Taking Stock of the Month: March

Here's what came to pass in my third month of being vegan.

My energy levels remained high this month, and could not be curbed by a 14 day do-it-at-home riding camp at the start of the month. I spent a total of 24 hours in the saddle over the course of this month, which quadruples what I did in either January or February on the bike (eek). I ran for a total of 12 hours, which is the same as I did last month and an increase on January's 8.5 hours. Swimming was up significantly, for a total of 5 hours in the pool. Oh, and I snowshoed for 2.5 hours.

So, total training volume was 43.5 hours in March, compared to 24.5 hours in January and 23.5 hours in February. I hadn't realized I'd ramped it up quite this much until I looked at these numbers; it suddenly makes me feel tired and like I should stay in bed this morning. It also makes me ever so slightly nervous that I've done too much too soon. I am being diligent with having one total day off every tenth day or so, and there is always one day in the week where I rest my legs completely. I have let my ab work and flailing-on-the-carpet weight bearing exercises slip; I will try to reimplement them this month (doesn't that sound convincing).

Some people have been asking me if I'm taking supplements, and the short answer is that I'm not. Since I am interested in seeing whether our bodies can sustain high volumes of training on a plant-based diet, I don't want to muddy the waters with taking supplements (the whole argument for supplements is that our diets lack essential micronutrients and we need to replaced them with synthesized versions). I have, in fact, cut out one supplement that I've been taking for years (all this in the same of scientific discovery): iron.

I have suffered from non-anemic iron deficiency for years (like 20% of the female population, apparently). It was first discovered by a clever running group coach in Vancouver, and blood tests confirmed that my haem was low, and my serum ferritin (a measure of stored iron) was particularly low (10 μg/L, for those who know about these things). I have been taking a variety of oral supplements and eating lean red meat 3 times a week every since....until this year. I cut out my liquid iron supplements on January 1st, and after three months of training without animal flesh, am ready to be retested. It just so happened that I had a day lay-over in England on the way back from Cyprus last week, and I persuaded my brother's family doctor to do a blood test while there (for those who don't know, I hold British citizenship and therefore have a claim to free healthcare). I am eagerly awaiting the results which should come through any day now; stay tuned on that front.

To complete my summary of the month: my weight remains exactly the same, which means it's time to get serious about leaning down for race season. I am starting out April with a two week stint of no sugar and no flour (this includes two of my favourite foods - bread and red wine) and also no eating after 7pm at night (which is when I most like to eat the bread and drink the red wine). This is a sure-fire way for me to lean down, it's worked every time in the past.

And finally, here's recipe of the month. I haven't been quite as experimental in the kitchen as I was in January and February - must be all that time on the bike - but I did discover one particular recipe that I have delighted in since it utilizes the major by-product of my almond milk production (I hate waste in the kitchen). It's a recipe for almond crunch granola:

Almond Crunch Granola

* 3 cups rolled oats
* 2 cups almond 'pulp'
* 1 cup wheat germ
* 1 cup oat bran
* 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 cup raisins or dried cranberries

This is the base of the recipe, and my volumes are approximate. I've been making my own granola for years, so I tend to throw in a handful of this or that and eyeball the final consistency (which is very annoying to those who want to recreate what I did). Using damp almond pulp has produced the best granola I've ever made becasue the water int the pulp helps it to form 'clusters'. You can add in other nuts (walnuts or pecans are good) or dried fruits (apples, pears, mangos or coconuts) as you like. 1/2 cup of maple syrup or honey will work to sweeten it if you don't have stevia, but I prefer to keep my cereals low-sugar.

Mix everything together in a bowl with your hands, except any dried fruit. Spread ona baking sheet and bake at a low temperature for 30 minutes until the mixture just starts to turn golden brown, then add the fruit and bake for another 15 minutes (if you add the fruit too early, it goes a little burnt). To avoid almond overkill, serve with soy or rice milk.

Divine retribution for complaining

I've been hit with divine retribution for my complaining over things not being open when I want them to be. I went to the pool for my lunchtime swim after a late morning run today, and found it closed. While standing in front of the large glass doors, blinking in disbelief, a few workman came out and confirmed that 'oui, c'est ferme' (yes, it's closed).

Me (an octave higher than my normal voice): Ferme! Jusqu'a quand? (Closed! Till when?)

Workman 1: Jusqu'en Octobre (Till October)

Me (an octave higher still): Octobre!! Mais pourquoi? (October! But why?)

Workman 2: Nous faisons beaucoup de travaille a l'interior (We are doing a lot of work on the interior)

Workman 1 to Workman 2: C'est midi, allons-y pour le dejeuner (It's lunchtime, let's go have lunch.)

I thought about running after them to ask if they might have it finished sooner if they didn't take two hour lunches every day, but thought better of it. I also restrained myself from beating on the doors with my swim paddles, throwing my water bottle through one of the large glass windows, and writing an angry letter to management asking them why they sold me a swim pass two weeks ago if they were planning on closing for six months. I've since come home and risen above it all in a Zenlike manner through the meditative act of chopping up vegetables and then beating the life out of some unsuspecting nuts for a roasted fennel and walnut soup (a definite candidate for recipe of the month). I shall resume my swimming schedule by making the very inconvenient trip into Lausanne tomorrow to jostle with the city folks for lane space. Looking forward to that, but am not going to complain...

Turning Thirty in Paris

Paris was fabulous in all the ways that it should be this weekend. Spring was just beginning to show it's face: the parks were sporting pockets of new-green against the background of browns and perma-greens, the blossoms were creeping out of their heavy buds along the boulevards and the sky gave alternating gifts of sun and showers that sent everyone back and forth from the cafe interiors to the sidewalk patios at ten minute intervals.

We did all the things that one shouldn't do in Paris - we bypassed classic French cuisine to eat Indian in the Latin Quarter (much better for the vegan), drank beer instead of wine with dinner (positively barbaric behavior, but it went better with the Indian food), stopped at a Tunisian bakery for dessert on the way home (who needs chocolate birthday gateau when you can have halva?), breakfasted on strawberries and champagne before running 10K in the Bois de Boulogne‎ (I don't recommend this), bought art in a touristy area, and tried to cover more than seven arrondisements on foot in a single day and ended up with loudly complaining feet and a general dizziness from over stimulation of the senses. All in all, truly the perfect backdrop for my crossing from one decade to the next.

It wasn't my first time in Paris and it won't be my last; I've come home with a head full of schemes to facilitate a relocation. Nothing permanent, just a brief stint; something long enough to later give me the right to start a sentence with 'quand j'habitais à Paris...' (when I lived in Paris...)'

Lunchtime thoughts from the pool

I didn't take my bike to Cyprus, and there wasn't a suitable training pool to be found, so last week was essentially a running camp. I ran on asphalt, I ran on trail and I even did some barefoot beach laps. It's a good thing that one of the three disciples of triathlon is a portable sport, or I'd be having some serious conversations with myself about having to choose training over travel whims right about now.

Now that I'm back (and was very pleased to find that the snow melted in my absence), I have shifted my focus to riding and swimming for the week. I did a 1.5 hour tempo ride along the lakefront this morning, and then swam 3km. To my delight, I've discovered that if I go to the local pool at lunchtime, it's deserted. I've mentioned before that the Swiss are very particular about the lunch hour (businesses close, service men will not make calls and - my personal favourite - parking meters actually stop counting). While the swimming pool stays open, there is a mass exodus at precisely 11.50am, which means that if I time my workouts right, I get a lane to myself to splash around in. It also means that I have my choice of hair-drying appliances in the changing room: being small in stature, I like to use the little peoples' wall-mounted hair dryer, but do not enjoy competing with a gaggle of schoolgirls to do so as has been the case with my pre-lunch swims.

Now I'm not going to make this another Swiss-rant blog entry, but I did turn one thing over in my mind as I swam back and forth, back and forth (what do serious swimmers think about when they swim for 2-3 hours every day? My mind starts to get a little wild and crazy with the monotony of staring at the bottom of the pool). Here's that thought: in Cyprus, I noticed that lunchtime closing was in effect, but like other Mediterranean countries, shops then stay open into the early evening. In Switzerland, they close at 12.30pm (although certain stores will close at 12.15pm, which has led to many a silent rage in front of the locked doors when I have shown up at 12.20pm) and then reopen at 1.30pm or 2pm, and then promptly close at 4 or 5pm. Now, the reasoning behind lunchtime closing in warmer climates makes sense to me: the middle of the day is horribly hot and therefore unproductive. It's a time to meet with friends or go home to family to be loud and boisterous over a long lunch and then have a siesta before going back for the second half of the shift at cooler temperatures. But here in cheeseland, I can't figure out what the need is for a one-and-a-half to two-hour break when it's not a sweltering hot climate, and then opening hours are not lengthened into the evening to compensate. The loss of business that this represents in the retail sector must have a staggering impact on the economy. And I'm just not sure what the time off is being used for; this is certainty not a culture of long, loud lunches followed by Spanish-style siestas. And no errands can be run when everything else is closed, so I can only imagine that the Swiss go home to their a-frame houses and practice looking serious. In any event, I'm pleased that I've found a way to benefit from the otherwise inconvenient midday shut-down, and lunchtime just became my new swim-time.

This coming weekend brings another trip: I have successfully corralled Michael into coming to Paris for my birthday. We're certainly not lugging our bikes there and I don't plan to stare at the bottom of a pool when there are shop windows on the Champs-Élysées to stare into, so we've agreed to just take our runners. It really is a good thing that running is a portable sport.

Where I've Been

It's been a solid ten days since I last posted, and I feel a little out of practice. My reasons for lack of posting have been far from having nothing to write about, but rather lack of internet access from where I've been: I managed to justify another escape from the snows and preoccupations with fondue in Swtizerland by persuading my brother to join me on a week-long sojourn on the beaches of Cyprus.

For those who think that my life since moving to Europe has become one big Club Med holiday, I'll remind you that everything in Europe is within stone-throw distance. Many of my escapades over recent months have been accomplished on long weekends. But this was a real vacation - a full week of no laptop, no dodgy dial-up connections in hotel rooms after dark, no searching for wifi cafes in the pre-dawn light, and no blogging. I did, in fact, write at least ten blog postings in my head (and they were really good, too) but I didn't have the foresight to carry something with me to scribble on. Now that I'm home, those ten cranial postings seem to be either permanently lost, or are only subject to recall in varying fragments; most frustrating. So I am resorting to a picture blog to recount what the week held.

To start with, there was lots of lounging by this:


And when we were bored with that, lying on this:


Every morning, running through this:


Or along clifftop trails with viewpoints like this:


And, not but certainly not least, eating this:


(Ignore the crustaceans off to the left, those belonged to my brother)

So I suppose I can understand why my life might look a little like Club Med to an innocent bystander. If it helps, I am now putting in manic marathon stretches in front of my laptop, freaking out over inbox overload and looming-large deadlines.

But for those who want to escape all that for a week in a food lovers/wine lovers/beach lovers/trail runners paradise, I highly recommend Cyprus. We rented a 3-bedroom 3-bathroom villa by the beach for 370E for a week, and promptly spent the perceived savings on massive amounts of local food and wine. Vegan food options were excellent, in a Mediterranean sense (in other words, not a lot of variety beyond nuts, salads and stuffed or grilled vegetables in olive oil - all very good). I didn't take my bike, but if I had, it would have been a mountain bike; the roads were often narrow and a little on-again off-again with the paving. The trail running is out of this world: miles of dirt tracks through olive, almond and orange groves, rocky trails climbing up through steeply terraced vineyards, and moonscaped clifftop terrain descending down to long stretches of palm-shaded paths hugging white sandy beaches.

Now, back to that inbox...

Wrapping up the Riding Program

Today, I did the last ride of my two-week 'jump-start' program. I fiddled with the schedule somewhat due to a few days of snowfall and one day of whimsical excessive distance, which I chalked up as two days in one. I'm finishing the program a day early since a snowboarding trip has cropped up in my schedule for tomorrow.

In total, I put in 21 hours in the saddle over the last 12 days. I feel thoroughly jump-started; even my backside toughened up after the first few days of resistance. I kept to my Ironman schedule for running, with a few minor modifications to ensure I had two total rest days for my legs, but swim workouts were cut a little short by bad time management on my part (believe it or not, I do have a fulltime job - although if I didn't work from home at North American working hours, I don't think I would have been able to pull off a riding schedule like this with the limited daylight at this time of year). Only in the last two days, when the pace of the rides increased and included low-gear attacks on hills, did my legs begin to show some tiredness, which seemed like a very good excuse to eat vegan dessert on these days (and I don't need much encouraging).

My final ride of the program was a 70km high cadence, moderate pace venture that took me over to France this morning. I crossed the border at St Gingolph, a town on the south side of Lake Geneva that, from our balcony in Chexbres, looks like a cluster of twinkling lights sandwiched between the mountains and the lake. Up close, St Gingolph is a schizoid little town with a border crossing right in the middle of the high street. One half of the town is unmistakably Swiss, and the other half unmistakably French. After passing through the border from east to west, the road suddenly becomes a minefield of potholes and everyone seems to be carrying a baguette under one arm. On Swiss national day last year, we watched from our balcony as fireworks went up from the east side of the town, while the west side sat in silent nonchalance.

The crossing itself always seemed like a regular party zone when I rode through it on various occasions last summer. Manned by a permanent stock of overpaid and underworked border guards whose job description was to smoke cigarettes and sun themselves while waving cars carrying goodness-knows-what through, I eventually stopped carrying my passport when I realised that they did nothing more than shout allez! allez! and sometimes clapped when I rode through. Today the crossing was much more dull; apparently the winter months only require one man to sit and smoke on either side.

For the locals with bikes: while the road on the far side of the lake is heavy with traffic in the summer months from tourists heading to Evian, mistakenly thinking it's a town worth visiting (for those who haven't been - it's not; this washed up little town boasts nothing but some unremarkable mineral water fountains near the Evian factory; the rest of the town is in a state of disrepair and has all the charm of a parking lot), the road is much less congested and much more enjoyable to ride in the winter months.

I arrived home in exactly 3 hours, and after eating a very large peanut butter and banana sandwich, dug out some pictures that Michael and I took on a ride to St Gingolph last summer. This was the first time we'd been to the other side of the lake, and we sat for a while and stared at the view back over to our side of the lake, realizing we had just entered a parallel universe where people on the other side of the lake must be staring back at us, as we stare at them, every day.

You can just about make out the terraced vineyards and Chexbres in the distance behind me in the first shot. Notice the baguette in Michael's rear pocket in the second shot; we were hoping to do a better job of fitting in with the French than we had with the Swiss at that point.

Breaking the Rules of Early Season Training

I successfully rolled with the punches yesterday morning. In a virtual white out, and with plenty of chapstick, hotshots in my gloves and Dixie Chicks on my mp3 (don't judge me), I got a 1.5 hour run in through the vineyards, followed by some soggy ab work on the living room floor (when I stood up, I had created a sort of inverted snow-angel on the carpet).

In an effort to compensate for my lack of gym membership, I've taken to doing weight-bearing and abdominal exercises on the living room floor after a run. I have no appetite for doing exercises at home; I find it hard to shake the association that a living room is for living in and the gym is for sweating in. Flailing around on the living room carpet in strange contortions just doesn't feel right. Plus, I am easily distracted by things like the dust bunnies under the TV stand, or a renegade peanut under the couch, which have resulted in augmented or abandoned sets. Maybe there is also something to be said for the knowledge that other people are watching; whatever it is, I somehow put more heart into weight workouts in the gym.

That was yesterday. We woke to sunny skies this morning, which undid all of Mother Nature's hard snowstorm work yesterday in short order (I have to say that the changeable weather of late leaves me unsure of what sort of mood to be in). With the roads cleared by 1pm, I managed to cajole Michael into turning our 4 hour ride into a 5.5 hour ride (which was actually very accommodating of him, given that he announced his butt was "no longer having a good time" somewhere around the 3.5 hour mark). I stretched a Cliff bar, banana and a slice of walnut pie found at a bakery pit stop (it was made with margarin, not beurre, and egg-free; a truly exciting find!) to cover my calorie intake. We estimated that we clocked somewhere between 110 and 120 km's in total.

I'm breaking all the rules of early season training, I know, but I really have to channel my energy into something. The absence of muscle tiredness is getting eerie, and a large part of me is just plain curious to find out what it will take to get some of the familiar leg tiredness of increased training volume. But I know I have to be careful and not overload my soft tissues with too much too soon. Tomorrow, I'll be good and I'll just swim, and maybe pound the milk out of some almonds...

Preparing to Roll

There is more white stuff falling from the sky today. This wasn't supposed to happen; it was supposed to be spring. I normally feel that snow is very pretty, but right now, I am finding it untimely.

The kick start riding program is going very well. It's an off day from both riding and running for me, so I swam 2.5km this morning and am putting my feet up for the rest of the day, with laptop in lap. The absence of tiredness or muscle lethargy is almost spooky; but longer and harder workouts will be the real test. The last 3 days have totaled 6 hours in the saddle and a short 20-30 minute run transition after every ride. Tomorrow is a 2 hour ride, 2 hour run, but unless I can make mother nature bend to my will, I'm not sure that the riding part will be safe.

If racing ultramarathons has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that you sometimes need to roll with the punches. The unexpected happens, and the happiest people I have met in life are the people who know how and when to roll. I'd like to think I'm one of those people, and am fully aware that I'm often not. I'm going to try and be that person tomorrow if I wake up to this weather.

I'm looking out the window, down to where the lake used to be, and I'm reminding myself that under different circumstances, I find snow pretty.

The Difference a Day Makes

March has rolled in with suddenly warmer temperatures, turning the landscape from white to brown overnight. This is disagreeing with me on an aesthetic level, but is otherwise agreeing with me, especially for training.

Since there's no imminent danger of freezing to my saddle, I thought it would be 'fun' to kick the month off with a self-styled riding bootcamp. I've been calling riding my weakest disciple for a while now, so it's time to do something about that. So I borrowed a program from one of Micheal's cycling magazines (the article says that Lance does something similar to kick off his season; if it's good enough for Lance, it's good enough for me) et voila - here's my riding schedule for the next two weeks (and I need to somehow fit swimming and running into this in a way that makes sense):

Day 1 1 hr easy
Day 2 2 hrs easy
Day 3 3 hrs easy
Day 4 OFF

Day 5 2 hrs moderate
Day 6 3 hrs moderate
Day 7 4 hrs moderate
Day 8 OFF

Day 9 2 hrs intervals
Day 10 2 hrs intervals
Day 11 OFF

Day 12 2 hrs moderate
Day 13 3 hrs moderate
Day 14 4 hrs moderate

I just finished the second day, and my bottom hurts. It otherwise feels great.