Cooking Clean: Recipes Part 1

Nutrition is a huge part of performance that most triathletes overlook.  Training & nutrition go hand in hand, which is why I love triathlons.  Triathlon forces me to concentrate on fueling the body with high quality foods in order to recover and reap the benefits of all the hard work I put in. When I'm training there is little room for bad foods & alcohol and you need to have discipline.  I follow the 90/10, which means 90% of what I take in very healthy and the other 10% I can treat myself if needed. 

With so many artificial/processed foods flooding the market, people are misinformed and often tricked into buying the wrong types and brands of food.  Try going to the supermarket and picking bread without any "high fructose corn syrup".  Try buying deli turkey, canned foods such as lentils, soups etc. that have less than your daily sodium requirement.   It becomes hard to find healthy alternatives if you don't know what to look for. 
I have seen a shift to more healthier foods and labeling such as "low calorie, low fat, high fiber" , but sometimes this even confuses the consumer more.  Big corporations do whatever they can to promote and label a product healthy when in fact it may not be. 

The only advice I have is to be informed about the foods that you eat.  I see the difficulty in eating healthy due to life stress, long job hours, bad habits & misinformation as people get older.  The fact is a lot of people have never had a chance to feel the benefits of eating healthy because they are so used to feeling horrible all the time.  I think most people given a choice would eat natural foods and leave the fake artificial crap behind. 

Below is a couple great food I incorporate into my diet on a weekly basis.  I try to break down the recipe so you can easily try this at home:
1. Baked Brussel Sprouts & Sweet Potato:

These are two of the healthiest, best tasting veggies you can find out there and are also the easiest thing to cook.  Prep time takes seconds. 

Roasted Brussels:
1.)  Preheat oven to 400 and cook.
 2.)Cut off the end of the brussel sprouts discard, half brussels and lightly coat in Olive Oil Salt & Pepper in a pan.
3.) Cook roughly 30-45 min
4.) Key is every 10 min to shake pan/turn over brussels for even cooking.  I love to keep the flakes that fall off each brussel as they turn crisp when baking similar to eating a kale chip.

Baked Sweet Potato:

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2.) Knife the yam/sweet potato (This allows some of the built-up steam to escape from the inside of the potato as it cooks)
3.) Put some tin foil on bottom of a pan and place in the oven for at least an hour.  Depending on the size of sweet potato some may take 1.5-2 hours.  I usually cook them for as long as 2 hours as I love to eat them as soft as possible.
4.)  Once they are done you can enjoy them by slicing them in half to let them cool off.  A good addition mashing inside with a ford & mixing a teaspoon of olive oil, salt, pepper into the potato for extra taste.

Option 2:  Puree

You can also use your baked sweet potatoes as a puree to incorporate under a seafood/chicken dish or even a soup incorporating stock.  All you need is a blender.  Complete by removing skins from sweet potato, add some olive oil (experiment with 1/4- 1/2 cup, salt , pepper).  You can add spices as well if you have chopped up jalepeno or even minced garlic would be a great additional for flavor. 

Option 3: Fries

For a decent sized Yam I would cut in half length wise and then cut each half into 3rd's, which leaves you with 6 yam wedges.  You can use as many potatoes as you would like, but clearly try and cut pieces to similar size for even baking.  Preheat oven to 400-425 while you lightly coat the sweet potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper.  Place on a baking tray and cook for at least 30 minutes or until nice and crispy.  After 15-20 minutes I would check on them and flip to other side for a nice burnt, crisp taste.


Kale Chips:
1.) Preheat oven to 225-250 degrees
2.) Cut kale from stems and chop evenly
3.) Lighly coat w/ olive oil, sea salt & pepper
4.) Bake for 15-20 min or until kale turns krispy.  Make sure to rotate/flip if needed

2.  Roasted Asparagus, Mushrooms, Zucchini with a side of Kale Chips;  When baking always lightly coat your veggies with olive oil, salt, pepper.  This is key & the flavor will come through baking & roasting for a long period of time.

3. Montauk stripped bass pan-seared & baked w/ lemon, homegrown chives, garlic over sautéed kale, vine tomato, chick peas, curry paste & onion in a lemon garlic olive oil.

When preparing fish I usually love to pan seared the fish first.  Which includes high heat and a small coat of olive oil salt pepper in the pan.  Once hot, place the fish filets in your pan & cook for a couple minutes on each side with the highest heat.  You should see each side become a light brown/crisp color.  You can cook straight through by lowering the heat & cooking for several more minutes or you can prepare the oven around 325- 350 degrees and bake the fish in a dish.  I usually let the fish bake with some minced garlic, vine chopped tomatoes/cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs.  You can add a touch of butter for taste, but it isn't necessary.  Also, topping your dish off with fresh parmesan or cheese of your choice for an extra bit of flavor. 

NYC Triathlon Race Report

I signed up for the NYC Triathlon as one of my main races for the season.  I figured it would be a good measure of where I stood in the elite field, considering this race draws over 3,200 triathletes and has a very talented field of elites/pros.  Even though I didn't get a full taper before the race, I took Friday and Saturday as a very light training day so my legs were somewhat fresh come race time.  With Timberman 70.3 in New Hampshire coming up in 3 weeks I wanted to make sure I didn't lower training volume too much.

Raceday: It was not the best day for a triathlon.  Rain made for a rough water swim and also a slick bike course. 

3:00 A.M. Wakeup
Breakfast: 2 or 3 eggs. Shake with blueberries/peanut butter/coco oil/strawberry/Green Superfood and made sure to take my Krill Oil pills.

3:45: 10 min Drive into NYC
4:15: Set up in Transition area
5:00: 30 minute Walk to swim start

The race was supposed to start at 5:40, but due to an oil spill on the West Side Highway we ended up with a 45 minute delay.  Waking up at 3:00 a.m. was miserable in itself and to add that everyone was sitting in the rain for 2:30 prior to race was even worse

Swim: 16:04   17th/40 Elite

I was in the 3rd Wave with all the Elite Age Group Men.  The first three waves, which including both pro men and pro women had a "dive" start of the 99th street pier.  The 1 mile swim portion is known for very fast times with the help of the Hudson River current.  I consider myself a pretty strong swimmer, so the speed of this course was an advantage to all the weak swimmers since the difference in times weren't that large.  On this day, the current was rough with large swells similar to that of an ocean.  I lined up as far out on the Pier as possible behind another competitor.  I had read that being on the far side would help carry more of the current.  As soon as the horn went off I was immediatly struggling.  My goggles had came off due to the dive start and I found myself on my back trying to get them readjusted as quick as possible.  Wearing new goggles was a bad idea and I soon realized instead of being out in front with the strong swimmers I would have to battle my way back in some rough waters being blocked by some of the slower guys.  I past a fair amount of swimmers, but didn't really settle and get my breathing calm until 3/4 of the swim had past.  The swim was a disspointment as I wanted to be somewhere between 5-10 coming out of the water.  The horrible swim condition is a situation that you cannot train for.  Experience is what helps you get through these types of challenges and next time I will be prepared.



Transition 1:  4:29

The transition at this race is like no other I have seen.  With some many atheletes there were two transition areas.  The distance from the swim exit to where my bike was about 3/4 of a mile.  We had to enter the transition on the South side with our bikes on the North end.  We pretty much ran past our bikes all the way to the South and had to run back North.  With the transition being so long I could hopefully make up for the mediocre swim and push the pace.  Running at a good pace (6:15 or so) I had gotten and my bike out of transition in 10th place.  This was huge as I gained 7 spots just while transitioning, which shows you the importance of the transition and also how close in time the swimmers exited the water.  About 6 swimmers came out of the water 10 seconds before me.

Bike: DNF

The bike started off on the sidewalk by the Hudson River followed by an immediate steep hill up to the 79th Street Boat Basin and onto the West Side Highway.  I carried 2 water bottles with me.  One bottle was strictly water while the other carried my electrolytes.  Before entering the Highway I hit a bump, which immediately flung my Electrolyte bottle to the ground.  I had a split second to go back, but decided I would try and manage with the one water bottle and some gels I had brought.  The Bike course was an out and back 25 miler.  The roads were very slick since it was raining and I had to focus on balance, avoiding puddles and potholes while pushing a steady pace.  I told myself that I would not hold anything back this race on the bike and I began to cruise, passing 2 to 3 people withing the first 6 miles.  Around mile 7 I began pushing the pace and was battling with 2 other guys for position.(One who wound up 5th overall in the elite & another that finished 10th).  With a couple miles to go I saw the lead Professional Men being followed by police as they made there way back to 79th Street.  About a half mile from the turn around I saw a pack of Proffesional Women making there way back and knew I was putting up a strong bike performance half way through.  With 12.5-13 miles of biking complete I had a time of 30:25(25 mph), which was encouraging. 

Soon after an amazing 1st half bike I realized I was fucked going 10 mph through the Bronx on the Henry Hudson Parkway!  I began losing air in my back 808 tubular with no spare.  In a race where a couple minutes can be the difference between finishing 1st or 30th I figured I wouldn't continue if this had happened.  Also, due to my inexperience with changing a tubular, where the process includes ripping of the tire from the glued wheel.  I soon got off the highway and realized my day was done.  There was no bike support North of the toolbooth, which was a couple miles up the road.  At this time it was 7:30 a.m. and still raining. I borrowed a policeman's phone to leave a message for family that I wasn't going to be at the finish line.  Luckily enough an old lady called a cab for me around 9 a.m. to take me to Central Park to meet up with family.  Thank god or else I would;ve had to wait until 11:00 a.m. until the last biker was finished!

At the end of the day, it was a huge disspointment for me with all the preparation the week prior and expectations to perform during the race.  Even more dissapointing was the idea of your family getting up early to cheer you on, but in the end having to pay for my cab ride and wait hours for me to collect my belongings.  Meanwhile 3200 other athletes and 1,000's of spectators are racing or cheering with so much excitement.  I would like to try and put this race behind me until next year and focus on Timberman 70.3 for August 21st.

The Beginning...

March 2010:

I was working down in the financial district in NYC full time, while spending my nights learning Brazilian Jui Jitsu at LA Boxing in Hoboken, NJ.  One night after being sidelined in a Jui Jitsu practice I remember talking to friends about how it would be cool to race in an Ironman.   Within hours I found myself on Ebay looking at triathlon bikes.  It became an obsession looking at these beautiful, rediculously expensive bikes and I began to realize the money/technology involved with the sport.  I had spent over a month researching Tri bikes and finally pulled the trigger on a used 2009 Cervelo P2, which was in great shape.  I figured a well-maintaned used bike would be a better value than something brand new.  I do consider it insane to spend $2,400 on a bike especially since I haven't done a single race yet, but this decision turned out to be a great one because I had to back up the value of the bike with good performance and frequent use.

I still didn't know what I was getting myself into.  I had to answer questions like; Where am I going to bike?  Where am I going to swim?  How much added costs will be incured with new pool memberships?  What added cost go into biking?   What's the pool schedule each week?  How many hours a day will I need to set aside to not only train, but gettting to and from training?  How many hours a day/week/month do a train? etc..  I was accustomed to training for one sport and realized training for all three disciplines would be a huge obstacle, create more stress and would definitely need some getting used to.

I started solving all of these unknowns that I had been worried about. I began swim workouts at Steven's College in town and researched bike routes in the area to avoid any busy streets if possible.  I had found a website http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/ that helped me link up with others to understand what is needed for a triathlon and give me a structured monthly plan of how to train for the races ahead.  Looking at the training plans some weeks were in the 10-15 hour range, which seemed impossible.  I knew it would be a long road, but I kept a positive outlook and tackled each day as it went by.

Jumping straight into a full Ironman for my first race would just be an idiotic way of starting out.  I soon began to realize that there was more to a triathlon than just the "Ironman".  "Ironman" is a long course distance, as well as, multiple races organized by the WTC. 

There are many other race distances out there including:

1. Sprint(shortest) 2. Olympic(Midlevel) 3. Half Ironman (2nd Longest) 4. Full Ironman (Longest).

I decided to start of the season with a short sprint triathlon and build up to an Olympic Distance Event(1 mile swim, 24 mile bike, 6.2 mile run) in June and take the season as it went.  This is where my first triathlon experiences began....