Winter Sandwich Wrapup

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, mainly because there are no pictures, and blog posts about sandwiches with no pictures is sort of a worthless endeavor. Unless you're like really good at imagining how things taste in your mind. If you're good at that, this post is right up your alley.

After spending such a large amount of my money, effort, and time brainstorming and constructing different sandwiches last summer, I felt it was time to take a vacation from the whole sandwich thing -- I was still completely open to eating them, mind you -- I just wasn't going to be putting the same effort into it as I had been for the 10 weeks or so leading up to my century ride. The rest of the summer, and even into the fall, was sort of defined as a sandwich-free era of my life. I was happy to rock the PB&J.

Then in early winter I got antsy. I decided that I needed something a little bit more interesting than peanut butter and jelly, and so I decided to zero in on some sandwiches that I felt could be 'go-to sandwiches.' The following sandwiches aren't the best that I've ever had. Nor are they the easiest. They are the sandwiches that fall into that middle-of-the-road spot. Not too expensive, not too bad, not too difficult. The question I always ask myself is this: I've just finished mowing the lawn for the past hour in the middle of the summer. Along with some Fritos and iced tea, what sort of sandwich will really hit the spot? I don't want to spend a ton of time with this, but I want to enjoy it. These are the three sandwiches that answer that question in the best way possible. As always, these are all items purchased at my local Wegmans.

Sandwich #1:
Ham, Swiss Cheese, 2 Pickles, Mayo on Whole Grain White Bread
Ham's the most underrated of the 'Big 3' deli meats (ham, turkey, roast beef), I'm convinced. Swiss cheese may be the most underrated of the most common deli cheeses as well. If this sandwich was an athlete it would be Jeremy Lin -- Overshadowed ingredients who never get their due, finally coming together to prove the world of sandwich lovers wrong for ever doubting them.

Sandwich #2:
Cajun Turkey, Sharp Provolone, Guacamole, Toasted Whole Grain White Bread
This is a more basic version of a sandwich I created last summer. It's possible this is my favorite of the top 3. Guacamole needs to be a more commonly utilized sandwich condiment, I'm saying it right now. This combination of ingredients is the perfect summer sandwich. Surprisingly hearty.

Sandwich #3(A & B):
Roast Beef, Swiss Cheese, Roasted Red Peppers, Mayo on Whole Grain White
Roast Beef, Provolone Cheese, Hot Pepper Relish, Babaganouj, on Whole Grain White
Until just before lunchtime on Monday this week, the first sandwich listed was sandwich #3. Now I'm almost 100% sure I've changed my mind. Babaganouj is something I had never had until Sunday when I was perusing free samples at Wegmans, and promptly made an impulse buy. This makes the sandwich. In the same style of guacamole, this is a spread that should be getting more sandwich play as a rule. The hot pepper relish is something I'm sure to use more of this sandwich season.

So there you have it -- These 3 sandwiches have been getting the most run this winter. I look forward to rocking out new sandwich combinations this summer. It all starts March 5th, which is the first week that I'll be commuting on bike every day of the week.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

It starts.

March 1st rarely comes and goes with any real significance to most people. There's usually some recognition of the day in much the same way that there's some recognition of EVERY new month beginning, but whatever day of the week March 1st tends to fall on (in 2012, it's a Thursday), it's usually just another one of those days.

For myself, however, March 1st brings with it the promise of and excitement of a new biking season. It brings the challenge of another, faster century ride. It brings new and intriguing sandwich creations. March 1st is the beginning of the summer, in it's essence. When considering the best days of the year, I don't have to go very far down the list to March 1st.

That is the day that I have pegged as the 'end of excuses' day. Starting March 1st I bike to work everyday, regardless of temperature or fatigue, ultimately to build up my endurance for the May 19th CASA River Century. This is the second year I will be putting my biking to the ultimate (at least for me) test with a 100+ mile bike ride, and it all starts on March 1st. This year is not about a culmination of work to finish 100 miles. This year is about making good time in that 100 miles. My intention is to also ride in the Seagull Century in October, with potentially (we'll see) a century ride in the middle of the two. So yea, March 1st is a pretty big-time day for me, as it's the beginning of what should prove to be a pretty huge spring-summer-fall for me overall.

'So what's this post for?' You may be inquisitively asking yourself out loud, shortly before wondering why it is you speak to yourself while reading... There really isn't much of an answer. More just throwing out the information that this blog is up and running again. It was a really huge success last summer, especially from a sandwich standpoint, and I hope that people enjoy it as much this year as they did last year.

Next post to come? 2011-12 Winter Sandwich Wrapup Special.

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.