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.