The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

Okay, I know it’s Wednesday, but I’m long overdue for a post. Life has been extremely busy lately. I have been gearing up for a move that will hopefully take place soon. I recently posted Getting confirmation on living the dream, but sometimes plans change. I have come to realize that often times we plan out a path, but God has something else in store for us, big surprises and sometimes disappointments. But in my case, I was thrown a huge curve ball and was pleasantly surprised. To make a long story short (I will post a longer version later) I will be moving to Austin, rather than Colorado, to pursue the girl I first fell in love with nearly two years ago. All I am waiting on before making the move is the sell of my house, which SHOULD happen pretty soon. But I also have to remember that the way I want things to happen may not be best. This could be held up for another month or longer. It has already drug out for two months.

Anyway, on with the smoothie recipe. Yesterday I got back into the climbing gym after not having been in over a week, and prior to that I was lucky if I was getting in the gym once a week. This season has not been filled with as much climbing as I had hoped for. Despite being out of prime climbing shape I decided to run 4×4′s with my climbing friend Scott. Basically you take turns climbing the same route four times, you have on to the next route and repeat the process. You do this until you fall. So, we decided to climb 5.9 routes after warming up on an easy 5.7 climb. We managed to finish 12 laps without any falling, but we both had our first fail at lap 13.

So, we continued on with our 4 laps, getting as high as we could each time. After finishing this, we moved on to bouldering after cooling down on some easier routes. So, in all I climbed about 19 routes and four boulder problems. All this to say, I did A LOT of climbing for being out of shape. I guess it goes to show I wasn’t as out of shape as I thought, but needless to say I needed a good anti-inflammatory recovery smoothie.

This smoothie is chock full of anti-inflammatory goodness and protein. As I have mentioned before pineapple contains bromelain that can be used to help treat sports injuries, trauma, arthiritis and other types of inflamation. I also added ground flax seed as well for a balance of omega three and six. The omega three contains the anti-inflamatory properties needed. So without further or do, here is the recipe…

The Recipe

• About 1/4 – 1/2 a 160z container of chopped or frozen pineapple
• 6-8 fresh strawberries
• 1+ cups of hemp milk
• 1 TBSP of raw tahini (optional, it didn’t affect the flavor much)
• 1/2 TBSP of your favorite greens powder
• 1 TBSP of hemp seed protein

My guess is this smoothie has around 18 grams of protein, I’m not sure what the carb count is, but my guess is around 54 grams, giving you a nice 3 to 1 ration. If you desire something closer to 4 to 1 just eliminate the tahini and replace the hemp milk with water or rice milk.

And don’t forget if you are considering buying a Vita-Mix 5200 blender you can get free shipping by clicking through the links here on my site. Granted these coupon codes are all over the internet, but by clicking through here I actually get a commission. I would be very grateful if you purchased through me! This blender is a powerful workhorse, a purchase you won’t regret if you are eating a lot of raw foods and making lots of smoothies.

  

  

  

  

Climbing, Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
anti-inflamatory, austin, carbs, Colorado, dream, free shipping, pineapple, protein, recovery, smoothie, strawberry, Vita-MIx, Vitamix discount
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Last night I was running the Cowtown Half Marathon, but something was strange. I was running with my Patagonia puffy down jacked, but even more odd, I was carrying my sister’s little annoying chihuahua named Daisy. I hate this do, so I have no idea why I was running with her. But, along the way I realized I was running by my house and I could quickly run by, ditch the dog and take off the jacket that was making me hot.

As I approached the front door of my house I realized I didn’t have the key. I thought about just ditching the jacket on the front porch but then remembered I had that annoying dog taking residents in my coat. So, I ran to the back door to find my spare key, quickly unlocked the door, tossed the dog inside along with my coat and was back on course as quickly as I could get there.

I had lost way more time than I wanted to though by the drop-off. I began to wonder if I was going to even meet my goal. To make this matter even more difficult I had to stop along the way during the race to talk to a friend. As we sat chatting I saw the pack of runners start to dwindle to the point there was nobody else running. Looking at my watch I saw that time was slipping away, so I referenced my GPS which appeared out of nowhere and had the course map on it, but the screen kept doing funny things and I couldn’t figure out how far I had run or how much further I had to go.

At this point I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to meet my goal but knew I still had to finish the race. As I began making my way up a large hill from the place I was meeting with a friend I noticed there was no longer any road closures ahead and that people that had been watching the race were heading back to their cars. Now traffic was another hindrance to my progress in the race. I was extremely frustrated and couldn’t understand why so many things were keeping me from running.

The bright side of the race though was the sky’s were completely clear, the sun was shining and the temperatures mild. It was a perfect day for running. I even wore my large aviator style sun glasses which I always feel a tad bit goofy wearing when participating in sports. I would much rather be wearing a cool stylish pair of Oakly Flak Jackets. It was around this time that reality kicked in… I woke up. Ahh, thank God it was all just a dream. My first ever dream about running, and bad one at that. I have had numerous climbing dreams which are ironically usually always bad, not a horrific type bad but just things you would never want to happen in real life.

This all makes me wonder, does carb loading cause bad dreams? Perhaps it does, but possibly no more than cutting carbs out completely as this article suggest about people on the Atkins diet. I recently read that carbs increase your serotonin levels, which also helps you stay asleep, I can see since eating mostly all raw the past few days I have slept better. There could be some sort of link here, but not likely. I guess it’s just race anxiety. Fellow Twitterer @jldrunner also had a “bad” running dream last night as well.

Today I will be truly carb loading though, eating more than twice the amount of fruit I ate yesterday. It should be interesting to see if any more crazy dreams occur tonight as a result of the increase intake, but even then it would be hard to determine if that was the cause. I have always been interested though in what causes dreams and what things we consume that contributes to them. I would be interested to know more. So, if anybody is aware of any studies published out there in the world wide web please share them below in the comments.

Anyway, happy carb loading to all you runners out there racing tomorrow, and to all you climbers I hope the weather is nice to you. Oh, and try loading up on fruit the day before and during your climbs. You will be surprised how much more energy it gives you.

Uncategorized by OrganicClimber
carb loading, carbohydrates, carbs, Climbing, Cowtown Marathon, dream, dreaming, dreams, Running
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I’m not sure how else to describe my new found addiction to running and cycling that is now competing with my climbing regime. I never in a million years thought this would happen to me. I mentioned before in other posts how I couldn’t understand my other climber friends lust for anything other than climbing, but now I am right there with them. Climbing is STILL and will remain my first and primary love. Even thought I am running and cycling more, it is simply because it’s easier to do without killing an entire evening.

Anyway, since purchasing my road bike for the purpose of endurance training as I previously posted I finally got go head out on a long ride today. I also left the homemmade gels at home and only brought a bottle of water with the juice of one lime, some agave nectar and sea salt for the purpose of replenishing electrolytes. The reason for doing this is to deprive my body of carbohydrates and teach it to burn fat as energy.

By teaching my body to burn fat for energy I will be able to perform better in a carb depleted state, maintain more energy for a longer period of time and build up a higher tolerance for pain as Matt from No Meat Athlete mentions in his Running Shorts blog.  This is important because there is more energy available in stored fat, this energy source is also more readily available; not to mention sugar burns a lot quicker.

I was also recently reminded of this concept in Brendan Brazier’s Thrive, an amazing book on sports nutrition from the standpoint of a Vegan. Brendan is a huge advocate of eating a highly alkaline diet, which I am also a big proponent of. Our bodies maintain a constant PH level of 7.35, but it has to work hard to maintain that level of PH. We can help our body out thought by eating less acid forming foods and more alkaline foods.

The cleaner and more alkaline foods we eat the less our body has to work to maintain a PH level of 7.35, thus making our bodies more efficient machines and giving us more energy. This is why I tend to eat more raw foods close to race days. I usually shoot for a 100% raw diet in the three days before, but so far have fallen short, mostly due to Holiday parties at work. In the future temptations to deviate will be minimal (at least I hope).

You can find Alkalizing / Acidifying food chart here.  Its best to avoid as many acidifying foods as you can, but many of them are still healthy for you, so it’s important to balance them out with more alkalizing foods.

As far as today’s ride… it was tough. It was extremely windy and there were lots of hills. You can view the elevation profile below the route map. I rode just over 35 miles in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. My time and speed weren’t too bad considering the conditions. I also was feeling a bit light headed at times because of the lack of carbohydrate intake. It was all for the good of endurance training though.

After getting out of the winds on more rural roads without having cars whiz by be at 60mph, the course become enjoyable and I had fun soaking in the quiet countryside, seems like I saw lots of farmers out working too. There were a number of hills though I didn’t get a lot of momentum going up and barely made it to the top. One of them I actually thought I might have to get off my bike and walk, thankfully I pulled through though. Somehow I was able to do quite well on the hills though and powered up them pretty will, which was surprising since I haven’t been on a ride in over a month.

I am looking forward to more and longer rides like this thought. I plan on riding the Hotter than Hell 100 in Wichita Falls in August 2010. I don’t know if I will do the 100K or the 100 mile yet though. More than likely it will just be the 100k. There are a couple other guys I climb with in the Texas Mountaineers that ride the race every year so I will more than likely have somebody to ride with.

On a side note I should be getting back into the climbing grove starting in January, so I will be able to start bringing you some climbing content for a change! Something I am excited about. Also, be looking for the announcement of a new climbing area I know about as well. It will likely excite a lot of trad climbers in North Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. That is all I can say for now, but if you dig through past blog entries you will see more information I have leaked!

Uncategorized by OrganicClimber
100K, acidifying, alkaline, alkalizing, Brendan Brazier, carbohydrates, carbs, Climbing, cycling, endurance, energy, fat, food, Hotter Than Hell 100, Running, Sports Nutrition, sugar, Thrive, training, vegan
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