Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I don't have too much time to blog right now because my hair is driving me crazy and I'd like to go upstairs and cut it. So here is the final tally:


Considering that I was up by about 170 miles at one point. I'm not too terribly thrilled with 127. But I'll take it considering this challenge was supposed to be tough. Honestly, I mentally checked out from the challenge around Friday the 27th. You can tell by all the driving around I did. I figured there was nothing to lose since the challenge was completely in the bag.

I think I will be biking to work much more often but tomorrow I'll take a break and drive.

There are a few things that surprised me during the challenge:

• Right before the challenge started I bought a seat pad since biking tends to hurt the crotch. Wow did that do wonders, I had no pains all month in that region despite the constant biking.
  
• The first week affected my marathon training but once I got used to the biking, it had no effect whatsoever. I thought I'd at least miss some runs or be tired more often, but it wasn't bad.
  
• I ate a lot more seeing as I was exercising more and therefore did not lose weight.
  

Really this was not a challenge testing endurance or stamina or physical abilities. It was more a month that tested my ability to overcome inconvenience. It's inconvenient to get sweaty on the commute to work, carry extra clothes, and have to shower at work. It's inconvenient to take 25 minutes biking home when driving takes 6. There was nothing physically difficult about it, but there were many times I just didn't feel like jumping through hoops. It was worth it though.

I might do this challenge again during cooler weather. Maybe April or something in the Spring. We'll see.

I was told that my companies Rec Center will be writing an article in their newsletter about my challenge. That'll be kinda awesome.

Did I say I wasn't going to write very much? Yeah, I'm always far too long-winded.

"What is not started today is never finished tomorrow." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"For every finish-line tape a runner breaks - complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras - there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about." -Grete Waitz

"Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you." -Proverb

I donate blood very frequently and subscribe to the Durham Platelets newsletter and the newsletter that came through today was intriguing to me. I love donating blood and platelets and am really proud of my 10 gallons donated so far, but this guy has nothing on me. If ever there was a person to look up to or to call a "hero", I'd say it's this guy, Ken Lanter:

One day I hope to say I've donated 150 gallons. I highly recommend donating. It's just as Ken says, you never know when you'll need the donations and I'm not going to wait until it happens to me before giving back.

I'm not going to say much in this post, other than the fact that I'm tired of this month being a joke to everyone except me. I've been laughed at by almost everyone and have even been called sarcastic names. I really hate it. Creating challenges to get healthy and in shape isn't funny to me. This may be my last post about the challenge seeing as I could probably quit now (I'm not though) and still win.



“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”

“One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself” - Mark Twain

Found this quote after my last post and it certainly resonates with me about the way I think life should be lived:

"A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life."
- Samuel Butler

I'm kickin' the car's butt. Here are the updated stats:


On Thursday I didn't plan on going out for lunch but at the last minute decided to go to a co-worker's retirement party, so that added 31 miles to my total. The buffet was worth it. Fortunately Thursday was a heavy day as far as working out was concerned so it didn't hurt me too bad. Saturday and Sunday should include a TON of miles for biking and running so that's good. I should be over 100 on my buffer in no time.

One thing I have learned in the past week is that it's a LOT easier and safer to run and walk on the roads than it is to bike. I think that opens up a world of possibilities for me as far as exercise goes. If I have to run 17 or 18 miles, I might just find some roads to run on. What I usually do is go to the trails or get on the treadmill. I still don't feel entirely safe biking though. You can't see the cars coming while biking and you either hold your space on the side or if you have to bail, you fall off to the side where there might not be anything. Cars are mostly polite but I just don't trust other people when it comes to 2 ton moving objects.

"Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is." -Vince Lombardi

"Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving." - Dennis Waitley

I'm beginning to wonder how many days in a row I can bike to work. So far I'm up to 14, and I'm thinking I can do it for both September and October but the colder months might start getting difficult. I really don't enjoy sweating in the morning, but I love not having to drive my car everywhere. It really is just empowering. It gives me a good sense of distance and doesn't let me take for granted being able to just get up and drive 30 miles just because I can. I think when the month ends, I'm going to continue to bike to work.

Saturday should be kind of awesome. We are going to bike to the American Tobacco Trail, bike all the way down to downtown Durham and go to the farmers market, and then bike back. Should be a total of about 20 miles round trip. We'll also probably hit up the pool after that. It'll be a nice little Saturday.

Anyone who has listened to The Dave Ramsey Show has heard it before. If you want to get out of debt you have to get mad. You have to get gazelle intense, throw everything at your debt snowball and make every sacrifice to win. You have to eat beans & rice and rice & beans and never see the inside of a restaurant unless you are working there.

Well to be honest, while we were getting out debt, we never really ate beans & rice. We continue to scrimp and save and live on less than we make, but we haven't gone as far as to eat the cheapest meal ever made. This week a friend of mine, Jason, gave us a recipe for a delicious beans & rice recipe and I was intrigued. We tried it tonight and it was AWESOME.

At one point I said to Liz, "you know how much money we would save if we..." and Liz stopped me in my tracks and said "I am NOT eating rice & beans for a whole month." She knows me too well. The brilliance of this meal. It cost us exactly $1.62 in groceries when you exclude the stuff we already had in our pantry (like onion and peppers and stuff). Now that's some good math. It made 3 very full servings.

Here is the picture and followed up by the recipe.


I apologize for the language in the recipe, but that's how it was written, and it does add some humor to cooking. I highly recommend it:

Take a lesson from the Puerto Ricans. Millions of us have managed to survive in one of the most expensive cities on earth with recipes like this:
Find a supermarket that has black beans on sale. Buy as much as you can. Then buy 5 or so pounds of Carolina rice, a bag of onions, a few bulbs of garlic, and a box of Goya Sazon.
Set 2 cups of water to boil
Throw in one cup of rice, turn the heat down to simmer and lid that shit
Slice up a small onion
Smash up a clove of garlic
Throw some olive oil or butter into a HOT pan.
Throw the onions and garlic into the pan and fry them till the onion gets glassy. Throw some salt in there.
Grind some pepper in there for good luck.
Toss in half a packet of Sazon and stir till you get a paste. Now you have a ghetto sofrito.
Dump in your can of beans bean juice and all.
Stir that shit up.
Add a pinch of Cayenne pepper so you remember that you have a set of cojones
Set that shit on simmer
Your rice is done.
Throw the beans on top.
Win
You should get at least 2 meals out of one can of beans, and if your lucky you can get black beans 2 for $1. Adding the cost of the Garlic, Sazon and a small onion and you still eat a tasty, hearty, relatively healthy meal for less than $1.

Jason's modifications:
So, he says HOT pan, I say medium / medium-hot, don't burn the oil / onions. Along with the onion I usually add a green pepper and hot pepper chopped. and I smash / very roughly chop 3 cloves of garlic. I slowly saute the onions / peppers until they are fairly soft.. I also use brown rice, so 2.5 cups of water to 1 cup of rice for 45 min on simmer.