Faves & Raves

Favorite Pre-Workout Breakfast: I thought I had posted this one up before, but couldn't find it looking through my archives so here it is (maybe again, maybe not!) Since we have our own chickens, we have tons of lovely eggs all the time. I like eating a high-protein breakfast, since it keeps me from the carb-crash later in the morning, but I get tired of just eggs. I love oatmeal, but it doesn't seem to stick with me very long, within an hour or so I'm hungry or just feeling low in the energy department. So this is my solution:

Robin's Breakfast Oatmeal Custard:

1 Cup Organic Steel Cut oats
2 Eggs
3 Tbs Milk
Cinnamon and Nutmeg to Taste

Cook up the steel-cut oats according to directions. While the oats are cooking, which only takes a few minutes, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon & nutmeg. Pour the cooked oats into the egg mixture in a microwaveable bowl (make sure you use a big enough bowl as this mixture will puff up as it cooks). Stir in any (or all) of the following:

Dried cranberries
Raisins
Chopped Dates
Dried unsweetened coconut
Walnuts or Pecans

Bake in the microwave for 4:30 (cooking times will vary, but it will get solid looking all the way through). Serve with milk.

Rave: A friend of mine who was training for the Eugene Marathon got hit by a car in a crosswalk two weeks ago. That's bad enough for any ordinary human, but for an avid runner to have a broken leg or two is doubly agonizing. As athletes, we know how dangerous it is to run anywhere near large two-ton hunks of moving metal, but we don't often have a choice. Remember to wear reflective gear and blinkies in the dusk, dawn, and nighttime hours. I believe my Illuminite jacket and headband saved my friend one night - we were on bikes and the car that was going to smash into her only stopped once its headlights hit my jacket - the blinkies on the front and back of her bike were not pointed in the driver's direction at the time.

Fave Music on my iPod Right Now: Aman Iman: Water is Life, by Tinariwen. I'm not always a fan of world-beat music, but this band definitely catches the ear and holds on to it. Formed in 1982 in Moammar al-Qadhafi's camps of Tuareg rebels, these musicians take musical roots from their own traditions, and combine it with bluesy guitars for a totally unique sound. The lyrics are mostly in French and Tamashek, but the beats are unescapably good, and the theme of their music is independence for their people.

Fave Book On My Nightstand: The Warrior's Path: Wisdom from Contemporary Martial Arts Masters Despite the cumbersome title, this is a gem of a book with photos and words of fifteen martial arts masters who have dedicated a lifetime to their practice. Many of them were born in Japan in the early part of the 1900s. All of them have decades of wisdom that anyone striving to better themselves in any practice can appreciate.


Favorite Quote: From the above book: "You can easily recognize whether the archer hit the target or not. But this is not what we should be judging for success. Did the archer tackle kyudo with an empty mind, one that will create a healthy body and healthy mind? That is the Way that kyudo is seeking - whether the archer has contributed to a healthy society. Of course there are targets to shoot, to aim for, but hitting the target is not the final goal. In kyudo we say "Shoot at your heart" -- shoot at your conscious thoughts. You yourself must recognize whether you exerted the utmost effort toward the target. How many arrows were shot is not important -- the contents of those arrows is what counts." -- Nobuyuki Kamogawa.

I am absorbing much from this book that is relevant to my own martial arts training, but also to triathlon and other sports, and to my endeavors as a teacher and coach to others.

First Faves & Raves of the New Year

Fave Food: Dates, stuffed with cream cheese and pecans. I like to make these for parties, but they're great after-workout snacks as well! We have a local organic creamery that makes awesome cream cheese, cultured with acidophilus and all that good stuff. Yummy!

Fave Music To Work Out To: ChangesOne by David Bowie. One of the first pieces of vinyl I ever bought, I was in our little local corner market the other day and the gal that works there was playing it. So I had to find it on CD. You just can't resist moving to tracks like Fame, Rebel Rebel, Sufragette City, Jean Genie, and of course Ziggy Stardust!

Fave Activity: Hiking with hubby and the kids, any day it's not raining lately! We took a New Year's Eve hike up a local butte in a lovely break of good weather and it was just gorgeous up there. Quite unfortunately, I managed to get poison oak! If you've read my blog for awhile, you know this happens to me all the time, but rarely in the middle of the winter. Argh.

Fave Workout Tip: That Holy Grail swimming move. Still working on it, I've been using the big rubber bandy things at home to simulate the movement of the catch and build up some muscle power. I have to say I think it's working. I swam our traditional New Year's morning workout (108 x 50 yards on the :45 interval) without much trouble, despite not putting in much pool yardage at all in December. I think that's largely due to more power in my stroke.

Rave: By the time I get to vote in the primary elections, out here in Orygun, we'll be winnowed down to just a few candidates. I understand why the system is the way it is, but I don't have to like it.

Fave Quote to start off the New Year: “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” -- Benjamin Franklin

Faves and Raves

Favorite Food to Fuel a Workout: My "Not Empty" Pancakes
















After a recent triathlon when they were serving a pancake breakfast, my son commented that the pancakes "tasted empty". They were traditional white flour and buttermilk variety pancakes, but he's used to mine. I usually put almond or hazelnut meal, flax seed meal, hemp seeds, and other high-protein stuff in mine, so they're really dense and nutty. They're great for fueling a morning workout, and don't leave me feeling empty and carbed out like fluffier fare. Here's the recipe.



Music to Run To: When Love Comes To Town - Live version by U2 and BB King. I took my hubby to see BB King last year for his birthday and even though the guy can't stand up on stage anymore he still just rocks and is a total entertainer. I was lucky to be standing right next to the stage fifteen years ago at Bumbershoot and see him live, not too long after he cut this song with U2 and he performed it at that concert. Awesome musician.

Favorite Workout:















We camped at Waldo Lake this week, which is one of the clearest lakes in the world. At over 6,000' elevation though it's also very very cold. Usually much too cold to swim in. This year for some reason however, it was warm enough to go in in a bathing suit! I had an absolutely amazing, mind-blowing swim over water so clear it was like floating on glass. Visibility there was recently measured at 150 feet. You get vertigo swimming and looking down, but once you get used to it, it is incredible. That's something you don't get to experience every day.

Least Favorite Workout:
My hubby has been gone a lot this summer for work, so I've had to schedule babysitters for some of my longer workouts, and it's not always easy to find them at the times I would like (like early in the morning on hot days, for one thing!). So I got to do a three hour ride on the hottest day of August, starting at 2:00 in the afternoon! Ugh, double-ugh, and triple-ugh... Ninety-five in the shade and I did 56 miles of heat and hills. Not to mention, I drove to a starting point of a longer ride so I could get out a way from the city for awhile, and I dropped one of my socks on the way to the car. So I had to do the whole ride with one sock, and one totally sweaty foot. I changed the sock over to the other foot at the halfway point to avoid blisters. I'll ride without socks in a sprint, but I usually don't go half-Iron distance without them!
But, even after all that, I averaged 18.2!!! And no nutrition or hydration problems. So that left me feeling pretty happy about my biking at least in the upcoming HIM which should be signifigantly cooler.

Quote for the Week "I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things." -Gandhi

I think this can apply to training as well as life in general. I've tried and discarded many training, race, and nutrition options over the years, and what works at one stage or for one distance may not work for another. Always good to be flexible.

It's About Time: Faves and Raves

Been meaning to post these for awhile, but summer ramps up and things get busy. Here's a few for now...

















Favorite Food for Fueling a Workout: "Special Eggs" - that's what my kids call this dish. Believe it or not, the kids will choose this over a PB&J any day! I think the Trader Joe's sample lady for introducing us to this one. Whip up some eggs and milk in a bowl and add a spoon or two of sun-dried tomato pesto and throw it into a cast-iron skillet. When the eggs are done, add fresh feta (I like sheep's milk feta best, the cow's milk stuff tastes like it went through the washer with my cool-max shirts after a hard run. gag.) Top with chives. For us, this recipe is almost a 100-mile meal.














We've been getting raw goat's milk from a local couple who keep exceptionally good dairy goats, and we have our own chickens for eggs. The chives are growing in our garden, and the feta comes from the farmer's market. Only the pesto came from the store, and after this year's tomato crop we'll be able to make that at home too, I hope.

Least Favorite Food: Anything that takes time to cook. I hate cooking in the summer. Our conversations go like this: "What do you want for dinner?" "I dunno. I don't feel like cooking." "Me neither. Let's snack." "okay"

Favorite Music to Run To: Black Horse & the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall. It's definitely got the beat and the tune for an iPod perennial fave, and the rhythm for good running company.

Quote of the Week: I saw this little gem from Walt Whitman and it just stuck in my head:

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Isn't that exactly what it feels like when you have one of those days when your body feels at one with the universe - your feet feel like they're flying, not pounding, and everything just flows?? A great poem. On other days, my very flesh feels like something written by a bad grammar school student, but that's another issue...

Workout of the Week: Running: 3 x 1 Mile Repeats with 1/4 recovery jog in between. This one comes from a thread on running at the Trifuel forums. I tried to do them at my target race pace, with each one just a little faster than the last one. I am happy to say that all three came in under 8 minutes per mile for the first time ever!! That's a big deal for me.

Faves and Raves

I guess I can't call these "weekly faves and raves" because I always forget to post them, so it's more like "whenever I feel like it and get around to it faves and raves." In no particular order, here's a few:

Favorite Activity of the Week: This one's a no brainer: Mother's Day. And not just because the kids brought me breakfast in bed (cooked by the ever-fabulous hubby), flowers, chocolate, my Sudoku book, stuffed animals to snuggle, etc. but because it's always a reminder of how grateful I am for my own mother (who met us in Disneyland and is now off on a solo adventure around the country) but also how grateful I am to be a mom to my two awesome kids. The entire day on Sunday was just so perfect. I got the royal treatment, got to go on my long run in the sunshine (which felt just great after a spurt of cold weather), got surprised by my dad and step-mom who came to visit in the afternoon, got to take the tandem bikes down to the park by the river with the kids, and went out for some late Thai food on the way home. Nothing could've been better.

Kid Quote of the Week: This one's from my son, who was trying to convince my hubby to violate the "no food upstairs" rule in order to bring me breakfast in bed. I overheard this from down below: "Dad, it'c called Breakfast in Bed. The operative words here are In Bed, otherwise it's just called Breakfast."

Quote of the Week: "Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results." - Denis Waitley. This one is particularly appropriate for me this week. I've been waffling off and on about trying to qualify for Nationals this year, since they're in Oregon for once (which I didn't know last summer, or I would've done a race then to qualify.) The last qualifying race that I can get to is this coming weekend, and I originally registered for the sprint (I don't usually race this early at all in the season, wimp that I am!), but then found out that only the Olympic was an official qualifier. To complicate matters, I've been sick with the remainders of a chest cold. Could I do the Olympic? Should I? Today my hubby looked at me and said "You know, you could just find a nice race later in the summer and qualify for next year and just stop worrying about it right now. What a wise guy (and I mean that in a good way). So yes, I'm going to do the sprint tri this weekend. No, I'm not worried about qualifying, if I do that would be icing, but I'm going to plan my actions and not worry about the results, and most of all enjoy it!

Favorite food: Always a hard one to decide, but I do try to keep this relevant to training for triathlons, so the chocolate souffle is pretty much out. I'd say now that we're reliably into the warm weather, it's smoothie time. Today's offering includes blackberries we picked last summer and froze, eggs from our very own lady chickens, and goat's milk from a nearby farmer (don't wrinkle your nose, when you get fresh goat's milk from someone who knows how to keep dairy goats, it's very good stuff). A dash of vanilla and it's perfect on a warm spring afternoon before or after a ride.

Workout of the Week: Over-under intervals on the bike. 1 minute max effort, 2 minutes just under the anaerobic threshold, repeat 10x. I actually did 5, took a break, then did 5 more. Wonder how the legs will feel tomorrow!

Music to Run By: I have none for this week. I loaded up my iPod with a Learning Italian CD and buon giorno'd my way down the trail. We are now definitely planning on a multi-week family tandem biking excursion in Italy for '08, and as I'm the family linguist I figured on getting a jump on Italian. So far I've managed to amaze the kids with how much I can pick up just from knowing French and some Spanish (as well as a smattering of Latin and a musical background). I also made an interesting discovery about myself. I'm such a completely visual (and completely non-auditory) learner that I can repeat out loud any word or phrase on the Italian CD that I can visualize in my head. If I can't visualize it, I can't say it. I remember this from learning French in college. We would watch movies in French and my comprehension dropped from 95% to about 10% if a character turned their back to the screen. I was actually lip-reading in French, not hearing it. Isn't that weird? It may explain why I can never remember anyone's name... unless I write it down or see it on a nametag.

Addendum to Faves

Favorite Kid Quotes:
From Miss A. (7): Mom, can you hand me my Lip Chap?
Me: What's Lip Chap?
Her: Well, there's Lip Gloss, Lipstick, and Lip Chap! (in tones of "everyone knows that" LOL)

I figured out it was the chapstick she wanted...

And from Mr. M. (10), overheard when he was upstairs playing with Miss. A.:

"Cry havoc and let loose the squids of war!"
(I have no idea what he was referring to but it cracked me up)


Favorite Weeknight Activity:
We invited several couples over and watched the British comedy Coupling. If you're not familiar with it, it's like Friends meets Sex & the City meets Seinfield and then some. Pretty damned explicit (with episodes like Size Matters and Lesbian Spank Inferno) and blisteringly funny like split-your-sides, laugh-until-ya-puke kind of funny.


Favorite Weekend Warriorism:
Watching (from the comfort of a computer monitor) BlueBirdBiker, and several other people from the Trifuel forums complete Ironman Arizona. It was a tough and windy day on the course and as always I am inspired by what people face and overcome in this difficult endeavor.

Weekly Faves n Raves

Favorite Food This Week: Leftover Easter crepes with yogurt and blueberries. I always make crepes for Easter and I'm in the habit of putting almond meal and flax seed meal in the crepe batter so they're full of protein and kind of nutty tasting. For Easter we had them with strawberries and whipped cream, of course! But they make a great lunch with fruit and yogurt on other days.

Favorite Workout This Week: That one's easy, the time trial on Tuesday, if for no other reason than it's the only workout I haven't done in the rain or cold. But today is sunny and I'm looking forward to a much warmer long run this afternoon.

Favorite Song to Run To: Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race. Thankfully someone I know posted the lyrics online because it's dang hard to figure out what he's saying. Then again, I'm the queen of misheard lyrics, and by the way if you are too, check out The Archive of Misheard Lyrics for some good laughs.

Rave for the Week: Someone keeps stealing my favorite pull buoys from the pool. We're down to one of them left now. Who on earth has a membership at a private club and then can't go buy themselves a pull buoy?? Did they actually "accidentally" just carry one home with them? They're a bit bulky for that. All the other ones are slick, which might work fine for the furry-legged men, but for those of us with smooth thighs, they just slip around annoyingly. I know it's a petty rant, but that's mine for the week.

Saddest Thing That's Happened This Week: Kurt Vonnegut's leaving this earth. At one time, I read every book he wrote over the course of a year or two. Might be time to go and re-read some. It would be impossible to find a favorite quote because there are so many, and I can't seem to dig up (even on Google) the quote he had about swimming (half of it was about writing: "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." but the other half was about swimming and I can't find it anywhere!) If anyone has this quote and can help me out, I'd be ever so grateful.

But this is one of my faves that seems appropriate to this blog and will stand as my weekly favorite quote: "I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

RIP Kurt Vonnegut, who once said about death:

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"