MOW - Spicy cilantro pesto

It's race season and you know what that means... carboload!

This is a great way to avoid those nasty jarred sauces. This homemade pesto will keep for several weeks in you refrigerator, so you can break it out before several races to load up on those carbs.

Ingredients:

5-6 garlic cloves
2-3 Serrano peppers
1 bunch fresh parsley
1 bunch fresh cilantro
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt to taste

Goodness in the blender.

Roast the unpeeled garlic cloves and peppers in a pan with a little olive oil. Keep the temps low, you want to char the garlic and peppers. If your oil is smoking, it's too hot. Also, if you have cast iron pans, you can use those without oil. Should take about 10 minutes to roast them, be sure and flip them around once in a while.
While those are roasting you can start your pasta. I prefer a nice fettuccine.
Peel the roasted garlic and seed the peppers, then toss
in a blender with the whole lot of parsley and cilantro plus about 1/2 cup of olive oil and blend to a liquid state.
Toss with your pasta and enjoy!
Put leftover sauce in a jar or sealed other container and refrigerate for up to 2 months.

A full blender yields about this much pesto.

Race Review - Reebok Military Spartan Sprint, CO, 2013

Spartan was the first obstacle race I ever ran and, subsequently, the reason this blog exists. It's still my favorite race to date. It's challenging and is a good test of all around fitness. Spartan picked up a major sponsor with Reebok (first Crossfit, now Spartan? Go Reebok!) this year, so now you have the long goofy name. But oh well, good for Spartan I suppose!

Grrrr!

The venue was the same as last year, the Ft. Carson army base in CO Springs. A great area with a lot of army training obstacles already onsite that Spartan makes good use of. This year I brought along 5 Spartan virgins who were inspired by my tales of glory (and failures) from last year's race.

The route was reversed from last year and had a couple of other change ups. The tire drag and pull was new to me, as was the Atlas Carry and the Hobie Hop. The lat pull down machines were absent and so was (mercifully) the grenade toss. The covered water trench was much shorter, which in turn made the mud hill after it shorter too. Also, the length of the barb wire crawl was significantly reduced and there were no rubber M16s to cradle. The wire crawl was, however, more interesting with its hills, but it had a lot of shin and knee scraping rocks in it. Although, I didn't find a piece of broken glass in it this year, so it all works out.

The log ladder was just over and down, rather than the weave, this year, which I figure was to alleviate the backups that obstacle had last year. It was a several minute wait in my 1030 heat, last year, but went fast this time. I'm guessing this is also why the barb wire crawl was shortened, as that was a painfully long slog in 2012. Although, I admit, I did miss the rubber training rifles and the Browning 1919 machine gun firing blanks over our heads.

Running the elite heat made for an overall easier race, in my opinion. There were no backups and the mud hills were not crazy slippery yet. Also, the layout and obstacle placement made the race feel shorter than the previous year, but that might also be because I ran better, finished quicker and generally am in better physical shape (10 pounds lighter helps) than last year. My friend just told me that the elite heat is going to be an additional $30 next year, as opposed to the $10 it was this year, so it's unlikely I'll run it again. Supply and demand I suppose. I'm certainly not threatening to win this race anytime soon, so I'll help make way for those who are.

Here is a picture to break up the text a bit.

The 2 obstacles that gave me the most trouble were the tire flip, (4 flips this year instead of 2) and the rope climb. I don't know what that tire (Ted) weighs, but it is a real gut check trying to flip it for me. It's got to be over 200lb. and on the last 2 flips my form went to hell. I was able to get it over fairly quickly, but had it been 6 flips, I might have been in trouble. A couple of my teammates didn't seem to have any trouble with it, so it might also be my fear of another back surgery on these type of lifts (dead lifts over about 200lb. start to freak me out). Also, it's not a burpee penalty if you fail, it's an instant DQ! Not sure if that's true for all heats, or just the elite? The rope climb was at the very end this year and the knot spacing makes for a tricky ascent. We'd been practicing fast rope climbing and that helped a lot. I came damn close to slipping at the top of the rope, but managed to power through and ring the bell. I believe only 2 members of our team prevailed here.

After our heat, the only back up (that we could see anyway) was at the slant wall with the rope on it. This particular obstacle did seem a little harder than last year for some reason and I heard several people remark likewise. I heard the traverse wall got backed up later, and I can only imagine that the tire flip must have as well.

At the festival area afterwards, we tried our hands at the slosh pipe. What a wacky contraption that thing is! A 10' long piece of 6" PVC pipe, half filled with water, that really wants to pull you over when you try to overhead press it.  Shawn was the only one of us who could even get it over his head. But, we got the crowd into it and helped count and cheer on others that did far better than we did. Best I saw was 25 reps. There is an official contest, and the winner gets a free entry to a Spartan event, but we didn't hang around to se it.

 The free beer was, well, free beer. I know Coors is a big sponsor, but Coors Light has got to be their worst product. It would be nice to see some better beer at Spartan. Then again, this is Colorado, recently coined "The Napa Valley of beer", so we tend to be uppity about our brew. There were also Mike's Hard margaritas there for $5 a pop.
Pro tip: if you want your servers to make money, charge $4 for the can. Instant $1 tips all day long. A lot of people aren't as nice as me to ask the volunteers to make change so I can tip them.

Shawn, AKA "Herk", with the slosh pipe.

I was hoping the medal might be different this year, but it was the same. But, it is also a unique medal as far as Spartan races go, so it's still the coolest one out there. I liked last year's shirt better, they were Colorado specific in 2012 and the tan color was more military looking. The new shirt needs a bigger Spartan helmet on it, I think. The festival also didn't have any fighting vehicles parked around it this year, which were cool to check out in last time. The showers had much better water pressure this time, but the water was so damn cold I chose to rinse off at the car with the water I brought. It was a pretty chilly day in CO overall though.

Security was tightened this year, complete with a bomb sniffing army dog. Even though the security and check in process went fairly quickly, getting there, just over an hour early and herding all the cats, made for a rushed pre race prep. But we were able to get everyone taped up, prepped and still had a few minutes to spare, but if we hadn't brought our own marker, we might have been really pushing it. Unfortunately this put us at the back of the starting pack. Also new in 2013, was the $5 bus ride fee, but not a huge deal. Last year military personnel were manning the buses, but this time it appeared to be Spartan's people.

I spent a lot of time training for this event. Basically the whole year since the 2012 CO Military Spartan Sprint. It paid off big time. I completed very obstacle this year, yielding me zero penalty burpees. This fact, combined with running the elite heat (with it's less muck and backed up obstacles), wearing better shoes and the shorter wire crawl allowed me to finish almost an hour quicker than last year, even though this year's course was about a half a mile longer.

I'm happy with my 1:10 finish time. My goal was to cut last year's time in half and pass all the obstacles and I nearly did both. I was chicked once, by April Luu (she passed me right at the top of the ruck sack climb), but that's only because us guys had a 15 minute head start on the elite ladies. 6 other elite gals posted faster times than me. Last year I did 150 burpess and I'm sure that added significantly to my time. This year I only stopped running on the steeper hills and never completely stopped anywhere except for some "Everest shuffle" on the ruck climb. I came in first place out of my friends and we all had a great time.

Team Live Badass

Officially I placed 77th overall, 70th for men and 8th in my age group (40-44, although officially I'm 39 and a half. Do they round up I wonder?) in elites. Which would be somewhere around 40th place if I were in the larger open group. That should put me in the about the top 2% for the day. Can't complain about that! Team Live Badass (that's us), ranked #14 overall for both days with an official time of 1:24:26. Not bad, not bad at all.

The post race pictures were not very good this year, I'm finding out. There's about a dozen pictures linked to my bib number, but only about 3 are actually of me. Also, no lost and found pictures to search through for some better shots. But they are free, so I suppose you get what you pay for. There was better video coverage though, with shots at a half dozen different obstacles. The official video for the day is OK, but it might as well be called the April Luu highlight reel. Doesn't show much of anybody else. But she genuinely deserves it.

I am the 2%

As always, the Spartan organization was phenomenal. Plenty of volunteers, who were all helpful, encouraging and even quite funny at times. The course was well laid out and maintained. The festival area was great and the crowd was happy, friendly and fun to be around.  It's still my favorite event. My buddy Dave called it "The Daytona 500 of obstacle runs", because it's the first (major) race of the year (for us in CO) and also the toughest. I always think to myself, "Maybe I'll skip the Spartan next year, to free up some money for some other events I haven't run yet.", but it's a tough race to beat and I know I'll be back. Hmm... Maybe I'll try one in another state to see how it compares next year... Anyone have a couch I can crash on for a night or 2?

You might also like:

DIY Spartan spear with throwing tips
DIY Spartan slosh pipe and lifting technique
2012 Spartan Sprint play by play

MOW - Spicy Crock Pot pulled pork

As usual, the Meal of the Week is about enough food for a weeks worth of lunches for 2 people. This one gave us a couple extra servings to boot and is damn tasty!

Ingredients:

2 pork tenderloins (about 3lb.)
1 red onion
2 tbsp. sugar in the raw (or brown sugar)
1 tbsp. paprika
1 tsp. sea salt (kosher or table salt will also suffice)
1/2 tsp. black pepper
6 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 cup low sodium chicken broth (if you like salt, as I do, regular broth is fine)
2 tsp. worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. crushed red pepper
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. dry ground mustard
1 tsp. cayenne pepper

Line Crock Pot bottom with thinly sliced red onion. Combine raw sugar, paprika, sea salt and black pepper in a bowl and mix well. Rub mixture on pork tenderloins and place into the Crock Pot. Now combine vinegar, chicken broth, worcestershire sauce, sugar, mustard and cayenne in a bowl, then add to Crock Pot.
Cook on low for 8-10 hours.
When done pull the pork apart with 2 forks and serve on whole wheat buns or tortillas with you favorie BBQ or hot sauce.

Pork tenderloin is rich in zinc, contains thiamin and is very low in fat. Each serving of this dish contains about 33g of protein and only 4 grams of fat!

Race Review - Vampire 5K

Kellan crossing the finish line in total darkness.

On a whim, my son and I decided to run the Vampire 5k last Friday night. Originally I wasn't planning on doing this event, being that it was on a Friday night and after a long work week I typically don't feel like running. But, they said they were honoring online prices for day of registrations, and the boy and I weren't doing anything, so we decided to check it out last minute. So last minute, in fact, that I had already done some serious race training at UFL. So I was in for double duty.

We arrived at about 6:15PM and breezed through the day of registration. The fairgrounds had a makeup booth for vamps, a food-mobile, a free massage tent, the booze vendor and a "tattoo tent" where you could get some fang marks applied to your virgin flesh.

The premise of the race is citizens v. vampires. The 2 groups start at different gates, converge in the middle somewhere and finish together. I was unsure how this would play out and had visions of us crashing headlong into a huge mass of vampires at about 1.5 miles into the race. To differentiate the groups, the vamps wore black shirts and the citizens wore white, with a black in reserve if you get "turned". You turn into a vampire when your flags are swiped. Each citizen gets two flags. Once they are taken, you don the black shirt (provided by V5K) and join the hunt.

A couple things I noticed right away before the race. There were a lot of vampires milling about. Also, the event seemed to attract a lot more women than men. But, as we all know, chicks dig vampires.

The race was slated to start around 7:30, or dusk, whichever came last. The organizers had touted about running under a full moon, but when I saw the moon rising Monday around 6:30, on my way home from work, I knew there would be no moonlight running for us and it would be very dark when the sun went down. Fun fact: the moon rises 50 minutes later each day.

As the sun began to disappear behind the mountains, they had us citizens march off to our starting point. There's a shallow creek to cross and the "bridge" was backed up, so a few of us just sloshed across. I figured we'd be crossing it again soon enough and I wasn't wrong. We got to the starting gate and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Our wet feet were getting cold and my muscles were stiffening as the air temperature dropped fast with the setting sun.

Finally someone announced that they were having some technical difficulties with the smoke machines and were waiting on a phone call. A guy dressed as a demon went over the rules (no stopping or running back along the course, no contact and he explained how the flags worked) and tried to cheer us up, but we were all getting a little restless, not to mention cold. After another several minutes (we must have stood there for at least half an hour), I got the impression someone must have made the "screw it" executive decision and started us off with little fanfare.

We're off! Fortunately the guy in front seems to know where to go, because the course is not clear. We start out in the front 10 and my cold muscles are not happy right away. As we get closer to the path that follows the creek, the temps drop significantly. But after the first mile I warm up and don't notice it anymore. The route winds back and forth with some volunteers along the way to point us in the right direction. About halfway through, Kellan and the lead half dozen start pulling away and I lose him in the encroaching darkness.

I'm plodding along, staying the course, when suddenly my right side flag gets taken from me as a vampire boy lightly runs past me. I begin shouting to the citizens up ahead, that there's a vamp coming. I'm trying to figure out where he came from, but as we make another switch back turn, I see where the vamps are merging in with the citizens about a 1/4 mile back. Now I get it. They merge in, but have to keep pressing forward, so being up front, I'm only getting the fastest vampires who are pushing through to the leaders. The middle of the pack is getting slammed with hundreds of vampires. I'm sure it was total chaos back there.

At one point we were sharing a wide path, with the front half going one way and the back half going the other way. Things got interesting here and I had to sprint off course and make a big loop through the field to avoid the hungry ghouls making attempts at my last remaining flag. I had slowed down to a fast walk for about 10 paces right before the creek and this allowed a woman vampire to come up and make a swipe for my flag. Fortunately she missed as I dodged last minute and I kept my flag... but not for long. Along the last mile a vamp came out of nowhere and swiped my last flag.

I put on my black shirt and managed to snag one flag before the end of the race. Somewhere along the way I passed a smoke machine, but the only thing coming out of it that resembled smoke was the exhaust fumes from the small generator. At the finish line I was disappointed to see no timer clock. I didn't wear my watch and had no clear idea when the race began or what time it currently was.

With no official times, we had to guess at our placements by the number of people at the finish, how many had passed us, etc. We placed Kellan in the top 15 for sure, maybe as high as top 10. Myself, we figured around 25-30. Kellan nearly survived. He said the same young vamp that had snagged my first flag had run him down in the last stretch to the finish.

I wandered over to the free drink stand for what I thought would be a nice can of something. Instead, I find a table full of tiny 8oz. plastic cups, full of ice and the good stuff only filling about 3/4 of the cup. The lady explaining the favors available warns me that it's 9% alcohol (so almost as strong as a glass of white wine? The horror!). But the partial mouthful of liquid in the cup would need to be about 90% to have any effect. So I have my single swallow and wander over to the kool-aid stand and have a small cup of the "vampire juice", then we called it a night. We didn't really feel like hanging out in the cold longer than we had too.

In short, it was interesting, but had some serious flaws. If you don't know how to use smoke machines, you should probably test before the race and figure it out. If you want to have a night race, best to understand the sunset and moonrise tables. Also, it gets cold in Colorado at night, especially in the early Spring. This event was too early in the season to be run at night. Lastly, for $60 an entry for a race that has no real setup or obstacles, you could at least have a clock so people could get some idea of what times they ran.

I give it an A for effort and a D for execution. It was kind of fun and a good warm-up for Spartan (which is this Saturday), but not worth the price. With some proper organization it could be a real winner. If anyone ran this event in another city, drop me a line and let me know how it compared to Denver's inaugural run.

MOW - Crock Pot chicken cacciatore

MOW, the Meal Of the Week.

As I've mentioned before, to keep a firm grip on my diet, I bring my lunch to work everyday. I also make sure it's something prepared by me and with fresh and good for you ingredients. To further that process, I generally spend Sunday afternoon or evening making up a big batch of something for my son and I to eat during the work/school week.

A current favorite of mine is chicken cacciatore made in a Crock Pot. It's a simple, delicious and good for you.

Ingredients:

3 large chicken breasts, cut into 1" or so pieces.
1 lb. thick sliced fresh mushrooms.
1 red onion.
3 large tomatoes, chopped.
2 cloves garlic, minced.
1/4 cup flour.
2 T. olive oil
1 cup chicken broth
2 T. tomato paste
1 tsp. dried basil.
1/2 tsp. dried oregano.
1/2 tsp. dried thyme.
Salt and pepper to your liking.

Combine all ingredients, EXCEPT chicken, mushrooms and onion in a medium mixing bowl and whisk together.
Layer the bottom of the Crock Pot with the chopped onions and place the chicken on top. Dump in the mushrooms and spice/tomato mixture. For no particular reason, I put in half the 'shrooms, then the mix and then the rest of the fungi.
Crock on low for 8 hours. I've let it go as long as 11, with no problems. If you're in a hurry, you could crock on high for 4-5.

Chicken over the onion. Crock about half full.

Whisked up goodness.

Might look like a lot of mushies, but it works out.

Finito!

Serve over pasta...

Or roll up in a tortilla for lunch.

This typically will make enough for my son and I to eat for dinner Sunday night, and for lunch for the rest of the week. Adding a salad or piece of fruit rounds it out nicely.

Pro tip: If you're going to do lunches, drain the water that accumulates the first couple of days to help avoid soggy tortillas.

DIY - Spartan Spear, with throwing technique tips.

So you want to train for Spartan, but you have no spear. Here's a (relatively) simple how-to for building your own training spear for around $10.

Shovel handle. Cost: $9ish

10 penny nail. Cost: 10 pennies

First, head to your local hardware store and get yourself a shovel handle and a ten penny nail.

There are various other handles available, rakes, spades and whatnot, but the rounded head shovel handle seems to be about the right weight and length.

Ugly, but usable with head intact.

Drilling also helps keep it straight.

Drilling a pilot hole will help keep the nail from splitting the handle. Don't go too big though, you want that nail to be tight in there.

Pound that nail in a good couple of inches. I drove mine about .5" past the first observation hole.










You can use it as is, but if you have a grinder or belt sander, grinding off the head makes it just that much better.

Try not to set your face on fire.

If you're not hitting nice soft hay bales, you can expect some bending with ground strikes. Not to worry, you can bend it back easily with a hammer, or just by hitting it against a hard object, like asphalt, a goal post, or your noggin.

Dart grip.

Throwing tips:
Find your spot on the spear and get used to the feel of it. For me it's a few inches behind the balance point. I like it to feel a little front heavy.
Grip it like a pencil, or dart.
Step into your throw.
Use your opposite hand to counter balance and aim.
Arc your throw slightly, but don't overdo it.
Follow through. Let your back foot come forward as you achieve full hip rotation.
Practice. It will probably feel funky at first, but once you find your sweet spot, repetition will have you making consistent hits.

DON'T THROW IT TOO HARD! The pics below are exaggerated for technique. I'm also throwing a lot farther, for practice, than the hay bales are in a typical race. A soft touch goes a long way!

If you find your spear is glancing off, or turning sideways when you throw (usually going to the left for right handers) you are likely side arming it too much. Bring your elbow in and down towards your body. You may have to exaggerate this. For my son, we had to get his elbow in front of his body to correct the for this. It's more of a basketball toss than a baseball toss, if that makes sense.

Most failures I've seen involve poor grip (holding it in their fist and/or not finding the right spot on the shaft) and throwing too hard.

Step into it.

Full rotation. Back foot coming up to the front.

Too much arc.

And there you have it. A cheap training tool that will help you avoid one of the Spartan Race's tricky pitfalls. Now that I've saved you thirty burpees, you can buy me a beer at the next race. ;)

You might also like:
Spartan Slosh Pipe how-to

Training - 10-100 with Spartan spear and grenade toss

With the CO Spartan Military Sprint just a few short weeks away, we are trying to get ramped up and ready. 2 of the trickier obstacles last year were the grenade toss and the spear throw. Either (or both) of these can easily cost you 30 burpees, so practice while you can!

We've developed an easy to use race training regimen we call the 10-100. This essentially works out to running 2.5 miles (10 1/4 mile laps) and doing 100 burpees. Then you can mix in an obstacle you'd like to practice. We chose both the grenade toss and the spear throw for our latest session.



Here's how it shakes out:

Run one lap. This first one we took pretty easy, as more of a warm-up run.

Toss the grenade (or spear). Sprint to recover the object and bring it back to the line for the next guy.

Throw the spear (or grenade). Sprint and return.

Do 10 burpees.

Repeat 9 more times. For a total of 10 laps and 100 burpees.

Such form!

For targets, since we didn't have a hay bale or a 55 gallon drum to haul around, we used a fleece jacket for the grenade and just aimed between 2 lines on the field, that were graciously chalked out when we got there, for the spear.
The jacket helped deaden the bounce of the grenade, if you overshot it, you had a decent sprint penalty ahead of you.

Kellan demonstrates how not to throw a spear.

The exercise is more about feel and form, through repetition, and testing your throwing under stress, rather than a full simulation of battlefield conditions.

Kellan lapped me on the 8th round, to finish first at 32 minutes and change (he didn't pay attention to the second hand).
I came in at 38:30
Billy couldn't remember his time, so we'll call it an even 2 hours. (OK, he finished somewhere around 35:00).

Billy takes aim with the 'nade.

Grenade used was an inert M10 with the spoon and "fuse" removed. Found at most Army Surplus stores for around $7 or so. Spear was a shovel handle with a 10 penny nail driven in the end and ground to a dull point. Here's a link to our DIY version: Spartan spear for about $10.