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chicken?

(and who didn’t see that reveal?)

There’s a great farmer’s market every saturday morning that we love to go to. Fresh produce that will spoil in a week’s time, but you know what? There’ll be another market in a week so who cares? We buy 1% of the produce, but consume 99% of it (#occupymytummy). There’s also great fresh bread, baked goods, tofu, and some great street food venders.

We always make it a point to visit India Gourmet. Their naan bread is baked there at the market in front of you and is like chewing on a wonderful, orgasmic, scrumtralescent pillow of flavor. The lady who runs the place has started to recognize me and always gives me a little bit of extra garbanzo bean with my eggplant. 

With Thanksgiving coming up, meaning a week or so off of work, I decided that if I was to get horrifically sick this should be the time to do so. I (literally) stoled the chicken wrap out of my SO’s hands and took a huge bite. She thwapped my shoulder pretty damn hard for stealing her food, but then realized what I’d done. Too late. I was chewing and was well on my way to turning that ill begotten chicken slowly into poop.

And it was… mediocre. The whole meme about tastes like chicken? I finally can say I agree. I mean, it was fine and wasn’t writhing with maggots, but… well… it wasn’t the grand unifying theory of everything, either. My intestines must’ve thought the same thing as well, as nothing went terribly awry over the next 12 hours. Since then I’ve made it a point to include a little bit more and more chicken into my diet as a pseudo-suppliment.

Anecdotal response? I feel great, but not amazingly better than I did before. My defecations have certainly changed in composition and odor (not really for the better, I’m afraid… and I’d like to apologize right now for typing that). I’m certain it’ll taper off and this will even out in the long run. Hell… Now I will eventually be able to bacon all the things like those cool narwhals do. Only time will tell.

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Tastes like…

The only “supplemental” nutrition I’d allowed myself thus far had been protein powders. And that is definitely a plural there. I have tried a shit ton of brands of protein powders looking for everything from best flavor to best protein/calorie or protein/carb ratio… bars, RTD, Shot… If you can slap a bro-stamp on it and sell it, I’ve guzzled it.

And I hate it. I hate making and/or buying shakes.

My better half was concerned about me. Not about my vegetarianism. Nor my dietary habits. Though she thought both were stupid and I was stupid for doing both. She didn’t like that it “locked me in” to a life style. You see, she’d known some kid in elementary school who was raised vegetarian and who ate bologna after swapping sandwiches with some other kid and needed to get his stomach pumped because his gut couldn’t digest the meat.

The story sounded like it could be plausible, if not a bit exaggerated. But still, it was enough to keep me from rocking the boat and keeping the sails steady ahead on SS BroShake.

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If it fits your macros

When I decided that I’d start shaping up and losing weight a bit ago, I did what everyone starting out does… I downloaded an app to count my calories for me and started dining at only the places in the food database index. So long as Calories In < Estimated BMR I was good to go.

And I lost weight. And it was good better.

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On self sufficiency in diet

Some time around 15 years ago (might be more… I’m terrible at dates… It was some time before high school) I had a revelation. Literally as I awoke. I didn’t know a single vegetarian. Literally. None. In the whole wide hippie world I’d lived in, I hadn’t known a single person who was vegetarian.

How hard can it be?

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…（；￣ェ￣）

One of the things I remember being told when I was growing up and playing Little League baseball was that whenever I ran I should stop running on the balls of my feet because it was slowing me down. I remember running all around the pitch practicing running in a way that didn’t feel natural or right to me, just to try to make my coach happier and hopefully shave a few seconds off of my sprints from first to second base. I like to think that I was as satisfactorily disappointing in this as I was in most other areas of sports.

So reading about barefoot running felt like a return to form, if you’ll pardon the pun. When my roommate’s brother began running with us, he ran in his pair of vibrams and sung their praises high and proud. I went to REI and picked up a pair tonight. The following conversation took place, verbatim, via SMS when I finished:

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A bit of a change of schedule

Hal Higdon’s done me no wrong. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But when RunKeeper decided to launch a pre-programmed schedule of running into my iPhone for me I figured who am I to argue?

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Why I’m running.

Friday was a good day. Scheduling at work meant that I was likely going to be unable to do my half-marathon distance run today (sunday), as scheduled. Instead I decided I would try to run it on Friday (my day off) and that would give me several days to recoup and rest before starting up with the full marathon training regimen. 

Attempt number 1 was an abject failure. I’m still unable to run well in the SoCal sun. While sitting around waiting for my car to get fixed I was browsing reddit and found a thread on someone else’s reason for motivation toward fitness.

Long ramble below the cut…

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On half-marathons and half-memories

With my Half-Marathon Training almost complete I’ve been lucky enough to set some Personal Records recently. I feel kinda bad that I haven’t registered for any races like I should have done, but then again I’ve tried to put the distances in even if it wasn’t officially timed.

Since I haven’t had a chance to be home before today in about a week, I’ve been doing most of my gaming on my phone. I’m still not sure if I like that my childhood can be purchased on the go, but it is something that has given me a chance to go back and re-play some of the classics. There are a lot of things that I missed when I was a kid. 

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On precipitation and procrastination

Though I haven’t been very active or vocal here (work, work) I have attempted to keep up to date with my runs and my tweets. I’ve also added a bunch of social network links to the sidebar on the right so that even when I’m not around you can see what I’m up to.

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Chosen audio inspiration

I’ve been thinking of what I would listen to for the marathon since I signed up for it a couple of weeks ago. I could always listen to music like I usually do while running, but I know I tend to skip through my playlists a lot (I actually took a break from writing this to create a Last.fm account so you can see my music) and really don’t feel like managing my audio during the race.

Often I will listen to the audio from movies/TV shows while I work, and I was driving home this morning and thinking about some possibilities of movies and/or TV shows I could run to. Forrest Gump is an easy example, but so is Firefly/Serenity and Studio 60.

Then it hit me… Lord of the Rings… The best three movies about the most epic backpacking trip EVER. Plus, the soundtrack makes you feel like you’re going to war and running to fields of battle. I know I’m a nerd and all, but who doesn’t think that the soundtrack for the Battle of the Hornburg isn’t going to help me pick up my pace?

Also: at over 9 hours, I think it’s the only thing that’ll last me long enough to make it through the marathon -_-

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On indisposition and inertness

Though a sore throat and inability to swallow correctly usually doesn’t cause too much discomfort or disposition on my day to day life, I’ve found that breathing and swallowing are requisite for the physical exertions I have begun to place myself under. The slight tickle that I might otherwise brush off as a shitty circumstance of living in Los Angeles does cause some concern when I find that I’m unable to properly swallow while running, throwing off that whole breathing thing.

As such, I haven’t had the chance to really keep up with my training schedule. We’ll call the ten day absence an extended vacation. Even though I was only sick for two. Shut up.

…

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