t work until a recent software update about a week ago.  The basic functionality was there, steps, calories/day, goal setting, etc. but it was all pretty fragile.

I’m happy to say that it appears that the Beta stage is behind us now.  The BodyBuggSP and it’s android software seem to be working well together now.  Functioning as expected and not crashing regularly.  Makes me a happy camper 🙂

Generally I really like the bodybugg’s and love the data they provide.  A few things that I’d love to see improved to make the offering top-notch in my opinion:

• make a device that I can swim with so that I can get the same data in the pool – may not be possible given the design of the bugg, but it’d be sweet
• on the smart-phone software, show me the battery status of the bodybugg arm-band
• currently, in order to clear the bodybugg memory, set goals, etc. you must pay for, subscribe to, and use the Apex fitness bodybugg website.  For me, this is just a cash gouge. I don’t use the site for anything that couldn’t be done with a local piece of software.  Certainly the site has a lot of value for people who need the educational and motivational support of the site, but I don’t.  Having to pay for the site membership to clear the memory on my bodybugg once or twice a week is nearly insulting.

Thanks to all who visited, and even more to those who took the effort to enter the draw.

I had only 7 people enter the draw, with a total number of eligible entries of 22. In the order they were received:

• Michael – 5
• Thomas – 4
• Roben – 3
• Nathan – 2
• Corinna – 5
• Stephanie – 1
• Sloutre – 1
• Marcio – 1

Using random.org I generated a random number between 1 and 22 and got… 17. Which makes Corinna the winner!!!.

Congratulations Corinna. I’ll be in touch shortly to arrange the details.

Today I finally got a chance to take my Nineteen Swimsuits Frequency suit into open water for a real™ test.

I went in the morning as the weather forecast for the day was for dropping temps and deteriorating weather conditions as the day progressed. The sun was trying to shine and it wasn’t raining (yet), when I got to Lake Kelso. I quickly donned my suit, put my Timex Global Trainer in swim mode and put it under my mask strap and, anticipating very cold water, put a neoprene swim cap on my head to try to mitigate “ice cream headache”.

Well, the water was cold, but manageable. My hands, feet and face, were uncovered but not icy cold or even really uncomfortable. I’d guess the water to be in the low 50sº F (~ 10ºC). I managed to get in an hour before the clouds started to really move in and I started thinking it was prudent to get out of the water and to my clothes, before rain moved in. Got nearly 2.5km in and felt pretty good.

Now, to the suit review (part 3). (You can find the previous entries: here (part 1) and here (part 2)).

Putting on the suit today I found myself marvelling at how well it fits. Putting it on today over a tri-suit the suit just came on. Sure a little effort was required to get it sitting “just right”, but if that wasn’t required at all, I’d assume that the suit was improperly sized. Once on, the suit feels so good. It moves with you, doesn’t bind, stretches in all the right ways. On shore, I started to get warm pretty quick, so moving to the water was prudent and quickly done

In the water, the suit took on the thin layer of insulating water at a comfortable tempo (not so quickly that I felt unprotected, but not so slowly that I felt I’d be waiting forever during a shore-start for the suit to water-balance). Once swimming, I’m reminded of the benefits of the variable thickness neoprene that the suit is made with: hip rotation it aided by thicker neoprene on the legs, long catch, high elbows and full extension on the stroke are all aided by the more flexible thinner neoprene on the arms and the expanding wing material. More, the thicker neoprene on my legs, I think, helped keep my legs warm and uncramped in the cold water, even though I’m not much of a kicker.

Getting out of the water, the sun was pretty much gone and the wind was picking up, I was happy that doffing this suit is easily managed. I stripped it off, simulating a T1 strip-off in only a few seconds (maybe 10-15 seconds if I were timing). So even though the suit fits well, provides good thermal and swimming support, it still comes off easily to get you on with the rest of the race.

The Frequency suit is the top of the line from Nineteen and, in my opinion, it’s fit, finish, and features, put it squarely in that category. If you’re on the market for a suit, definitely seek out the Nineteen Frequency and make sure you consider it for your needs.

Right now, your odds of winning a FREE RoadID are better than 1 in 3. In fact, at this point, there is only 1 entry… not much of a draw with only 1 ballot!

Nobody wants a free RoadID? I don’t believe it! RoadIDs ROCK!!!

You still have time to enter. Follow the instructions on this post.

Very odd, they’re just gone 🙁

Fortunately google had them cached, so they’ll be back soon…

The other day, while spinning in my pain-cave, I was watching a rerun of the 2007 Kona footage. Today, Slowtwitch.com highlighted Lazer helmets and their new “Magic Buckle”, a magnetic buckle that you can close with one hand and is still secure when closed.

These two disparate events got me thinking. Macca sure could have used a magic buckle at this point in the race: