Recipe: Chicken, green beans and carrots

My blogging has been particularly un-prolific but I have accumulated a wealth of information that has enabled me to set personal bests in my 10km, 15km and 21km races. The sources of my information are varied and my take or breakdown shall be "hopefully" passed through this medium. One important aspect of my training is eating, and what is "correct" eating is a hugely exothermic discussion. For all trolls who will not agree with my coloured view, I do not give a damn for vitriolic comments (note the type of comments is defined), on a safe note this blog is not nearly popular enough to warrant that sort of disclaimer.

So a small start in my blogging re-endeavour is to give a recipe that is both tasty and can be eaten with a carb (if you swing that way). The prep time for this meal is about an hour if you use a pressure cooker. I love my pressure cooker because you get tender proteins and well blended food. Another plus is to keep the dishes count...... down!

Ingredients:
2 table spoons butter
1 teaspoon garlic
2 teaspoons ginger
2 cardamoms
3 cloves
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons Amin's masala (in house spice blend from a local store Spice and stuff in Richards Bay)
1 chicken with skin cut into suitable pieces (suitable is depended on the chefs taste, I prefer 8 pieces)
3 cups cut and cleaned green beans
2 cups cut and cleaned carrots
1/2 cup water

Method:
Melt butter in pressure cooker (not at high pressure but by simply applying heat)
Insert garlic, ginger, cardamom and cloves into the melted butter and stir till garlic browns
Insert salt and masala and stir till you get a paste
Insert chicken and mix in paste and let cook until the outside of the chicken has been seared or browned
Insert and mix in vegetables and water (green beans and carrots)
Place the pressure cooker lid and set the timer for 25mins on high pressure.
Release pressure by method of choosing and your meal is ready.

This is the finished product, too lazy to crop out the background items. Enjoy

Incremental validation

 

This blog post is both a small bit of good news and a making public what is giving me some success. I hope this will help someone out there.

I took my second set of indicative body data results on the 20 Feb 2014. I am a member of virgin active and use their body measuring apparatus for the results highlighted herewith below:

Date	23-01-2014	20-02-2014	Difference
Weight (kg)	83	79	4
Body Fat (%)	23.5	20.5	3
Fat Weight(kg)	19.5	16.2	3.3
5km time	33 min	28 min	5 min
10km time	1hr 03 min	58 min	5 min
Pull ups (avg)	1.3	1.6	0.3

 

The results highlighted on the table above indicate that my eating(Paleo) and training program have been quite successful. In fact so successful that I am sceptical. I have lost approximately 1kg per week and of that 1kg approximately 825g is fat that is 82.5% fat. That is flipping exciting. This kind of weight loss is what is advocated by telemarketers and what is worse, is that “for them” I have done it with fresh food only.

 A goal of mine is to be able to do muscle ups (google it if you do not know what it is) but that is a long long way off, right now I shall focus on pull ups and the value indicated is without kipping (google for meaning) and is the average of 3 sets. The success that I am over excited about is that the 5km and 10km times are way down, in fact I have not seen these times in 2 years. I was hoping to reach these times in July, this way way ahead of schedule……I am so excited. An improvement of 5mins is just ridiculous.

I shall highlight my training program on Sunday every week so that my readers can use the information for themselves.

	03-Mar-14	04-Mar-14	05-Mar-14	06-Mar-14	07-Mar-14	08-Mar-14	09-Mar-14
	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
AMRAP	x	x	Rest	x	Rest	x	x
Morning						10km easy run	13km easy run
Evening	Weight training     4X10 thrusters, 3x max pull ups, 3x10 SS lat pull down & push up	6mins warm up, 5 x 100 sprints		8km Time trial (club run)
AMRAP - as many reps as possible - 50 skips, 30 sec plank, 5 sit ups, 5 ab roll in 5mins
SS - Super set
4x10 means 4 sets of 10 reps allow for 1 min rest in between

 

This week the training is abit more in terms of volume than I would like. I enjoy 4 training days a week. This week we have 5 sessions because we could not fulfil our weight session today. AMRAP is a term from Crossfit and can be completed at any time on the training day. The time limit on the AMRAP is 5 mins and the target is the core/abs.

I shall post my eating for the week once I clear it with my better half. Cooking is something that we do together and we enjoy. I shall over the course of this blog post our recipes and possibly videos on how it is prepared.

Yours in the way forward

Naruto level healing? unexpected side effect

This week so far I have been natural/paleo style eating approximately 90% of the time. I got 2 injuries, in the past 5 days and they are detailed as follows with healing:

Split big toe nail
While running at the ACE club run I kicked a sleeping policeman (Ala top gear) or speed bump (not a speed hump there is a difference). I split my big toe nail and when I took off my vibrams there was quite abit of blood and it did not look too good.

The odd thing is that the nail on my big toe grew faster relative to the rest of my toe nails. Meaning that by Monday I simply clipped off the injured nail and everything was back to normal. Previous experience tells me that this would have at least 7 to 10 days to recover.
Another note I have not taken any medication for the injuries both orally or by ointment.

Blisters
I played squash on  Sunday morning (with "split toe nail"). It had been quite a while ,at least 6 months since I last played, and there were blisters on my thumb and middle finger, very sore, skin peeled and with abit of blood on my racket handle. 24 hours later the blisters were no longer sensitive, and I continued with normal functioning (not even acknowledging the blister) and the skin layer has steadily returned to normal day by day. My experience says that a week healing is required.

Anyway I attribute this healing to my eating habits and on another note my bowel movements are more consistent and I am not as flatulent. As a muslim I need to keep my wudhu (flatulence breaks my wudhu) when I pray and if I am trying to control flatulence, my spiritually is not focused on my prayer but rather my bowel movements. This is a spiritually downlifting process.

Akasia 3 in 1, eating roadblock, planning

Thor and myself participated in the Akasia 3 in 1 race in pta. The traffic before the race is abit much but course itself is relatively flat. We competed in the 10km race. My time improved by virtue of the course being easier than the PWC race but the time range was the same which was 1hr 5mins. My target is to complete 10km in 50mins by year end. This is a good race with good marshals and a lovely chilled atmosphere. I would certainly recommend this marathon especially if you are not bio- mechanically gifted like myself.

My eating this week was terrible. I was traveling for business purposes and I was found snacking on chips, sweets, bread treats really easy plus all the free food on the airplane. My inner indian means that I will not give up on free stuff.i would estimate this weeks paleo time was approximately 60%. Snacking on biltong and macadamia nuts is my solution.

I took some measurements to plot my progress and hope to place the information and progress on a table on this blog.

I formulated an eating plan which I shall post later in a format that is easier to read.

Both myself and Thor are travelling this week so our training will be a little relaxed but when we train the intensity will increase.
Sunday - squash in morning
               - explosive training in the          afternoon
Thursday - club run 8km
Saturday - 10km easy

After our race this past Saturday one of the funny things was over hearing a couple debating the merits of macdonalds vs kfc. The reasons are irrelevant because they both are fried with bread and/or chips and/or coke but they believe they earned this for running. Energy in equals energy out. ...... This simplistic thinking I might address later. The winner was kfc. ......lol

First league race

The time had come to test my vibram five fingers in a race. The training had gone really well, although Thor might not have agreed.

We did easy kays the weekend before approximately 18km.

Weights on Tuesday, just deadlifts and push ups all with negative lifts. 15min of pain.

Thursday we did the club run. We belong to athletics club eesterust or the acronym ACE. The club run is described as "relatively flat with a few hills". For the record this is not true and it should be a runners swear word like "undulating".

But that is training if it ain't tough how will you cope when it does get tough, or consider all the money you have wasted to not complete.  I've seen finance being a greater motivator than disappointment especially for an Indian. That is why there are not many Indian sports stars, the risk of the cosy is too much.
The heat at 515 pm was crazy. So the club run was especially tough.

My paleo mission was going smoothly except for Friday I ate relatively well.

So race day, this was a league race so there were alot of people. My official time 1hr10mins, time from start to finish 1hr5min. That means I spent 5mins doing nothing.it was 9km/hr and I was relatively new at this minimalist thing it was a good time. 

This was the PWC George classen. One of the more tougher races to start the year.  I felt so good that I bypassed 2 water points and only took in water at 9km. I felt comfortable the only stress was the social damage of wearing the vibrams.

Runners etiquette, don't use all manner of perfumes before a race especially if the smell could suffocate fellow runners and who does up their hair before a race, that's environmentally unfriendly.

Some dude was running in front of me and he let of some rear end fire works. I felt like I inhaled all the Carbo loading aroma from the night before, it was very aromatic and I think this guy had spagetti. He is someone that I would advocate to go paleo and control his bowels or better still collect the methane and protect himself from load shedding, which ironically is what he is trying to do.

Untill next time Safe running

Feeling out process

We have completed 1 week of training for comrades 2015. Herewith below is a summary of the week:

Eating-
I only ate when I was hungry.
I tried to limit my food intake to a third of my fist size.
I ate mostly a protein and a vegetable.
I did not drink (no alcohol) and eat at the same sitting but rather alternated the 2 functions.
No sugar with my tea and coffee or at all for that matter.

All of this went fine until Friday afternoon when I ate KFC for lunch and then again for supper. 3 soft drinks, chips (crisps) and a cheese burger in 6 hours. Felt terrible. Why the change, because I was out with friends, I need to control myself during these outings.

Saturday was abit better until late afternoon where I ate chips and ice cream. My wife's stir fry was awesome.

Sunday was much better. Ate an awesome breakfast, coffee was divine (freshly ground Ethiopian dark roast). Supper was a steak and vegetable tagine. I shall post a video soon on my tagine cooking. I learnt this style from a YouTube video posted by an old Moroccan lady was awesome. There is hardly any admin during the preparation phase. easy and the taste is incredible.

Training-

I use endomondo to track my training on the road and my Garmin 310 XT as back up. The endomondo PC interface is very good and easy to navigate.

Tuesday - took my at a park - sprint training barefoot. warm up with 5 sprint runs of approximately 80m. Thor my training partner is much quicker than me. My challenge is to try to get close to beating him.

Thursday - 8 km time trial - We only did 7 km. I wanted to join my running club Athletics Club Eersterust (ACE) but the traffic became abit much to get to the venue. I am also going to have to make a plan to get of work a little bit earlier. It was quite hot and we were still sore from Tuesday.

Saturday - We took a break from training because Thor's legs were still quite sore and it was probably that his body is adjusting to the rigors of consistent training. Now is that a reason for me not too train. Not at all, I was being flipping lazy.

Sunday morning we did 10km in an easy fashion, approximately 8min/km.

I need to somehow post progress on this blog but at the same time keep personal information to my self. I shall post something soon and outline progress on a monthly basis. This blog is more a report back. The paleo eating is quite good in that I do not feel as hungry as often. The minimalist running style leaves my with sore-ish calves but my recovery is getting better and not as sore as earlier in my minimalist career. I need to start incorporating drills into my training process.

Take care, yours in training