When the New Year rolled around this year, I thought about the fact I really have nothing to give up anymore. I gave up eating animal protein nine months ago and have been thriving on the plant-based diet. I am at my goal weight and am maintaining it even through the off-season. Starting an exercise program maybe? Aaahhh…I think I got that covered too. After thinking about it a bit, I still have two vices still left: coffee and beer. My daily morning java and having a couple IPA’s on the weekend are two things I thoroughly enjoy, but they really aren’t benefitting me that much. 
While my blood pressure has come down over the last 9 months, but it is still not perfect. I am curious if coffee may have something to do with that. A couple microbrews on the weekend are a tasty treat, but honestly as I get older they seem to give me more of a headache than anything. I usually forget about that until I wake up the next morning. So I have decided to try cutting these out of my diet for awhile and see if any improvements come with it.
I had gradually tapered back on the morning coffee until I eventually had my last cup on Thursday morning. The last few days I never even finished the cup I took into work with me. I have felt a little off the past few days, which may be a result of that, but am feeling better today. I am still drinking tea, which still has caffeine, but nowhere near as much and has added health benefits. As for the beer, I just stopped and haven’t had any for a couple weeks now. Not a big deal.
I have been waking up earlier on the weekends which is nice since it allows me to bang out those long weekend workouts earlier in the day. We’ll see how that goes. My thought is that I will not have a beer until after Ironman which will be an added incentive to cross that finish line. I may still have a glass of red wine on special occasions or dining out with friends. I don’t need to be totally dry!
Anyway, training this week has been good. Volume-wise was a little over 8 hours. We were pelted with a little bit of snow, but it cooperated with my schedule since it came on a bike trainer workout day. Only did one run on the treadmill, which I probably could have done outside. I did my long run over at Trexler Park(wow they have a Fb Page?) on Sunday since I knew that would have it plowed. It is a pretty nice loop, except for the hilly outer loop. I am not planning on making a habit of doing that since it wreaks havoc on the knees.
I also picked up a Kinetic inRide sensor for my trainer. This unit uses Low Energy Bluetooth to transmit the actual power(watts) being output by the trainer to my laptop or my iPhone. It is accurate within +/-1% which is pretty good for establish power zones. The only problem was that my MacBook was a version before they started putting Bluetooth 4.0 in them. Argh! So I ended up having to purchase the IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Adapter to get it to work. The TrainerRoad site said it was plug-n-play with Mountain Lion 10.8 Mac OSX, but it didn’t work out of the box. I ended up have to edit some “Kext” file and then download a utility program to save it. Kind of a pain in the ass, but it worked. The one thing is my mice do not work with it, so I have to unplug it when I done. Fortunately, I only use for doing indoor trainer rides with TrainerRoad.
Ah well, that’s all for now. I did make some new recipes today, but I will post them later. That 5 AM swim is looming. Got another build week and then I would guess recovery week after that.
