Completion!... And then Laziness (Pt. 2)

Taken right before we headed out on our second leg of the century

Our first 55 miles were marked by unprecedented success, and because of the way the world always tends to balance itself out, the 45 miles following that awesome 55 miles were some of the worst miles I've ever biked. We theorized why the volunteers suggested doing the Berkley loop first... The consensus we came up with was that the Berkley loop must be significantly hillier than the Jefferson loop. Whether or not this was correct, I can't really speak to, because I was too exhausted to notice how bad the hills were.

The final 45 miles (technically 47.9 miles) could be split up into 3 different trips -- There was the difficult start (about 17 miles), the 'worst biking that's ever existed' portion of the trip (the next 17 miles), followed by the 'Dustin & Ben become possessed' portion of the trip, which was the final 14 miles. I'll discuss them all:

Difficult Start -- Immediately following our solid 55 mile start, we were feeling good... Growing tired, but feeling like we were doing great. Over the next 17 miles we (and I say we, but I really mean I... We both struggled at different times, and were strong at others... Overall, though, I'm fairly confident that speaking for both of us in this regard is at least very close to accurate) grew more and more tired. We had biked at least 55 miles in a ride 4 times, and it was nothing new. 72 miles, however, was coming up on our personal bests. That made the 17 mile ride from the 'halfway' point to the first Berkley loop rest stop critical stretch in our ride. It became more and more difficult, and the difficulty was only compounded by the fact that we were biking in a more "urban" (urban is a loose term when talking about Martinsburg), and therefore less interesting, area. We pulled into the rest stop and I noticed for the first time that I was starting to feel exhausted. Not just tired, but that tired feeling way past tired... I had another 30 miles to go.

The Worst Biking That's Ever Existed -- Between the first and second rest stop, I hit the wall. 3 miles past the rest stop I found myself in uncharted territory, and I began to really feel it. We actually had to make a pit stop at Ben's grandparent's house, which just so happened to be on the way... We pulled into the final (!!!) rest stop, and my body was breaking down. I was shaking, couldn't concentrate, and was seriously questioning whether or not I would be able to finish the ride (I was leaning towards not for about 10 minutes). We took a power 20 minutes at the final rest stop... I ate 2 bananas, some oreos, a bunch of that gu stuff, and drank a ton of water. I eventually began feeling ok again, and we finally (reluctantly) got back onto the bikes for the homestretch. If my explanation of this ride ever sounds exaggerated, note that there is nothing about this part that was exaggerated... Ben said he couldn't concentrate and almost ran off the road, I was shaking... This was the point where this went from a long ride to a true endurance race.

Dustin And Ben Become Possessed -- Not a lot to report on this. After I ate and drank, we went into a serious zone and plowed through the last 14 miles. To take a phrase from famous sports writer Bill Simmons, we went into 'F you mode' and just finished it out. We didn't joke, we weren't friendly... We didn't even talk. We put our heads down and just pushed forward. At 3:45, 9 hours after our start, we pulled into the finish line to our adoring fans... Who were just awesome.

Exhausted post-race photo.

Dominos Pizza never tasted so good.

103.5 Miles is more appropriate for a top 40 FM radio station than it is for a bike ride... After doing it, I don't find myself thinking it's any less crazy. I expect that in the future I'll do it again, probably multiple times... But it's still crazy; I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I'm glad that I did it, and I'll always be glad that I did it... It sounds cliche, but the knowledge that I can do this gives me the confidence that I can actually do a lot of things that I didn't think I could do before. For now, I plan on just going back to throwing my iPod on and riding to and from work, which is really the reason I started riding in the first place. I plan on changing my concept of 'long rides' to being more like 30 or 40 miles. I fully intend on doing a few of those in the near future. But again, I'm super glad I did this century ride.

Thanks to all those who followed me with this blog -- The support has been great, and greatly appreciated. Having people's support along the way has really made this a lot easier to achieve. Until the next century...

Completion!... And then Laziness (Pt. 1)

How often can you go to sleep at night and be confident that you did more physical work in that past day than you've ever done before? I don't know if I've ever been conscious of that fact, but on Saturday night I fell asleep thinking this exact thought.

On Saturday around 6:15 in the morning, Ben and I arrived at the starting line of the CASA River Century in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Although the title of my blog may be alliteratively compelling, it's in fact factually inaccurate, since only a small portion of the ride took place in Martinsburg. As we walked up to the starting line, they were giving out coffee and donuts, among other things (who wants to eat a bunch of fried dough before a 100 mile bike race!?!), and this gave us a really good idea as to how strict and serious this whole thing was going to be. When we asked those in charge what time we should start, the answer was 'eh... Whenever you feel like it'. This was pretty nice -- We were clearly marching to the beat of our drum. We decided that 6:45 was a perfect time to get this monster started. We were prepared, dressed appropriately, and not freaking out enough to not do it, so we set out on our way.

The course was split into two loops. There was the Jefferson County loop (55.6 miles), and the Berkley County loop (47.9 miles). We decided (against the suggestions of the volunteers) to knock out the Jefferson County loop first. We both preferred to have the larger loop done first, and considering we had done the Berkley County loop 3 weeks prior to this ride, we thought it would be nice to have an idea of where we were when the going began to get really rough at the end.

I'm sure that adrenaline was at work, or maybe the first 55+ miles of the ride was just a perfect culmination of our 2 1/2 months of training. Either way, we made the best time we'd ever made in those first 55 miles. In a touch under 4 hours, we completed the first loop. That translates out to be just under 14 miles per hour, which for us is fantastic. We were stopping at every stop, but only for 2-5 minutes, maximum. We stopped for maybe 7 minutes at the final rest stop before the halfway mark (around 47 miles) for a bathroom break, and cruised into the 'halfway' mark at about 10:45, to the delight of our screaming fans. The picture to the left shows us at only halfway -- We hadn't accomplished anything new, and we had a lot more to go.

The Final Training Ride/Final Numbers

It's been only a couple of months since we began training, but we've raked up over 325 miles on a bike solely on our long rides. If I include the mileage from my commute to and from work (10 miles each way), the total comes to well over 800 miles. So over the course of the past 8 weeks or so, I've averaged biking 100 miles per week. Obviously that's been pretty backloaded, but for 2 months of my life, I have been biking a century ride per week. This coming Saturday is the century ride, after which I will be somewhere between 900 and 1,000 miles for the entire 2 months. These are pretty wild numbers. Anytime you need to put a comma into a figure measuring distance, you're talking about something pretty crazy.

To put 1,000 miles into perspective for those who read this blog:
•  It's 1,011 miles from Washington DC to Des Moines, IA
•  It's 1,041 miles from Buffalo, NY to Jacksonville, FL
•  It's 948 miles from Salisbury, MD to Madison, WI
•  It's 1,002 miles from Chicago, IL to Denver, CO
•  To travel 1,000 miles by car, you would be looking at about a 17 1/2 hour drive, and that's assuming absolutely no traffic.

Enough with the 'trying to blow your mind while also doing quite a bit of bragging' thing. This weekend Ben and I decided to tackle a route where we travel completely around Sugarloaf Mountain -- a geological marvel, in that it is the only mountain in Maryland. I'm fairly certain that whenever this happens, it's because the mountain in question is a volcano -- But Ben calmly reassured me that he's like 60% sure that it's not a volcano.

At the crack of what not very many would consider dawn (5:00) I woke up and prepared for the 80 mile ride with luckily no incidents similar to last week. We were on the road by about 6:30, and the weather somehow cooperated. The meteorologists were calling for rain all day, and somehow we lucked into about 8 hours of it holding off, which was just miraculous.

Something that we've struggled with over the course of the training has been time... We've generally been averaging 10 miles per hour when all has been said and done, and we've come to the conclusion that a lot of the time lost (we're almost always averaging 12 mph+ while actually riding) is spent looking at directions while stopped. Saturday was the worst we've experienced. What we though were very basic directions turned out being extremely difficult to follow, and we ended up having to call lady friends at 6, 7 and 8 in the morning to google maps us in the right direction. Ultimately, I think our time will be much much stronger next Saturday, when we will be directed where to go at all times.

Our route ended up quite different from our original plan. Minus the getting lost multiple times part, though, it was pretty close to what we were aiming for -- From what I've heard from my friends who have done endurance races (all running, none biking, but I'm assuming the principle is solid), if you can get to 3/4ths of the race distance, you're good to go. We biked 75 miles on Saturday, so let's hope that advice is legit.

So this is it. In 6 days I will be riding 100 miles in the culmination of everything I've trained for over the past few months. I appreciate everyone's support in doing this, as it's one of the most difficult and stressful things I've ever partaken in my lifetime. It's crazy that this is actually going to happen.

Veggie Pt. 2/Swan Song Sandwich

May 9-13 will more than likely conclude my sandwich experiment. While it's been wildly successful for me as a means for eating healthier, it's also been a surprisingly pricey endeavor. Also, although I like to think of myself as an extremely creative individual, the longer I go on with this exercise the harder a time I find myself having with coming up with new sandwich concoctions. I'm sure that moving forward I'll create a bunch more sandwiches from time to time, but I'm sort of tired of expecting myself to come up with something for the entire week. Call me crazy, but I'm actually looking quite forward to a week filled with PB&Js.

With that said, I would like to think that I went out with a bang. When looking back on all the sandwiches I've made, I've come to the conclusion that the vegetarian sub was the far and away winner. Going into this I never would have thought that it was possible to have enjoyed a meatless sandwich that much. But I did, and because of that I decided to try it again.

This week's sandwich is nothing new. People have been making mozzarella and tomato sandwiches forever. I chose to add pesto to my sandwich, and place it in between 2 halves of a toasted whole wheat english muffin. It was a really solid sandwich, and I'll give it a fitting score of 8.5/10.0. The true selling point of this sandwich, and the reason why I would consider it strongly in the future (perhaps more so than any other sandwich I've made in the past 2 months) is the simplicity. I could make this sandwich in the dark after like 25 beers. In the future I fully plan on bringing this back as a go-to sandwich.

My century ride is next weekend, and although there is another week where I should be making an interesting sandwich, things have gotten a little hectic, and I'm going to be missing a few days from work. So this is my sandwich swan song. At least for now. Unless I change my mind. Stay tuned.

May Failures

So many have asked me how my 80 mile ride of the past weekend went. The answer to that isn't even an answer. It's the absence of an answer... The reason there is no answer to the question is because the 80 mile ride didn't happen. The series of events leading up to the ride at 6 am ended up being disastrous, and in many ways the outcome of my morning was a blessing in disguise.

On Friday night I was invited to an Orioles game by a good friend of mine, who was looking to have a bachelor-party-like outing. Although I was going to be waking up at 5 am, who am I to tell a friend that I'm not going to go to something that's important to you, because I have to wake up early tomorrow... So I decided that I was going to just grin and bare it, I'll deal with exhaustion after the ride. After the game (around 10, 10:30ish), the group decided to go out for drinks. Being the great sport that I am, I said 'sounds great, I'll buy the first round'. We ended up getting home at around 12:30 am; Not the worst time in the world for a Friday night, but when considering the 5:00 am wake-up call, this was literally getting into the danger zone for sleep.

Let me explain a little bit about my sleep tendencies. I don't tend to sleep, I just do it. 8 hours plus each night, or else my life is less than ideal. 8+ hours gets me through the day in good condition. 6-8 hours and I live my life, but I'm in a tired state. 4-6 hours, and I don't function well -- I'm too tired to walk around and fulfill my duties as a human. Anything less than 4 hours, and I literally turn into a toddler. I don't listen to anybody, I have no attention span, I walk into stuff, I talk to myself... It's ugly. Less than 4 hours worth of sleep, and I may as well just not go to sleep at all. On Friday night (before 80 miles worth of biking) I went to sleep at around 1:30 or 1:45. We were deep inside the danger zone at 3:15 or 3:30 hours worth of sleep.

On Saturday morning I awoke (relative term under these circumstances) to my alarm at 5:00 am feeling worse than I've felt since college (not an exaggeration). I got up and went through all my routines -- Oatmeal, water, stretching, SportsCenter, etc. After all that I began prepping my bike. I started by pumping my tires... Which went along without a hitch, until the hitch. I broke the valve on my back tire, making riding an impossibility. "So why don't you just go buy a new inner tube, Dustin? Sounds like you didn't really want to go on this ride to begin with" would be what the doubting questioner inside my brain would say. The fact remained that it was 5:20 am on a Saturday morning, and nothing opened until 10:00. I was unfortunately (fortunately) going to have to pass on this week's ride.

Warning to anyone about to read this post -- This is a really long post that doesn't go anywhere, and has an ending that's totally not worth the build up. What? You already read it? Bummer, sorry about that.

Turkey, Dressed Up

Trying to do the more healthy thing nowadays... With my century ride just over 2 weeks away, I've put it in my mind that I need to begin to eat healthier sandwiches. With that in mind, this week I chose to ditch any unhealthy meats (not like I was going too crazy with heavy stuff in recent weeks) and go lean. I went with a straight up turkey sandwich, but with a little flair.

I found the Wegman's Jalapeno Deli Cheese to be a huge success with last week's sandwich, and so I brought it back this week for a second interview... I tossed some sprouts on top of those classic sandwich staples to create a little bit more of a unique sandwich. What separated this creation from other run-of-the-mill turkey sandwiches was I slathered guacamole on both slices of toasted wheat bread, and I ended up with a fairly healthy sandwich which was wildly filling as well.

I've found that since I began making serious sandwiches about 2 months ago that I tend to lean heavily towards some more than others. This is obviously to be expected. What wasn't expected, at least to me, is how heavily I would lean towards sandwiches that were more towards the healthy end. I'm very surprised that instead of the chicken salad sandwich and hawaiian ham sandwich, I've found myself much more pleased with the veggie sub and toasted turkey/sprout/guac club sandwich on wheat. It's definitely been a pleasant surprise -- Maybe my tastes are maturing as I reach the second quarter of my life. Either way, if I was to make a list of the best sandwiches I've made since beginning this exercise, this week's sandwich would fall no further than #2 in the standings. A delicious, (mostly) nutritious, and easy-to-make sandwich, I will give this a good 9.0/10.0.

70 Miles... Take me home, country road...

With the beginning of May rolling around, Ben's and my training is beginning to wind down/intensify (depending on how you look at it). After Saturday's ride, we have two long rides left. We'll be doing an 80 Miler this Saturday, and then we have the century race. That's it. So yea, we've got only two long rides left... But it's 180 miles between those two rides, so how much we have left is really all a matter of perception.

Somewhere along the line, this went from being a casual weekend bike ride activity sort of thing to becoming an intense endurance training regimen. I'm not sure when this happened (I'm guessing it was between 40 and 50 or so miles), but we're both better for it. It was strange -- A few weeks ago, we weren't concerned with nutrition, we were rocking the short sleeve/long sleeve combo, and we were just cruising along not worried about time. In the past few weeks, we started eating every 2 hours during the ride, dressing the part, and becoming conscious of the time that we're making. On Saturday we made incredible time, and I can easily say that it was the most enjoyable grueling experience I've ever had.

We drove to Martinsburg, West Virginia this weekend... Home of our century ride. This proved to be our most daunting challenge thus far for two reasons: 1. It's the furthest we had yet to go, clocking in at a whopping 72 miles, and 2. We were actually biking on a good portion of the actual century ride course (more than half of it, actually). What did we learn? That West Virginia knows how to construct an endurance bike course... All I can say is... Wow. It was beautiful. We were riding by lakes, rivers and creeks. We were riding through forests, alongside farms, and possibly even some meth labs. And it was all amazing. Traffic was as close to minimal as I could envision it being anywhere in the country without the use of time travel. It makes me so excited for the race, now knowing that it's going to be a gorgeous route.

I had some serious brake issues which took about a half hour to fix in the early going... Not to bog you down with details, but it was like calling the cable guy to come fix your cable box and when he gets there he plugs it in for you. I felt like a total moron. We also left 19 minutes later than we would have liked to (6:49 leave time instead of 6:30). Those 2 things considered, we made awesome time for us. Including breaks, our ride clocked in at about 6 hours, which is miles ahead of any time we've made in the past. I attribute it to the traffic issue, mostly.

One last thing -- Sort of depressing, but also sort of great. The beauty of this ride made me realize how shitty our DC Metro area rides have been. Washington DC says that they're biker friendly, but there's just only so much you can do as a big-time city to accomodate for bikers. Going out to the country like that really makes me realize how bad we've got it here as bikers, and how rough our training has been due to our environment. Better to train in the fire, though.

A Spicy Twist On An Old Classic

This week's sandwich, in similar style to last week's sandwich, was lazy. To many who don't take the art of the sandwich seriously, my sandwich this week was far more than they would want to attempt, but for me I found my efforts this week laughable.

When I started this blog roughly 2 months ago, the initial purpose of it was to track my progress towards the eventual century ride. What actually ended up happening was I got super pumped about bragging about my sandwich creations. I found myself getting totally geeked over the thought of what next week's sandwich was going to be, and I was sort of losing a sense of what I set out for initially by starting this blog.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks, this viewpoint changed. As I'm creeping closer to the date of my century ride, my focus has been getting clearer. I'm not all of a sudden making terrible sandwiches, but I'm not as consumed by thinking about potential sandwich combinations as I was several weeks ago. I'd argue that this is a great thing, because it gives me hope that I'm actually focusing on the right thing.

The turkey club is a classic on almost any menu you'll ever see -- turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, toast. It may not be the most exciting sandwich ever, but I find it hard to believe that there's a human being out there that, when presented with a turkey club sandwich, will respond with 'don't poison me with this garbage' (or something along those lines). My sandwich this week was my own personal spin on this popular sandwich.

The personal flair in this sandwich is it's spiciness. I bought some Wegman's Cajun Turkey, which has quite the kick to it, and topped that with jalepeno pepperjack cheese and then some chipotle mayo. I topped that all with fresh tomato and lettuce (no bacon, tried to keep some idea of health to this sandwich), and added some pickles and stuffed all of this in between 2 slightly toasted slices of bread. Great sandwich, but not legendary... Which is probably what almost everybody would say of a turkey club sandwich. It's never going to be in the Hall of Fame, but turkey clubs will always be a solid starting right fielder. I give this sandwich an 8.0/10.0.

60 Mile Holiday Ride

This past weekend we went out on what will turn out to be our third to last endurance training ride. Amazingly enough, we are winding down to the actual century ride, which will be taking place less than a month from now. What is amazing about the whole thing is that while it seems like we've come so far, we still have so much further to go. After this weekend's ride though, I tend to lean more towards the former than the latter when considering our progress.

Ben and I had Friday off for Good Friday, so we ended up with a 3-day weekend. This is a nice thing to have when you're just working a 40-hour a week job, but when you're biking upwards of 50+ miles every weekend, having an extra day off in essence gives you your weekend back. It changed my life, if for only a couple of days. It should go without saying that an extra weekend day means another day of rest after a long ride, and 60 miles of biking is an awesome amount of physical effort -- The extra rest was a big deal this weekend.

Our aim in creating this week's route was to try out some new roads and keep things interesting. We recently purchased a bike rack so we can transport our bikes by car, meaning we no longer have to be limited by routes that start and end at our apartments in Silver Spring. We met at 6:30, drove north into Rockville and parked our cars at work. We headed north on the start of our 62.8 mile jaunt around Gaithersburg.

The trip can be split into three legs -- The first leg of the trip was plagued by stop lights, crummy roads, and was just generally a crappy route. We made awful time, probably taking about 2 1/2 hours to go less than 20 miles.

The second leg of the trip was arguably the best biking I've experienced around here. We were out on country roads spanning rolling green rural pastures. It was gorgeous. The temperature was on the cool side, but by no means was it cold. The hills were manageable, the traffic was close to non-existant... It was a great time. If the entire century ride in WV is like that, we could probably knock it out in like 5 or 5 1/2 hours... We were cruising, and enjoying every minute of it.

The final leg, which unfortunately ended up being the longest leg by far, was brutal. We stopped for a snack (Nutrition Granola Bars), and it began to rain. Like real rain, not a drizzle. For the last 25 miles or so of the trip we were soaked, freezing, and somehow constantly going uphill. To say it was miserable would be a vast understatement. The only consolation in having done that is to say that we (fingers crossed) will never have to deal with those sort of conditions again. It was awful, and unfortunately put a major damper on what had to that point been a great ride. Here's hoping the 70 mile ride we tackle this Saturday turns out to be a lot more like the 2nd leg than the 3rd (We're actually doing the 70 miler on the course of the century ride, so it'll be very telling on how prepared we are for the actual race).

Back to Basics/Lazy Man's Sandwich

Over the course of the past few weeks, and throughout the course of my sandwich making experimentation, I have challenged myself to make sandwich concoctions that I had never expected, never thought of, or had just never tried before. I used this exercise as more of a way of broadening my sandwich landscape, a way of thinking outside the lunch-time box. To say I have been successful up to this point would be a drastic under-shot.

So why, I found myself asking, am I reverting back to a solid go-to sandwich for this week? (That was both a hypothetical question, and also an internal question) I'm not sure there is an answer to the question, but the fact remained that the sandwich of the week this time around was awesomely uninspiring, uncreative, and unimpressive.

Not only did I create a sandwich that I knew for a fact I would like, but I actually directly ripped off a standard Wegman's sub, which I'm a common purchaser of. I took a baguette, threw in some roast beef, swiss cheese, roasted red peppers and spinach, and touched it off with a little chipotle mayo. I found myself disliking this sandwich mainly because of how easy it was to make. It's almost like how you always feel better when you work out. It's not that you actually enjoyed the act of working out, but you feel better about yourself. This sandwich was the equivalent of blowing off running a 5K and instead ordering a pizza. While it ended up as a pretty tasty lunch, I'm almost embarrassed at the fact that I made it this week.

Truth be told, however, this was a quite tasty sandwich. Although the roasted red peppers were canned, and I think had actually gone bad a bit ago, and the chipotle mayo wasn't as solid an addition to the sandwich as I had hoped it would be, this sandwich gets an 8.0/10 for me. With a few tweaks (toasting the baguette, maybe some oil instead of mayo, possibly replacing the roast beef with prosciutto, remaking the whole thing, essentially) this could be the best sandwich ever. With Easter coming up this weekend, my ambition may be just as weak this coming week, we'll see what happens -- I'm yet to be inspired for next week's sandwich.

50 Miler

On Sunday we hit the halfway mark in our training... This may seem like not that big deal to a lot of people, or it may seem like an enormous deal. The size of the deal of this is somewhere in the middle. On one hand, we will never again do a training ride that is less than half of the eventual total distance that we're training for... On the other hand, it means that this week's ride was only half of where we ultimately need to be. So I guess it's a mixed bag in that regard, but that is why we're training in the first place.

Sunday was by far and away the easiest ride for Ben, and by far and away the most difficult for me. It was unfortunate that the two occurrences happened to coincide with each other, because it only compounded my issues on the bike. I can't be 100% sure what exactly it was that made me struggle so much this week. My diet in the day and a half leading up Sunday was certainly poor (Five Guys, pancakes, and Ruby Tuesday's), and I was also still tired from a Friday-night CAKE concert, but it's possible that I was also just having a bad day. This is bound to happen when you're doing long endurance rides -- I'm glad it's over, and I'm looking forward to the coming long ride (which we'll be doing Friday morning to accomodate for Easter weekend... Holiday ride!).

My position as a biking failure on Sunday gave me a better perspective on how Ben is progressing on these endurance rides. He's gotten a lot stronger and a lot faster. This is good, because I'm assuming that I'm making similar strides. If his performance on Sunday is any indication of where we can be at when we're both firing on all cylinders, than it's great news.

One final thing... When we go out on these long bike rides, there are, naturally, many other bikers (they almost always pass us). These guys/gals always look so professional, and I feel like Ben and I look like a couple of scrubs, with our long sleeve/short sleeve combo. With that, I decided to snazz up my look a bit, with a more professional looking getup to be debuted the day of the race... Or before... Really, it just depends on when I get  my new biking threads in the mail.

Hawaiian Sandwich Week

Since beginning this sandwich experiment several weeks ago, many of the ingredients and concepts have changed. What I've tried to stay pretty consistant on, however, is looking at sandwiches in a different light. I've tried to challenge myself on what I can put into sandwiches, and I've tried in many cases to actually re-consider what I believe a sandwich to actually be. This may sound like a bunch of sandwich nerd talk, but it's really helped me become more creative when it comes to inventing new sandwich creations.

My questioning of what ingredients constitute a good sandwich ultimately lead me to this week's invention. While trying to brainstorm new ideas for sandwiches, I found myself always gravitating towards the same ingredients -- Lettuce, Tomato, Onions, Peppers... I recognized that there was an entire food group (fruits) that I instantly disregarded. Whether for a reason or not, it's what was happening, and so because of that, I chose to incorporate this forgotten part of the food pyramid into my sandwich for the week.

The highlight of this sandwich is the pineapple salsa. I cut up some pineapple, and added red, green, and jalepeno peppers along with red onion, lime juice, and some cilantro. The salsa turned out quite amazing, if I do say so myself, and it's been a hit around the office this week. The actual sandwich has been a very solid performer all week. I toast a white kaiser roll, and then put ham on one side. I then melt mozzarella cheese on top of the ham and them put a generous portion of the pineapple salsa on the other side. After that, it's just a matter of mashing both sides into a harmonious Hawaiian marriage.

After a week of this sandwich, I've decided that the sandwich itself leaves a bit to be desired. Although tasty, it's not miraculous, and there are probably things that I could do to it to make it better. I would give the sandwich a 7.5/10 on my scale. HOWEVER, the pineapple salsa is in fact a 10/10. This is almost certainly a dish I would serve at any dinner party I would be hosting in my imaginary world where I host dinner parties. This stuff is great, and I will totally consider making it again in the future.

The First Snag in Training

This week we planned on doing a 48 Mile ride down into Washington DC, and then out towards Potomac, MD. The route was mapped, sandwiches and granola bars were made, the bike was lubed up, and we were outside my apartment at 7:30 ready to go... And Ben's brakes weren't working. This was an inevitability. Not the brakes part, but the part about something holding us up unexpectedly. It was bound to happen, at some point in the training we were going to get hung up on something that we could not predict, and it happened yesterday.

My initial thought was 'great, I didn't really want to go biking almost 50 miles today anyway, cause that's a lot of work to do, and it'll make my legs hurt.' However, I pushed through that and decided, with the suggestion of my beautiful fiancee, to take this opportunity and do something a little different. Colleen suggested that I do a 'tempo run', where I go a shorter distance but push myself to focus on my speed, and that's exactly what I did. I took my normal route to work + about 5 more miles out, but instead of leisurely riding, I pushed myself harder than normal. I average generally between 10-12 MPH when riding to and from work, but I made it a goal of myself to ride 14+ as much as possible yesterday. The result was covering just over 31 miles in exactly 2 hours. That's an average of over 15 MPH, which is quite impressive, especially on the bike path.

My Big Fat Greek Pita

My entire life, I've lived under the blind assumption that whether it's whole grain or white, toasted or untoasted, a sandwich can only be a sandwich if the ingredients are placed between two slices of bread. This sandwich prejudice has existed my entire life, and I'm not entirely sure where it originated. I grew up in a very diverse sandwich environment, and I was most certainly taught to embrace all different sandwiches, regardless of cultural background. So I'm not sure where this thought came from initially, but suffice to say, it's existed. I've only recently discovered that in changing what my concept of a sandwich is that I'm capable of opening up an entirely new world of sandwiches in my life. This is my bread awakening.

In previous stabs at sandwich making in the last several weeks, I have certainly been incorporating the previously mentioned bread experimentation into my sandwiches. Bagels, and English Muffins, while sounding totally normal and run-of-the-mill to some, are scary and intimidating ideas to me, the sandwich bread virgin. This week I totally turn that fear upside down.

My sandwich this week is a self-conceived greek inspired pita. Chicken Souvlaki is something I have only recently (within the last 4 years or so) discovered, not only as something I love, but also as something that just plain exists -- I'll give the credit to my wonderful fiancee for introducing me to it.

My pita consists of some chicken marinated in Wegman's Greek Marinade (grilled ahead of time), fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, and some really great Feta Cheese. I mix everything together in a bowl before placing it into the pita. I also chose to garnish the sandwich with some pepperoncinis. They add a little kick to the entire meal, and go very well with the sandwich, I feel.

This sandwich has been overall a great success. It's delicious, filling, and actually quite healthy, with the majority of what I'm eating being veggies. The construction of this sandwich is difficult, as the pita tends to fall apart at the sheer amount of stuffing that I feel I have to put into it, and so it's a super sloppy sandwich. Luckily I'm not trying to win a sandwich aesthetics competition, and so I'm going to look past that fact. The sandwich ends up being probably the most difficult of the 3 thus far to make, and tends to be pretty time consuming for me and my 30 minute lunch, but in the end the effort is totally worth it. I'm giving this Greek-inspired sandwich an 8.0/10. I would certainly consider making this sandwich in the future, with almost no changes.

40 Miles... Down.

Today we set out on our 2nd week of training. According to our training log, we were supposed to bike a good 35 miles today. We instead ended up going closer to 40 miles, which I don't have a problem with. When given the option of going well over or well under the predetermined mileage, I will always take the over. That's what I did when developing this week's route.

Ben and I both felt great today. We made great time (About 3 1/2 hours of actual riding time to cover about 39 miles worth of road), and it's nice to feel like progress is actually being made. Last week was our first ride, and I didn't really have any sense of accomplishment. But considering we biked almost 40 miles this week compared to the 24 miles we biked last week, I really feel as though things are happening... That we are actually improving on where we've already been.

One thing that I've been noticing (digression alert) that I find mildly humorous... We tend to ride down a lot of roads that are home to extremely wealthy people. I mean like super rich; The Washington DC metro regional area is home to some of the most astronomically expensive real estate prices in the country, and we're driving by places with acres of land and giant equestrian pens. These bitches be rich. So anyway, I noticed on 3 separate occasions today (and I have noticed this in the past when I've been biking) homes that have both Hummers/Excursions/Giant Gas Guzzling SUVs and tiny hybrid cars (mainly a Prius) in the driveways. I don't want to make this blog into some obnoxious political thing, but let's just say I find that to be extremely funny, and surprisingly common among the elite upper class around this area.

One other thing, that's slightly less amusing, but may be slightly more interesting. Today we saw a fox. It was a regular red fox, nothing too special, except for the fact that this was found really close to Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda, a super busy road populated by a lot of weekend foot and car traffic. This on it's own is a strange occurrence. When you take into account the fact that last year while training for a different century ride (didn't happen, broke my collarbone) I saw a spider monkey (this actually happened, maybe I'll write about it later in the blog... That's called a teaser!), these become two very strange sightings.

We're getting stronger. The century ride is still a ways away, but I feel as though every day that we ride, the reality of the century race becomes clearer... Things are definitely happening.

Intense Action Shot

That is pesto juice squirting through my knuckles. The shot was captured at a point in the sandwich where structural integrity had been compromised. Thus the intense focus. Like I mentioned previously, this is not a structurally sound sandwich.


That's sandwich dedication, son!

Five Guys Wednesday

So today we had a goodbye lunch for a co-worker of mine who is leaving after today. Now, I've been batting 1.000 on this whole lunch thing thus far, and haven't gone out to eat since I began training, but I couldn't not be present for this lunch. This guy is great, and everyone will actually miss him... Not like one of those 'Oh, I don't like this guy, but we're going out to eat, so I'll get in on this' sort of things. However, the place that we decided to go just so happened to be one of my favorite lunch destinations ever: Five Guys.

Now, if you're reading this and have never heard of, or been to Five Guys, let me lay it out for you. It's a regional (but growing) burger joint. They've got great fries & burgers, and anyone who's ever spent a good amount of time with me in the past several years will know that if Five Guys is ever an option, than in my mind, there need be no other options. If someone asked me to describe the Five Guys experience to them, this is how I would do it: Imagine whatever you think heaven is. Then tone it back a little. That is Five Guys.

Eating Five Guys when you're on a vegetarian lunch schedule is sort of like being abstinent, but then going to a strip club and picking some hookers up on the way there... It just sort of blows the whole thing up. The Five Guys menu contains 4 kinds of burgers -- Burger, Cheeseburger, Bacon Burger, & Bacon Cheeseburger. You have the option of getting the 'little burger' which is just one patty instead of two, but unless you're a girl or elderly, there's just no excuse to do so. It's definitely aiding in America's race to be the fattest country in the world (We're Winning!).

So yea, the vegetarian stuff starts back up tomorrow, but for today it was nice to get a greasy meaty sandwich. I took a picture of the burger because, ultimately, it is in fact a sandwich, and therefore fits into my training/sandwich blog. And for the record, the burger has lettuce, tomato, and onion on it -- So I still got some veggies in my lunch.

"The Mongaheela"

In much the same way that most people expect the sun to rise in the morning, I've always looked at meat in sandwiches as a pre-arranged certainty. Almost every sandwich I have ever had has followed the sandwich algorithm: Bread Bottom, Meat, Cheese, Veggies, Sauce/Condiment, Bread Top. If I was feeling particularly crazy, I would flip the sandwich upside down, putting the meat and cheese on the top portion -- But I almost never felt that uninhibited. Those days of simple-mindedness have officially gone the way of MySpace, the rotary phone, and unfortunately, Knut the Polar Bear.

Several months ago, my sister made the lifestyle decision to become a vegetarian. Good for her, but dreadful for myself, a lifelong meatatarian. When I would go home to visit, it was as if I was visiting a health food store, and I would always have a tough time finding something to eat. On one of these visits, my father made us homemade vegetarian subs, baked to crispy perfection in the oven. I enjoyed it so much that when planning out my sandwich exercise I made sure to include my own spin on a vegetarian sub. This week marks the invention of a sandwich I like to call "The Mongaheela" in honor of my sister, but more importantly this week marks my foray into vegetarianism (for a while, at least)

 My idea was centered around peppers -- I initially decided that I would go with hot peppers, fresh peppers, and roasted red peppers, but then I realized that I would be peppered out by Tuesday. I revised the sandwich in a way that I would be able to enjoy it throughout the entire week. I decided on sauteing mushrooms -- to act as the 'meat' in this sandwich. Texture-wise and taste-wise, mushrooms are a great veggie option for people who don't want to completely jump into the vegetarian pool, but would like to wade around in it for a while. On top of the mushrooms I put a heaping portion of fresh red peppers and hot banana peppers, to give it a bold taste. I placed these on an already somewhat toasted Wegman's Italian Sub Roll, tossed on some fresh mozzarella cheese, and then toasted it in the toaster oven for about 12 minutes so the cheese melts. After a short cool-down, I put some pesto onto it, and my meat-free creation was complete.

Although the pictures are professional looking to be sure, they fail to capture the effort that went into this sandwich. There are two issues that arose while constructing this sandwich at the workplace. A.) It takes kind of a while to make... Between the sandwich building and the sandwich cooking, this whole process took a solid 35 minutes, while the actual eating only took about 2-3 minutes. B.) Structurally the sandwich just doesn't work within the parameters of the sub roll. I'm sure that I could find a better roll for the job, but it just seems to be a sloppy sandwich in general.

Aesthetic issues aside, this sandwich was delicious. I feel good that I'm eating vegetarian (If only for this week), and it's just a really solid, well made sub. I think that in the future I probably won't be making this every week, but I will totally consider this a huge success, considering that with the vegetarian aspect, I took a pretty big risk with this sandwich. Final score: 9/10.

The First Long Ride

So today marks the first of what will end up being 8 long weekend rides that will ultimately build up my endurance so I can handle a 100 mile bike race at the end of May. The route that Ben (my partner in training for this whole ridiculous thing) and I set up yesterday went into the city of Washington DC, and then back out along the wonderfully beautiful Rock Creek Bike Path. It was perfect -- We're going to need to travel north, northwest, and northeast in the coming weeks to accommodate for the amount of mileage we're going to need, but for the first of the long rides (a seemingly easy jaunt), it seemed a great idea to head into the city and see the scenery of our nation's capital.

The idea that seemed so great actually turned into a terrible idea at around 9:30 last night, when I was informed that because of The National Marathon (apparently a big enough deal to be dubbed the marathon of the nation), and the annual Cherry Blossom Festival (one of the biggest annual events of the nation's capital), traveling into DC on bike was borderline suicide. So we ended up doing something that I really hoped we wouldn't have to do in this training, and that is 'wing it'. With a solid understanding of the local roads and an ambitious attitude, we set off in search of 25 miles of road to call our bitch.

Once we actually got on the road and started cruising, it was pretty uneventful, but in a totally good way. Aside from the new arctic weather pattern, which dropped the temperature down to a little bit above freezing, the ride went off without a hitch. We made surprisingly good time -- We pulled off 24.1 miles (actual distance, mapmyride.com didn't take into account a few mistake detours...) in just about 2 1/2 hours, meaning that we averaged 10 miles per hour. Not an ideal speed, but considering we were stopping at red lights, biking on hilly terrain, and not actually gunning for good time, I think we did a great job.

Sandwich Switch-Up Fridays

One thing that is eerily creeping into my mind as this sandwich exercise reaches the end of it's first week is the fact that I'm going to be eating the same sandwich for 5 straight days every week. You see, I go to Wegman's every Sunday and do all my shopping for the week. Because of this, I'm buying 1 sandwich concoction for all 5 work days. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but if in fact variety is the spice of life, than my sandwich routine will become very bland very fast.

Today I came to work with no enthusiasm for my 9th and 10th chicken salad sandwiches, after having them for the past 4 days. However, when I arrived to work in the morning, I had a genius idea -- Bagel Sandwich. My company buys a couple dozen bagels for everyone every Friday. This is great for a breakfast, or better yet... Sandwich Switch-Up Fridays! It just so happened that the materials available to me (poppy seed bagel, chicken salad, onion) made up a perfect replica of the sandwich that got me through many a hangover and late nights when going to college several years ago. All I did was toast (somewhat heavily) the bagel, throw some chicken salad on, throw some cut-up onions on top of the salad, cut in half, and I had one of the tastiest sandwiches I've had in quite some time. I plan on implementing Sandwich Switch-Up Fridays on almost every occasion in the future. It's a great way of breaking up the monotony of an entire week's worth of sandwiches.

Poppy Seed Bagel version of this week's sandwich gets not only a 9.5/10 on the arbitrary scoring scale, but also two enthusiastic thumbs up... I would love to make this sandwich a go-to lunch in the future.

Sandwich Greatness

So one of the things that I've gotten super excited over since I began biking about a year and a half ago is lunch, and the art of making sandwiches. Biking to work essentially negates any possible plans you may spontaneously make to go out to lunch (no car=no drive thru lunch, unless you mooch off others). This generally works to my advantage as someone who's trying to lose weight, however it becomes somewhat problematic in this sense: When biking to and from work, there are a lot of calories being burned... How do I fill myself up at lunch without asking co-workers to drive me somewhere to eat? My answer has become: Badass sandwiches.

I've always been a huge fan of good sub sandwiches, and when I was a lad, I recall being the only person I knew that would rather go to Subway (much better 15 years ago, nothing like it is now) or a sandwich shop instead of McDonalds or Taco Bell. I was also somewhat creative in my sandwich ordering... I had a go-to sub (Italian BMT), don't get me wrong, but I also liked to branch out, and switch it up from time to time.

This 'sandwich excitement' has followed me into my adult life, and it's that excitement that led me to create a new sandwich for ever week of my training (or beyond, really, I have no problem making that a very 'soft' deadline).

This week has been my first week of training, and ironically enough, I've done borderline NO training. I've only been able to bike to and from work once this week, however the sandwich portion of my training is in full swing. This week, I decided to make a homemade chicken salad. I went a little bit of a spicier route with it than a 'chicken salad' purist would have -- I marinated the chicken in Wegman's Tangy Marinade, and also added a little bit of extra seasoning, most notably some chili powder, to give it a little bit of a kick. I also decided to include some shaved almonds... I've never made chicken salad before, so I'm not sure if that's a normal thing to do... My favorite part of this sandwich ended up being unquestionably the toasted whole grain english muffin, which is a great way to mix up a sandwich. I threw on a thinly sliced tomato (thinly sliced to ensure structural integrity), and then some cut onions and lettuce. Viola! I was super excited to make these sandwiches this week, and I have definitely gotten a few strange looks from co-workers as I take 10 minutes to build these 2 (smaller sized, so I gotta go with 2) well crafted gems, however I have been disappointed somewhat by my results. I think that I overhyped them in my mind. Good sandwiches in general, but not earth shattering like I had hoped for. I will give this sandwich creation a 7.5/10 in the arbitrary scoring system I just now created.

It Begins

It seems only fitting that I would begin my March to Martinsburg during the actual month of March. It would also make sense that during the best sporting event of the entire year, March Madness, that I attempt to train for something that may be the craziest thing I've ever done. What doesn't make sense, however, is the fact that I'm calling it a March, when what I'm training for is actually a 100-mile bike race. Alliteration rolls off the tongue... Don't over think it.

I don't want to make a blog about straight up training... I find things like that totally unreadable: Monday, rode 11 miles in 53 minutes, gotta get my time up! Tuesday, rode 13.5 miles in 1:19, feeling great!... It's just super monotonous, and in all honesty it's really annoying and egotistical. Everyone knows that one person on facebook who updates their running stats every morning and muddies up the front page. Get over yourself. I don't really care about every minor step along the way. Give me the highlights. If you run a half marathon or fall into a sewer, that's the sort of thing I want to hear about in a training blog.

So I guess what I'm saying is that my aim of this blog is not self-serving. I don't have this delusion that everything I write is interesting, or even factually accurate. But what I do think this blog will provide me with is a way of keeping me honest. If I'm charting my progress during this whole thing, than having the steps published to everyone will put pressure on me to actually do what I need to do, and not puss out and be lazy. Discipline when it comes to physical activity has been, in the past, near non-existant.

End short essay.

Today, like what I plan on doing every Monday-Thursday until the race on May 21st, I biked to work. This is officially when I no longer say 'It's too cold' or 'I'm just tired this morning'. Every day, unless there is a torrential downpour outside during when I would commute in the morning, I'm biking. No Excuses. Good weather, good music, and good conditions. Today was about as ideal as it gets biking in the Mid-Atlantic at this time of year. It was cold, but totally bearable. My first long ride takes place on Saturday morning, so the intense stuff is still a ways away, but every journey begins with a step, I guess.