The 2013 Atomic Man duathlon race report

I competed in the Atomic Man Duathlon this morning to make up for being a no show last week at the Spring Fling triathlon. This was my 84th multisport race, and my 20th duathlon.

The Atomic Man duathlon is my favorite race of all time! This was the 8th time I competed in this race, and this year it was a qualifier for the duathlon national championships. Last year there was a couple pro's and an Olympic duathlete who showed for this race. The RD's go all out to make sure everyone has a fantastic time. They had a ton of stuff in the race packet bags from performance t-shirts, chap stick, gels, bars, water bottles, coupons, honey, wet suit bags, & those re-usable shopping bags, and pro photographers throughout the course! They have the most comfortable timing chip straps I've ever seen at a race! They also had more swag than I've ever seen in a non-Iron distance race! Ruby helmets, Ruby sunglasses, gift certificates to tri sports, gift certificates to a local bike shop. they had free coffee (5 gallons worth), gluten free sandwiches, organic meat, organic veggies, organic bread, fruit, many other things.

The race is a run/ bike/ run format. The first run I completed having kept an 8:58 minutes per mile average. The bike is a very difficult and MOUNTAINOUS course, but I still kept a 15.5 mph average, which suprised me since I'm weighing in over 230 right now. The 2nd run I kept a 9:15 minute per mile average. I finished the race 1st place Clydesdale, 18th place overall.

RX all week, and updating my goals

This week was the 1st week in 14 weeks of training at a CrossFit gym that I've been able to do the RX on every workout. Yesterday I was even able to do all the toes to bars, I never had to scale down to knees to elbows, which up until yesterday I had to do after 5 reps of toes to bars. Next step is being able to do a hand stand push up......

Just to keep my goal list updated, I'll post my 3 biggest goals here.
1) I want to get to 198 pounds at %10 body fat.

2) When I was a kid my natural father's max bench press PR was 265. I remember being so impressed. I thought he was amazing! My new and exciting goal is to beat his bench press PR. When I'm ready to beat it I'm going to take my babies to the gym to watch me just like my Dad did with me.

3) be able to do a handstand push up.

P.S. Mona, thank you for the encouragement. I'm very grateful.

Jeremy, benchmark at RX

A few days ago I stopped dieting and started eating enough to maintain my weight. Apparently more calories was EXACTLY what my body was needing. Today before CrossFit started I did some push ups and pull ups. I do this daily since those are 2 of the  things I'm weakest at. I was able to crank out a lot more pull ups and push ups than I've ever been able to do, a lot more! Once class started we did the workout called "Jeremy" which is reps of 21-15- then 9 of overhead squats and burpees. Jeremy is a  a CrossFit benchmark workout, and up until today I had never been able to do the RX (recommended weight)of a benchmark workout. Today I did the RX for the 1st time! I was very stoked! I was really close to busting out in a happy white boy dance!

The extremist

I am by nature an extremist. OCD to the max. In many ways that benefits me, in many it doesn't. When it comes to dieting it doesn't. I end up pushing myself to hard to lose weight. From years of triathlon training and dieting I've figured out that my body responds best to losing no more than one and a half pounds a week. If I try to lose more than that I end up overly hungry and I fall off the wagon. I've also learned that Every 4-6 weeks I need to increase my calories to a maintenance level for a week or two. If I diet for longer than 4-6 weeks I end up getting overly hungry and/or burned out with dieting and I fall off the wagon. I've been dieting constantly since January, which was too long. Last week I fell off the wagon, and I've gained a few pounds back, I'm currently 235. Thankfully I realized what I was doing wrong. For the next 2 weeks I'll be eating more calories to let my body realize it's not starving, that there isn't a world wide food shortage, and that in a couple weeks it'll be OK to drop some more weight.

Most boring blog in the world?

Back when I started this blog I was new to multisport. Back then my blog was exciting for me to write about because I'd always had pathetic endurance and speed. When I played football in high school I finished the runs in practice in last place. Guys who outweighed me by 50+ pounds could outrun me. In the army I had to run in the slowest group. If I was going to build enough speed and endurance to finish a triathlon or duathlon iť was going to be a HUGE transformation. I became obsessed. I trained an average of twenty-two hours a week. And iť showed. Back then I had so much I could blog about everyday. New places I trained. New workouts. What types of training seemed to work, what diets helped, equipment, which races I wanted to try, etc.

The last couple years triathlons and duathlons has started to bore me. I still enjoy to cycling and running occasionally but not nearly as much as I used to. Most shocking to me is that I'm tired of racing. On Sunday my stomach was upset, so I didn't race a triathlon I had signed up and paid for. Back in my hard core multisport days nothing would have stopped me from racing. Back then I'd have showed up and raced even if I was projectile vomiting blood!

For the last 14 weeks I've been attending CrossFit 5 days a week. I'm average at it. I've made average improvements, average strength gains, and average weight loss doing CrossFit. There just doesn't seem to be anything all that exciting to blog about now. Being average is boring, most people are average. Now that my fitness focus has changed my blog may be the most boring blog in the world.

Celebrate at the Spring Fling triathlon

It took me a few days to recover from the shock of realizing I had only lost 11 pounds during my 9 week weight loss competition rather than the 29 pounds I thought I had lost. Eventually I realized 11 pounds is still something to be happy about. Unfortunately it's all to easy for me to lose track of the little things when I'm working 70-90 hours a week and seriously sleep deprived. Add into the equation the memory problems I've been having from the traumatic brain injury I sustained in September 2011 when I got ran over by a vehicle while cycling, these brain farts seem to happen a lot.

Once I got over the disappointment I realized 11 pounds is still something to be happy about. I've decided to celebrate by registering for the Spring Fling triathlon held in Rio Rancho New Mexico this Sunday. This will be my first triathlon in 6 months. This has been the longest I've gone without competing in a triathlon since I first started competing in multisport in 2004. The Spring Fling triathlon is a sprint triathlon, the distances are 400yd swim, 18k bike, and 5k. This will be my 4th consecutive year competing in the Spring Fling triathlon, it will be my 65th triathlon and 84th multisport race all time.

The link for this race is: http://www.trisportcoaching.com/races/springfling2013.html

hydrostatic body fat test April 2013

I got my body fat tested at the University of New Mexico exercise physiology center today. I've been eating Paleo, running 2x a week, cycling 2x a week, and CrossFit 4x a week. I assumed I'd end up having made HUGE gains, but I didn't. I'm disappointed. 11.7 pounds in 9 weeks is not all that great.

I lost 11.7 pounds total, lost 14.7 pounds of fat, and gained 3.3 pounds muscle.

April 2013: 229.7 pounds @ 23.1% body fat. I have 176.6 pounds lean mass, and 53.1 pounds fat.

Feb 2013: 241.1 pounds @ 28.1 % body fat. 173.3 pounds lean mass. 67.8 pounds fat.

Oct 2011: 181 pounds @ 6.86% body fat. 169.3 pounds lean mass. 12.5 pounds fat.

June 2011: 188.4 pounds @ 10.9%. 169.4 pounds lean mass. 19 pounds fat.

Nov 2010: 222.2 pounds at 19.01% body fat. 180 pounds lean mass. 42.2 pounds fat.

July 2010: 189 pounds at 9.81% body fat. 170.6 pounds lean mass. 18.5 pounds fat.

Jan 2010: 207 at 18.4% body fat. 169.2 pounds lean mass. 38.5 pounds fat.

July 1999: 204 at 13.1% body fat. 188.43 pounds lean mass. 15.57 pounds fat.

CrossFit games 2013 rankings

Well I finished the 2013 CrossFit games. It wasn't pretty.
Workout/ world ranking/ South West ranking
13.1/  35,822/ 2,391
13.2/ 44,856/ 3,443     
13.3/ 44,271/ 3,629
13.4/ 45,763/ 2,990
13.5/ 44,464/ 2.844
overall I placed 40,230th in the world. And 2,639th in the South West.

I've been in a Paleo and fitness competition for the last 9 weeks. As of yesterday I'd lost 29 pounds and was within 9 pounds of my short term goal of 220. My diet hasn't been a problem all year. It's as if I've been a normal person in regards to my eating, which I know I'm not. But yesterday I fell off the diet wagon. One of the things I've learned is never allow myself to get hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. If I do any of these I end up turning to food. I've been working a lot of hours recently. By recently I mean like just shy of 8 years. Anyways, I got off of a 16 hour shift and was so tired couldn't even get off the couch to go to bed. But I sure as hell could get off the couch to eat. So yesterday I fell off the diet wagon. I was hoping to regain control of my eating today, but no such luck. Hopefully tomorrow.........

Speaking of being tired, I've worked 12-16 hours a day 24 out of the last 28 days. The last 2 days in a row I only got 3 hours of sleep. I've been tryingto sleep all day. I don't even remember what a good night of sleep feels like. Crap I'm tired. I'm too tired. I'm so tired my body can't sleep. Man, I wish my body would just go to sleep.
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