Meal Time: Chicken spaghetti

This is one of my favorite mid-week at-home meals. Easy, fast, healthy, easy to cleanup, inexpensive.

Consider the choices:

Our chicken salad - with a dessert! -  made at home in about 20 minutes for $4.25/meal and about 1,300 good calories, notably salad and good clean organic chicken.

Subway footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch for about $9.00 with 1,080 mostly good calories (and I love bacon!) and 20 minutes to go and get. This is just the sandwich. no drink. no dessert. I can RARELY say no to the cookies at Subway, so you might as well add $1.29 and 300 calories for three chocolate chip cookies

Arby's #14 Fresh Market Sandwich combo with large curly fries and a green iced tea for about $10 and 1,330 calories and 20 minutes to go get. This doesn't have a dessert, although the curly fries are close to be a dessert(!).

Our chicken salad absolutely wins when I'm at home. When travelling, I try to stick with the Subway. If I'm driving, I generally go for the Arby's (and get a turnover, too, with the large order!).  Even considering the calories and type of food, our chicken salad wins because it is SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER, and we get to eat as a family at the dinner table.  And it's very easy to clean...very few dishes because the chicken is BBQ; most of the dishes go straight into the dishwasher...clean and simple!

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My wife and call it chicken salad (so creative!). Let's do some basic math to compare to fast food. I only eat at Arby's and Subway for fast food, and the cheapest I can get there is about $8 and walk out mostly satisfied ($7 footlong plus tax).

This meal has 1/2 pound chicken (1.89/pound off the chicken truck), so let's round up to $1 even.

Half a bag salad bought for $2.49, so call that 1.25.

Two rolls from a box of six for 2.49. Let's round up to a dollar (those are 50 cents each?!?!?!.....might pass next time at the store). But Grandma's homemade strawberry jam (free!) is awesome and needs a method to get in my mouth!

1/3 of a bag of mixed veggie steamers. Bag is maybe 1.39 so round up to 50 cents.

Add $1 for the fundraiser chocolate bar (very small) I had for dessert.

Drank water only. I prefer water but sometimes have iced tea in the summer or Lipton drink mix in the winter.

$4.25 total, and COMPLETELY satisfied and full, including chocolate bar to hit my sweettooth!

'Versus $8 minimum for fast food and no dessert. Calories? 

Chicken about 500. 

A small squirt of ranch dressing has maybe 50 calories; just spice on the chicken. 

Salad probably 250. Rolls: 2 x 80 = 160. Chocolate = 180

Total Calories = 1,300 calories, almost all good pure food.

Sub (Subway Footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt)

Serving Size: 1 footlong, Calories: 1080, Fat: 53.1g, Carbs: 87g, Protein: 67g

Arby's Meal of a large #14 combo = 1,330 and about $10

 Fresh Market Sandwich = 670 calories

Turkey Ranch & Bacon (Honey wheat bread, roast turkey, natural cheddar cheese, leat lettuce, tomatoes, red onion, creamy ranch spread, pepper bacon)

371 g

42

73

23

15

670

MORE

Plus large Curly Fries

Curly Fries (Potatoes, partially hydrogenated canola or soybean oil, bleached enriched, wheat flour, modified food starch, cornmeal, corn starch)

large

7

66

30

13

560

MORE

plus sweet green tea isn't listed, but let's call it 100 calories.

Tracking Training Points

Earlier I showed you the weekly points tracker and explained how the points equal 1 mile of bike, or 100 yards swimming, or 1/4 mile running.

Now here is the chart that is used to visualize the annual volume. You can clearly see a ramp-up, and then some leveling with four week cycles followed by a rest/easy week, a race week (zero volume).

The last "set" of weeks shows how I plan to change-up the schedule to focus on Olympic distance training. The even-week sets prior to that are high-volume moderate intensity to train for a 70.3.

This last set has some of that, but intermixed with a lower-volume, high-intensity week to prep for the Olympic distance that is a bit shorter but higher paced.

When I'm done posting all the training data segments, I'll upload the excel file for anyone to copy and use on their own.

Excitement of a new training season

I'm quite excited about the start of this new training season. I think I'm actually starting it this time, instead of a few failed starts in the past few weeks, all thwarted by scheduling problems.

What's so great about a new season?

1. Another chance to put together another project, almost from scratch. I rarely get something right on the first try (70.3 race!), but I make big improvements in the second try. I really think I can hit a 5:30 on whatever 70.3 I do this summer.

2. After a while off, it feels good to break a big sweat again. On the bike this morning, I kept the fan off but did a few minutes of high intensity intervals (the pyramids in "Local Hero" Sufferfest to be exact). I broke a big sweat, and it felt great!

3. The chance to get into new, GOOD HABITS. And break the old, bad habits. I really want to get into good pedaling habits this winter. No more mashing.

4. I get to see how God made our bodies to react to inputs. Watching fat melt off and muscles tighten up is very interesting to me.

5. The soreness when you're not used to a workout. I'm a bit sore this morning after my first weights workout yesterday (first time since March or so!). It feels great to be just a bit sore and remember where all those muscles are.

6. The rush of being back in the pool and feeling the water all around me. I miss being in the water!

What are some of the things you look forward to when starting a new season or getting back into a training program?

Meal Time: Chicken Spaghetti and Acorn Squash

Tera is such an awesome girl! Two healthy dinners in a row. Here's the breakdown on this meal.

Easy to prepare. Tastes great. Incredibly inexpensive. Easy to clean. Home-grown food!

So last night was the chicken salad with barbecued chicken. With some proper planning, we managed to make some extra chicken. Tera cut that up into some small pieces while making the spaghetti. In the refrigerator was acorn squash that we got out of the garden in November and has kept quite well. Whole wheat spaghetti is bought in the bulk foods section at WinCo.  Twenty minutes later, we have our chicken sphaghetti.

Chicken = free, put into last night's meal cost.

Spaghetti = not sure. Probably $1.00/meal at the most. Can't think that it's much higher. Calories unknown, but lets call it 500.

Sauce = $2.39 for a jar (guessing). I used 1/10 of a jar probably, so 25 cents for that. Maybe 100 calories.

Water is free.

Dessert is not shown. Three pieces of halloween candy (chocolate coin, twix, 3 musketeer) for 240 calories? 10 cents each?

Total cost = $1.85 or so. I ate an extra serving equivalent to the spaghetti shown, so let's say it was $3.05 total.

Calories = about 1200 - 1400 calories.

Tera cooked it in about twenty minutes. I cleaned it in five minutes.

I'm quite full and my sweet tooth is satisfied about thirty minutes later as I write this.

I would like to keep my dinner calories at about 800, but that is clearly quite difficult.

I think this meal is clearly a good way to go.

I have a couple of favorite healthy meals that can get expensive, but this is clearly a healthy meal that is easy and inexpensive.

What are some of the ways you eat healthy yet inexpensive?

Two reasons to do flip turns

I swam this morning for the first time in about 90 days. And in that 90 days, I didn't do much in the way of exercise after the 70.3 on September 8th. I ran about 15-20 mile per week, but didn't do any swim or bike or anything else for that matter. What I did do was eat and drink whatever I felt like. Needless to say, I'm a relative physical mess right now as I start back into a winter training season. In short, I got a bit fat and out of shape.

So I swam 500 yards this morning. The goal of the session was really to just get to the pool and jump in and see what happens.

Well, the first thing I noticed is that I'm physically weak.

And that was especially clear when I did the flip turns. It took an additional bit of effort to make the flip, and I realize now just how much of an abdominal workout it is to do flip turns. And that leads to the title of this post.

Here are my two main reasons to do flip turns:
1. The underwater glide creates a hypoxic element to your workout. As you glide after the push, your body has to work with the oxygen it is given and you can't simply get another breath. I don't pretend to know the physiology behind it, but I know it results (for me, anyway) in an increased efficiency in my body and its breathing requirements, most of which is most notable when I get to running. This is a major reason why I think increased swim volume can lead to much faster run times (in addition to weight loss and general aerobic improvements).

2. The flip turns are an additional ab workout. Physical fitness depends signficantly on core strength. Any opportunity to increase core strength and endurance should be exploited and maximized. Thus, you should be doing flip turns whenever possible. Incidently, this is the only positive thing I can think of when wondering what could be good about a 25 yard pool.

My point is....do your flip turns. If you don't know how, learn. It will help you swim, and you'll be quite surprised what happens with your run.

Determine beginning weekly volume and intensity

This week is all about establishing a routine. Next week I'll worry more about building fitness and such. But you have to start your volume expectations somewhere.

A tenet of Marine Corps planning is to begin with the end-state desired. In my triathlon life pertaining to the beginning of this season, the end state is a combination of my goals of  a 5:30 in a 70.3 triathlon and a 2:10-ish in an olympic triathlon. 

With those goals, and the 70.3 having priority and meaning a focus more on volume than intensity, I want my last week of training sometime in the end of June to look like this week below. An explanation of the charts is at the end of this post. 

		S	B	R	T
Monday am	B-90m,S-2.6	26	26
Monday lunch	Run 6 miles			24
Monday pm
Tuesday am	Bike 120 mins		38
Tuesday lunch	Run 6 miles			24
Tuesday pm
Wednesday am	B- 90m,S-2.6	26	26
Wednesday   lunch	Run AK			12
Wednesday pm
Thursday am	Bike 120 mins		38
Thursday lunch	Swim 3200	32
Thursday pm	Long Bike Out?
Friday am	Run 9 miles			36
Friday lunch	Swim 3200	32
Friday pm
Saturday	Bike 3 hours		56
Saturday
Saturday
Sunday	Run 13			52
Sunday
Sunday
21		116	184	148	448
		26%	41%	33%

With that end-state weekly volume and schedule, I want to start out this week with the below schedule. I'm already noticing that it is a bit aggressive, which means I let myself go even more than I thought. For instance, I'm only doing 40 minutes on the bike, and my swim this morning maxxed out at 500 yards. Of course, I could go further, but I want to build slowly and smartly, and that 500 yards and 40 minutes on the bike felt comfortable. The priority this week is to establish a routine of consistency, and building fitness is secondary. Put another way, I just want to get used to getting up in the morning and doing something.

December 3, 2012		S	B	R	T
Monday am	Bike 1hr, S-1.2	0	8
Monday lunch	Run 5 miles			20
Monday pm	Quick Lift
Tuesday am	Bike 60 mins		16
Tuesday lunch	Run 5 miles			20
Tuesday pm
Wednesday am	Bike-60, S-1k	10	16
Wednesday lunch	Run to lift			12
Wednesday pm
Thursday am	Bike 60 mins		16
Thursday lunch	Swim 1500	15
Thursday pm
Friday am	Run-4, Q-Lift			16
Friday lunch	Swim 1500	15
Friday pm
Saturday	Bike 75 mins		21
Saturday
Saturday
Sunday
Sunday	Run 3 miles			12
Sunday
36		40	77	80	197
		20%	39%	41%

Reminder that the numbers represent part of the points program I learned on slowtwitch.com that says 1 mile bike = 1 point, 100 yard/meter swim = 1 point, and 1/4 mile run = 1 point. So the volume represented below is in points, such that 24 points = 6 mile run, 26 points=2,600 yard swim, and 26 points = 26 mile bike. There are a couple references to time with the bike, too, in that "Bike 120" in the second column means a two-hour bike that should result in the 36 points to the right of where it says "Bike 120."

The second-to-last line shows the weekly volume totals, and the last line shows a percentage of the overall volume for swim, bike, and run. This changes as I input the actual workout points for the week. I'll show those tables in the next post. 

The number below the last "Sunday" is a the week number that I use to track in charts and such. 

Winter training officially begins!

*** Note that I'll be posting the amphibops.com entries here from now on. *****************

This morning marked the official beginning of my winter training season. I’ve been trying to get it going for the past couple of weeks, but I didn’t get any real traction…mostly because I couldn’t get up in the morning. Now that I’ve totally let myself go for two months, it’s time to really get going. I’m mentally committed 100% to a good start now, too! I even got up early this morning after getting home late from a weekend drill period.

What makes a for a good committment?

1. Mentally ready and “bought-in” to the plan. Deep-down in my heart I want this to happen.

2. I have a logical, doable plan that I can measure to see if I am meeting my goals and improving towards a successful season that results in more than just a good race time (goals to be posted later).  

3. I have a schedule that will facilitate consistency, which in turn helps me meet my goals, which in turn builds confidence and desire to keep doing the scheduled workouts. It’s a synergistic cycle.

4. I have a bit of a foundation from two preparatory weeks that allow me to build smartly and relatively quickly.

The rest of this week will be posts about the winter training plan. Check back to have a template for your own plan if you haven’t started yet.