A big dump (of snow)

TL; DR

• Recap: a good week
• But one orange card!
• Getting fat(ter)
• Cutting down on caffeine: It’s great and I hate it
• Finding a genre of music I hate but I’m listening to it

Recap

Good week. One non-green card but I earned it (see next). Did a couple of hard workouts. CTL climbing. Coach is good at figuring out what I can do.

Yellow card!

Users of TrainingPeaks will know about colour-coded workout cards. I’ve been pretty darn good (pats self on back) about having a lot of green cards. Got an orange card (worse than a yellow card) this week:

Trying to do a hard-ish treadmill workout after a rough hour and a quarter shovelling my car out of 50 cm≅20 in of snow; just had nothing in me and stepped off. I’m not happy about it; I’m inclined to credit the depletion from the snow shovelling but Coach Mary may have a point about nutrition (next section).

Fat manatee

In 2009 I did the only Ironman I finished. I trained hard. I gained weight.

I struggle to have enough in my gut and my blood to fuel a good workout. Having too little is a harrowing experience so I’ve tended to “eat ahead” so I can finish the workout. I’m now the heaviest I’ve ever been and I’m not any taller than I was at age 14.

I am working with a nutritionist but this seems like the hardest of nuts to crack (pun unintended just fell in there).

Three espressos

TL; DR: Cut my caffeine consumption 25%. It’s great and I hate it.

Long story: I didn’t start drinking coffee until my 21^st birthday. My parents were heavy drinkers of instant coffee mixed with condensed milk—yuck—so I didn’t develop the habit at home. In my last year of university my girlfriend took me out to a birthday lunch at a prix fixe restaurant. I decided to try the included coffee but to have it black so I could add cream and sugar to taste. I never did that; I’ve never drunk anything but black unsweetened coffee.

I used to drink a lot. I would percolate a pot at home and bring it to work in a huge Thermos.

Then I got used to having several mugs of the brewed coffee at work.

Then I discovered the caffè americano. Even when I was home I would get all my coffee from Starbucks: 3 triple caffè americanos a day, that’s 9 shots of espresso. Eventually I got a superautomatic espresso machine that would make a near-equivalent, the caffè crema.

You can see the pattern here: snazzier coffee but actually less caffeine.

When the pandemic hit my coffee consumption dropped. (So did my alcohol consumption but that’s a story for another day.) For the last several years I’ve had 4 caffè crema a day—very approximately 250 mg of caffeine, less than a single large coffee from Tim Horton’s.

The nutritionist I’ve been consulting asked me if I could try having just three shots of espresso a day. Sure, I said.

It’s been 3 weeks. The good? Even though I’ve almost always had my last caffeine before lunch, cutting down 25% has made it easier to get to sleep early—and I hadn’t thought I was having any problems at all. And the nutritionist is right: my gut seems happier.

The bad: mostly just the craving. I so want that 4^th shot. The nutritionist said I could have it when I “needed” it, but so far I haven’t crossed that threshold.

I will not give up caffeine. The boost in the morning is awesome. But 3 shots/day seems to be my new normal.

Low fidelity?

“blend hip hop beats and jazzy vibes and serve it chilled” would normally be words that would send me rushing to change stations. If there’s any music that gets me irritated it’s cool jazz, and as a Boomer I’m generally unenthused about hip-hop (tho’ there are some songs I like).

But here I am listening to Lola’s “lofi study & focus” playlist on Spotify—and liking it, at least when I’m working at my desk. Fills that aural space but doesn’t engage me or spin up any emotions. Sounds terrible but it seems to work.

(For working out, housework etc. I still like much more active, engaging music.)

Until next week!