Heavy cream and sour cream tend to give me an upset stomach, so I created this recipe using skim milk. This is a very basic recipe, and I would encourage you to add some garlic, salt, pepper to taste. I also like to add just a little “Frank’s RedHot” to it as well. Experimenting with my recipes is always fun, and lets you create your own work of culinary delite!

TJ’s Very Easy Baked Potato Soup
Ingredients
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups skim milk
6 large baking potatoes, scrubbed
1 cup sour cream substitute (see below) or use sour cream (I don’t like)

Directions
1.Microwave potatoes until done.
2.While potatoes are cooking make a roux over low to medium heat. Mix butter, margarine, or light olive oil, and flour. DO NOT BURN THE ROUX. When roux is thickened a bit, gradually blend in milk. Continue cooking over low to medium heat while preparing potatoes.
3.Peel and cut up potatoes. You may want to mash some of the potatoes also. Add potatoes to the milk mixture. Blend in sour cream. Soup is ready to be served

Sour Cream Substitute
Ingredients
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons skim milk

Directions: Whipped until smooth in a blender.

If you raced an Ironman in the last few months, you’re set up to have a fantastic series of races if you focused on recovery and kept the ensuing three to four weeks’ training volume modest. Finishing an Ironman contributes to your fitness like no other workout you’ll do, and as long as you avoided the temptation to keep training at pre-Ironman levels, you can put that fitness to work at the sprint and Olympic distances.

The first key is to keeping your training efforts short and light in the first 7 – 14 days. If you took a week off after the race, you’ll feel extremely sluggish getting back into action as your systems have shut down and you’ll need to gently stimulate them to bring them back online before you can access your new abilities properly. Avoid the temptation to push long or hard as you’ll only delay your recovery and hit a mini-plateau as a result. Now’s the time to “save your cans of whoop ass” for the races — stick to 30 – 60 minutes in your workouts, and make gentle “nudges” at top end or intermediate speed. Make sure you book yourself into some sprint races for the three weekends starting two weeks after Ironman.

The second key is to keep the first key in mind for days 14 – 21, too! After a week to ten days of training again, you’ll find things are coming ’round and the short, hard efforts feel like something you’d like to act on and “test” to see what you’ve got.

Well, you’re right to feel this way — you can be on fire right now, but save that fire for race day! You want to set the scorching performances when it matters, so hold back them horses and keep your hard efforts well short of race distance. Keep “nudging” at high intensity — just enough to engage the system, then back off, recover, and do it again. All you want to do is re-engage your speed without pushing it so much that you delay recovery from Ironman.

Be a mature athlete and rein in your horses, keep your training to very moderate amounts, eat healthy and get your sleep — that’s all you’ll need for some smoking fast sprint and Olympic distance races after Ironman. Keep your impulses under control, wait for your fitness to come knocking again, and you’ll be on fire at the races in the month following your Ironman!

Always keeping a workout log can seem to be a bit of an annoyance or perhaps a waste of time, but it’s really a critical factor in any superior workout routine. Always keeping a detailed progress log and checking your improvement will make a huge difference to the level of quality of your training.

Here are my top 5 good reasons to start and carry on tracking those workouts:

1. Increase Your Training Effectiveness
It may seem like having to keep information on exercises takes lots of time, however keeping a progress log will likely help you save more hours than it takes up. The cause for this is that you can see right away which exercise to complete next, what type of workout to complete (distance/interval/tempo) and how you completed the same workout last time you did that exercise. You’ll also be able to gauge precisely when to raise your distance/speed/intensity, which will reduce the guess work as well as make sure you can improve more proficiently.

2. No False Flattery
We like to flatter ourselves (males especially – it’s been shown that adult men are inclined to see themselves as thinner and better looking than they are in reality). And our relatives and friends also normally honey-coat their less flattering messages to us. That’s okay for most social situations, but not a virtue concerning exercising. Your training log will invariably show you exactly where you have been making good improvements – and where you have not. It will make any training session you miss painfully obvious, it will show you exactly where you were lagging and give you a transparent picture of what you have been neglecting.

3. Keeping Track of Periodization/Training Cycles is Easier With A Log
Effective training should be done in cycles to allow best recovery. The same goes for intense workouts, from which you should take a break now and then. With a exercising log, you can simply add an annotation when you’re beginning a new training period and even mark the date where the cycle ends ahead of time. If you try to keep track of it in your head, you’re setting yourself up for making mistakes.

 4. It Helps You Form Training Goals
The Progress log shows you exactly what you’ve done in previous workout-sessions. Seeing that history, you almost invariably start forming goals in your mind. You’ll be thinking about how much progress you want to make in the coming weeks and months and start setting goals for weights and reps that you want to reach. And as you certainly know, having clear goals in your mind makes success that much more likely.

5. Boost For Your Motivation
Seeing how you have progressed to greater speeds and distances can give you a great motivation boost. Your log will show you the progress your making much sooner than can otherwise be seen. It can take a very long time for training to show clearly visible results. A training log will show you your “real” progress from the get-go.

In short: Keeping track of your training is important in many ways and you’ll definitely benefit from it. You can simply keep track using pen and paper, or print out an excel-sheet with your routine listed.. Another option is to check if there’s a training log application available for your mobile device (lots of options for iPhone and Android phones), or use one of the great online resources, which I have listed some below.

http://BeginnerTriathlete.com
Instructions: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=434
Cost: Free for most functions (garmin/polar import requires upgrade/cost)
Notes: This has long been a favorite of mine, though it is lacking features in some of the newer logging programs, and charges for features that the newer ones list for free. That said, it’s extremely robust, workout tracking, nutrition logging, exquipment lifespans, etc. You can’t go wrong with this log, but you may need to pay a few bucks a year to access all features.

http://TrainingPeaks.com Personal Edition
Instructions: http://support.trainingpeaks.com/personal-edition.aspx
Cost: Free for Personal Edition
Notes: Can pre-plan workouts and have emails sent you you with your daily workouts. I have not used this much, but it seems to be a slightly stripped down version from the paid version. TP has been developed into a robust system than some online coaches tend to swear by (at least the paid version).

http://DailyMile.com
Instructions: Lack of instructions, but very intuitive and great forums
Cost: Free
Notes: Does not seem to have a calendaring feature, but seems to integrate well with social media – this is more of a “blogger” than a training log. Have an iphone or other fancy phone? There’s an app for that… Lack of a calendaring function is what would keep me from this one.

http://training.slowtwitch.com/
Instructions: Lack of instructions, but seems intuitive enough
Cost: Free for everything (I think)
Notes: This is probably the newest offering – I don’t have a ton of info on it, but it seems to be robust, integrates with Garmin (for free), import from twitter (think phone logging), and just may end up being the best deal – though I have not played around with it much yet to make the offical determination – though I think it’s just nice enough to have to try to use. There are some things missing (equipment), but it looks clean and simple.

Others:
http://workoutlog.com/
http://therunninglog.com/
http://mapmyrun.com/ – incredible mapping feature

http://www.coachtj.com/?page_id=696

Chicken with Strawberries and Grilled Pineapple

- four boneless chicken breasts
- two cups of diced fresh strawberries
- five 1/2 inch slices of fresh pineapple
- one large lemon
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Grill pineapple slices for two minutes on each side, transfer to a cutting board and dice.  Transfer to a bowl and combine with strawberries.

In a small bowl, combine paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper.  Coat chicken breasts with mixture and grill for 4 minutes on each side or until juices run clear and center is no longer pink.

Place a chicken on a plate, squeeze lemon over chicken and top with strawberries and pineapple mixture.  Serve.

Beat the Clock – Starting on a 4:00 minute interval and subtracting :05 each time creates an approximate 97 minute set. Maintain a set distance (150s, 200s, or 250s) until the clock “catches up” to you. Rest for the following interval then drop a length (100, 150, or 200) and swim until the clock “catches up” to you again. Repeat until you cannot complete one length in the current interval.

All the other posts talk about running long or running fast or changing your stride lendth/cadence. They are missing the most important aspect of getting faster. Here’s the science behind it:

Fitness, referring to the maximum oxygen uptake (vo2max). Two ways to increase your speed. Increase your vo2max, and increase the oxygen amount getting to your muscles (o2 supply), OR increase your anerobic threshold, which will in theory help the enzymes in a cells mitochondria utilize oxygen better, or otherwise your ability to work at a higher percentage of your vo2max for a longer period of time (o2 utilization).

Both ways have been shown to help, but it is oxygen supply that is the major limiter to endurance performance. So, how do you improve the o2 supply, ie. increase your vo2max? You increase the ability of the cardiovascular system to deliver oxygen to active tissues. An increase in blood volume, maximal cardiac output (due to increased stroke volume) and better perfusion of blood into the muscles account for the changes in VO2max with training.

You can significantly increase your VO2 max by regular training and by gradually increasing your activity level until you can work at an intensity that raises your heart rate to between 65 and 85% of its maximum for at least 20 minutes 3-5 times a week – in otherwords, if you want to run faster, run more frequently.