Changes

I didn't do my weight lifting this Monday, or this Wednesday. My left shoulder has been bothering me. and I think I will wait until that is no longer the case. Then, I will reduce the weight values by 5 pounds apiece and continue.

I've been doing well on increasing my running volume. Today included two runs carrying just the stripped frame of a raleigh 20. It turns out that the frame is in pretty good condition. I hope to have it modified; the barb for a frame pump will be removed, along with the kickstand mounting point and a few other bits and bobs. The bottom bracket mount will be re-threaded to 24 TPI and faced down to 68mm. Then it can be sandblasted and powdercoated.

Yesterday, I washed and sorted a kilogram of dried soybeans, then put them to soak. As it turns out, that many soybeans will occupy most of a 4-liter jug once they expand. Today, I steamed them. I'm continually pleased with the performance of steaming versus boiling; it uses less energy and water, and seems to yield more consistent results. The resultant steamed beans were mashed with a small jar in a large pyrex bowl and formed into three bricks, which were placed onto a drying rack to dry to the point where they can be hung for further aging and fermentation.

Yesterday, I made two egg yolk curing beds. Both contained 200 grams of kosher salt; one was mixed with 200 grams of refined white sugar, and the other 200 grams of dehydrated and ground brown sugar. I then placed four egg yolks in each bed. They have been resting in my fridge, and I plan in a few days to put those yolks into my dehydrator.

Also it turns out my cat likes tattie scones.

Whew.

The last few days have been full. I started a nukadoko bed; it used 2 bags of rice bran, almost a kilo, and an assortment of chilis, garlic, and ginger. I've made it a habit so far to stir it twice a day.

I failed to stay off of solid food for Lent. I was just feeling shattered; I don't think I was getting enough food, even though I was drinking several keto chow shakes and several protein shakes a day. Doing as much cardio as I'm doing makes it difficult to keep up. Today, I biked a bit over 70 kilometers; I was towing a trailer the entire time. I made it to a large Korean grocery store and bought (among other things) glutinous rice and nuruk, with which I can try to make makgeolli. After I left the store and loaded up my trailer, I stopped to eat an apple, a chocolate bar, and a bottle of kombucha. Rarely in my life has food tasted so good or disappeared so fast. I also got several internally geared bicycle hubs; most of them are sturmey-archer AWs. I went for a walk after getting home today to get my steps in; I picked up some photos I had printed to send to my grandmother. It amazes me that I live in a world where someone could take a high-resolution picture and have it printed out for someone else on the other side of the world in under an hour for less than a dollar.

My black garlic experiment has failed. The slow cooker either turned itself off or was turned off. Even after only a day of cooking, it closely resembled baked garlic. I'm going to try again, and I'm also considering trying the same basic technique with other things. Shallots, for example; what would they taste like after an incredibly long, slow maillard treatment? Perhaps ginger.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll put in a large batch of soybeans to soak. Thursday will be a day to steam them (which should be a more efficient use of water than boiling them), crushing them. and making blocks to be aired out.

Early on day 4

Yesterday was mildly rough.

My garmin watch erased my commute home. Eh. Part of the whole reason I started keeping a "measured life" spreadsheet was so that I would rely less on apps, devices, etc. from other parties to track the sorts of things I want to track. Anyway, it was snowing all day long, which just made both commutes more interesting. I stopped on the way home at a japanese/korean grocery store in search of nuruk (which I didn't find) and koji (which I did). While at work, I took advantage of the availability of a slow cooker and a reasonably accurate thermometer to gather some information that should be useful when making black garlic. I added about a quart of water to the slow cooker and turned it to "low". After several hours, the temperature stabilized at almost exactly 80C. A similar experiment with the "warm" setting yielded around 60C. So my black garlic experiment is more or less planned out. I will seal whole garlic bulbs into a couple of the clip-top glass jars I have, add them to a pool of water in the slow cooker, and set it to "warm". I'll check the temperature for the first couple days to make sure it's staying stable, and keep checking over the course of time to make sure there's always water in the dish itself. The only real question now is where to put the whole contraption.

I also got in touch with a few bike shops and should be getting my hands on a few old internally geared hubs soon. I rather enjoyed rebuilding the one I'm currently using, and I think rebuilding a few more would be a reasonably good use of time. I also gave some checkouts via zoom for work, did laundry, went on a medium-length walk, and accomplished various chores. My blood ketones yesterday morning were at 2.5, and my blood sugar was down to 71. I'm probably out of ketosis now, though, because I had a milkshake in the evening. I had been feeling moderately run down all day, and was already down to 87.1kg yesterday morning. That's an absurdly fast rate of weight loss, and I can't attribute it just to water; I've been consistently well-hydrated for a long time now. I don't particularly mind being out of ketosis; my goal isn't to be in ketosis, it's to lose fat while gaining (or at the very least maintaining) muscle mass, and ketosis is simply one way to help achieve that. I just need to maintain myself at a reasonable but not excessive caloric deficit and get myself squarely below 87kg. Once I maintain that for a few weeks, while at least maintaining my strength training performance, I can go get another scan.

I also received some seeds in the mail yesterday; luffa, a couple different peppers, a red-necked bunching onion, and a korean variety of melon. Makes me wish I had a garden.

Lent, day 2

That title format is going to get repetitive.

Yesterday and today, I have been consuming keto chow mixed based on the ideas that I would be consuming significant amounts of protein powder and that I should run at an overall deficit of 1,000 calories per day, based on what I had burned the day before mixing (and therefore two days before consuming). This may have been a mistake; yesterday, I burned well over 4,000 calories, while today I consumed only about 1,800. I will consume a substantially greater amount tomorrow, but it's possible that I am not yet fat adapted to the point where a 48-hour lag in replacing calories is acceptable.

Anyway, I got in two bike commutes and a run today. Tomorrow is my last strength training day for the week, a couple bike commutes, and (hopefully) another run. If I can get that done, a 1-kilometer swim on Saturday will put me at a half ironman for the week.

I put a fair amount of thought into various fermented or other long-term foods to make or start making over the next several weeks. I bought some dried soybeans and dried jujubees, as well as a small cabbage and an earthenware dish with a lid. I plan to make a nukadoko bed in the dish, seeded largely by the cabbage, but also by garlic, ginger, and chilis. I'd also like to start making some black garlic, but the issue is where to do such a thing. There is also the question of keeping the moisture at the correct level; I'm inclined to seal the bulbs of garlic into glass jars with something in the bottom to elevate the garlic above any liquid which may pool in the bottom. The only other project which is reasonably feasible within the Lent time frame but which might take most of it is making sea salt; the main question is how to get large amount of seawater that is chemically clean. From there, I'd strongly consider just adding the seawater slowly to a crockpot over the course of many days.

As for shorter-term foods, cured egg yolks are a certainty. I also plan to make black limes, and of course kimchi close to the end. If I can get nuruk, I want to make makgeolli as early in this experiment as I can, because apparently it can be left to stand and clarify to make a drink called cheongju or yakju. I'm thinking it will probably get brewed in the larger crock that I own.

As for really long-term items, I plan to make korean soup soy sauce and have a crock which yields both tamari and miso. I'd like a large clear glass container for the korean soy sauce, so it can get some sun. The tamari/miso should get made in a container with vertical sides, to make it easier to keep air out.

Lent, day 1

Today was very fulfilling.

I spent a fair bit of time this morning looking into various foods, mostly fermented, that I could try making over the course of the next six weeks. Kimchi, black garlic, black limes, makgeolli, tsukemono, tamari, soy sauce, miso, mead, sea salt...the list goes on, and obviously some of these things take much longer than six weeks to make. So I'm going to try to divide the list into three categories. First, things that will take nearly the whole time, like tsukemono, and which I should start ASAP. Second, things which will take only a few days or a couple weeks, and which I can wait a bit for (like cured egg yolks). Last, things like soy sauce which will take WAY longer than six weeks, but which will obviously be finished sooner if I start sooner. But I'm going to at least try to get something food related done every day; today, I dehydrated some brown sugar. I intend to make two batches of cured eggs yolks, one with salt and white sugar, the other with salt and brown sugar. The dehydrated brown sugar will obviously be much better than regular brown sugar when it comes to drawing moisture out of the yolks. In the next few days, I hope to obtain koji, nuruk, and dried soybeans in order to facilitate making miso, tamari, possibly Japanese-style soy sauce, and makgeolli.

I'm also going to have to think about containers. I have quite a few glass jugs, which would be fine for making things like mead. But anything involving solids is going to need a jar or a crock, and I have two crocks that might possibly be considered fit to ferment in. I honestly think that at lest some things might be better if made in glass jars. For example, some of the recipes I've seen for Korean-style soup soy sauce say to take the lid off and expose it to the sun when possible, which seems like an invitation to contamination. But I've found at least one reference to a glass lid to be used in such circumstances; surely a glass jar could do as well or better, particularly if equipped with a shade or wrap.

But that's not all! This morning also involved stretches and strength training. After some video calls for work, I went on an extended bike ride, donated platelets, biked partway home before my tire blew out and I had to get an uber the rest of the way, ran a bit over 7 kilometers, and had another video call. I actually didn't drink all 3 keto chow meals; instead, I had 2, and 4 scoops of protein powder instead of the planned 3 to compensate for the third, unconsumed keto chow meal. In 43 days (or less!), I will hopefully be down to my target weight of 87 kilos.

Lent plans

Yesterday, I went and had another body composition scan done, almost exactly three months after the previous one. I've gained 3 kilos of muscle tissue in that time, and gone from 11 percent body fat up to almost 14 percent. I've been thinking about doing another bout of keto and seeing if I can continue gaining muscle tissue while losing fat. Obviously that would be a massive dietary change, so Lent provides a good opportunity for it. Starting tomorrow, I'm giving up solid food for Lent. I'll be consuming 3 keto chow shakes per day, but that only gets me to about 70 grams of protein per day. My strength training regimen specifies more like 160 grams per day. So I will also be consuming the same whey protein shakes I've been using with the program so far; 3 scoops per day on weight lifting days, and 2 on other days. Between keto chow powder and protein powder, that means I'll be consuming 980 calories on weight lifting days, and 780 on other days.

I want to be running at a caloric deficit in order to lose weight, but that's way too much of a gap. Of course, keto chow is designed to be mixed with fat. So the plan at the moment is to mix up keto chow each evening for the following day, adding enough fat to get within 1000 calories of what was burned the previous day. For example, tomorrow is Wednesday. So, when I mix up three shakes this evening to be consumed tomorrow, I'll add enough to get to 2,558 calories, since I burned 3,558 yesterday. Tomorrow is a weight training day, so 2,558-980=1,578 calories of fat. Since I plan to use avocado oil, which has about 800 calories per 100 mL, I've got to use just under 200 mL between the three shakes.

In order to keep myself somewhat occupied and to give myself something to look forward to, I plan to make a variety of foods over the course of the next six weeks that require extended periods of time to prepare. For example, I'm going to make cured egg yolks, which I think will be enjoyable grated over some fresh pasta. I've been meaning to try making agnolotti; that could easily be frozen. I'm going to make a nukadoko pickling bed, essentially a bed of damp, salted rice bran with various vegetables buried in it that eventually develops a lactic acid bacterial culture which will preserve and flavor vegetables buried in it. The bed takes a fair bit of time to develop, but I should be able to get it done by the end of Lent. I'm strongly considering making soy sauce, although that would be a much longer-term project.

Last week, I got no swimming done. Well, I got about fifty yards done; I broke the zipper on my thicker wetsuit early in the week, and I tried swimming in the thinner one. It was WAY too cold. But I got the zipper repaired rather quickly, and today I got back in the water. I need to spend more time swimming greater distances at a lower level of effort.

More 80/20 thoughts

Sometimes, I need to work to remind myself that triathlon is not, to me, an end in and of itself. Being on a podium has no value to me. If I thought that all that would ever come from triathlon training was a medal or a time on a formal race, I'd stop training tomorrow. Triathlon is like the strength training I'm doing; it is a means to an end. It is a mechanism by which to attain improved physical fitness. 80/20 training is simply a mechanism to be more efficient in pursuing that improvement.

Anyway, work and life in general have made it such that the half ironman did not work out last week; there was some swimming, but only 750 meters. Everything else worked out; in fact, I exceeded 130 km of biking. This week might work out. I've yet to go swimming, but today I went on my longest bike ride ever (just over 66 km). I can really see myself doing an olympic length tri once a week. I actually was thinking for a fair chunk of the bike ride that I would go for a 10K on returning home, but my phone and my headphones were both nearly dead.

It's very common for triathletes to create a "pain cave"; a (usually) indoors space for training that has some sort of bike trainer, and sometimes also a treadmill. There's often some sort of arrangement to watch TV or to use swift or another virtual bike/run simulation, and they can cost from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, even before the bike. If I went for something along those lines, I'd probably stick to a pretty minimal budget; additional money that does not improve the results is wasted.

I've also been thinking about this blog just being mostly a log of thoughts on exercise. It's really just a diary that's accessible (but not read) by the public. There's not good reason it should be limited to exercise, and frankly a couple good reasons it shouldn't be.

I'm thinking about buying a home, or buying a piece of land and building a home. Building around here is insane. The permits and fees and other assorted red tape are as difficult, and often as expensive, as the construction itself. It's disheartening. I do honest work; all I want is room enough to lay my head, exercise a bit, work, cook, and maybe keep a small garden and a few chickens. I shouldn't have to pay a king's ransom for that.

80/20, graduation, etc.

I graduated college yesterday. I do not expect that this will have a substantial impact on my life, except that now I will not longer be doing college assignments.

Today is the first day of the MIT getfit challenge. Somewhat coincidentally, I recently started reading about 80/20 triathlon training, the idea that 80 percent of your training should be of low intensity. The bool advocates a week of easy, slow training to acclimate you to the idea of conducting most of your training at low effort, so I ran 10K today and tried to actively slow myself down. I ran a few minutes slower than other 10Ks I have done, but I'll need to slow down quite a bit more.