Sorry so quiet

By bryanbig | Published: April 14, 2010

I’ll have more this week – I was off on vacation in Florida for a week which killed some time. Also working on some side projects which is sucking up a good amount of time.

I have a pretty cool gadget I bought that I’ll review tomorrow/this weekend – it’s helped with two of my biggest weaknesses. No, not my gut – my lack of organization and my somewhat suspect memory. Stay tuned.

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WOD – puppy-style

By bryanbig | Published: March 22, 2010

Here’s an example of a Cross Fit workout, scaled to a new-guy like myself:

10-8-6-4-2 reps of the triplet:

pull-ups
Box jump, 12-15 inch box
Sit-ups

This means 10 pullups, 10 jumps, 10 situps, 8 pullups (no rest in between), 8 jumps, etc…

Now, I did this at home tonight while Tracy was out with the girls at basketball. I have no pullup bar, nor a box. So I adapted,improvised, overcame:
for pullups -> subsituted “reverse pushups”. Hard to explain, but lay on your back on first step of stairs, one hand on each railing with feet out as far as possible. Pull up! This is good for me as I really suck at pullups, so it’s assisted ones for me for a bit anyway.
Box jumps-> jump up 2 stairs. Takes a little more balance not to jam your toes, but if I can do it so can you.
Situps ->situps. Don’t be a wuss.

It’s not impossible to do, and the regular workout is 10-9-8-7-n…2-1. I am trying to take extra care not to go gung-ho like normal so I minimize the chance of doing something stupid and hurting myself.
It didn’t take long to do, but if you do them in a continous loop you’ll feel it by the end. Give it a try!  After I finished, I threw on my compression socks to help with recovery and my  legs felt nice.

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Training for Chicago Marathon is On Like Donkey Kong!

By bryanbig | Published: March 15, 2010

Sorry for the sparse level of updates lately.  I’ve been very busy.  In short, here’s what’s been up:

1) After seeing how quickly my summer has filled up with some awesome life experience items + my motivation to ride my bike hours at a time has remained tragically low, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m not going to get any half or full Ironman distance races in this year.  I’m trying to use the time to balance out my body’s weaknesses and strengths.  Looking back at last year, I forgot about the 30+ trips to the physical therapist for various deep lower back (core) & upper ass (core) problems I had.  I don’t want to suffer through those again.   So, I’m slowly easing into CrossFit workouts, while trying to correct some of my more glaring running form issues.  I’ve always “sucked” from a form standpoint as a runner.  I remember Coach Walcholz and Labinski both making fun of my Stevie Wonder-like gait, and it’s only gotten worse.  Luckily my wonderful wife has done wonders for herself through Chi Running.  She’s liked what it’s done for her issues so much she’s taking the classes to teach others, and using me as her guinea pig.  So far, so good for me.  I’ll have more on the CrossFit stuff later.

2) I found out I am eligible to activate my Italian citizenship.  I started doing genealogical research after my grandma died, and found a cousin that got his Italian citizenship four years after starting the journey.  Expect to hear much more about this going forward as it is a large paper chase with some interesting history wrapped in.  There will be some good drama too I’m sure.

3) I’m doing the Chicago Marathon with Tracy for our anniversary.  She’s likely to try to make a run at qualifying for Boston.  I just want to get through it uninjured.  It’s easy enough for me – I just need to drop 25-40 lbs.  And seriously, that’s easy enough on paper as well.   I have to this point just lacked the willpower to do it. 

So here is my testimonial to the world – I’m going to be under 200lbs by the time I toe the line in Chicago on 10/10/10 with the Open Heart Magic charity team.  I’ll be chronicling my journey on these pages, so stay tuned.

I’ve also got some web design hobby stuff going on that might be interesting.  And at work, we managed to be the Category Kings in both of our funds (Small Cap Growth and Mid Cap Growth) through March 1st.  Not easy to be the top fund for very long, and we’ll see if we can keep it up for the year.  I don’t usually talk about work on here because it bores most of you and I’m afraid I’ll say something that compliance wouldn’t like, but I wanted to give the Portfolio Managers (Patrick and Ken) congrats for all their hard work.   They have the hard job – listening as I pitch the latest goofball tech or clean energy idea dejour.

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Bison Jerky Recipe

By bryanbig | Published: January 24, 2010

I’ve made my fourth batch of bison jerky this year, and they’ve all been pretty good. This was the first one I made where I used my own marinade. (I’m trying to cut down on my MSG intake, thanks).

  • 1 lb ground bison
  • 1.5 cups soy sauce (oh, I so non-paleo – I’ll turn in my card at the door)
  • 1 tsp red pepper powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 pinch curry powder
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp Canadian steak seasoning
  • 0.5 cup water
    • Ground buffalo can actually be cut into strips. Who'd have thunk?

    Ground buffalo can actually be cut into strips. Who'd have thunk?

    Take the tube of ground bison, and cut it in half lengthwise. Mix up all this crap and pour it on top of the buffalo meat. You have two choices here (I’ve done both): either mix in a little more water, and simmer it over low heat for 2-3 hours until the meat gets up to 165 f, or put it in the refrigerator for 12+ hours and let the meat soak it in. If you go with the heat method, you’ll need to pat down the meat and let it dry a bit before cutting it into strips.Either way, cut the meet into 2-4 inch strips, and put it in your favorite dehyrdator for the next 8-12 hours. See what the directions for your dehydrator say – I’m sure it varies depending on the horsepower yours has.
    Here’s the end result – protein with a kick – all grass fed and good for you.

    Bow down at the might of my bison jerky, peon!

    Bow down at the might of my bison jerky, peon!

Posted in bison, buffalo, jerky, paleo, recipes | 2 Comments

Installing the Zoom 5900 Skype Adapator on Windows Home Server

By bryanbig | Published: January 23, 2010

I’ve been playing around with replacing my landline with either Magic Jack or Skype. It’s silly to pay the $35/month for a phone we really never use. Both my wife and I have cell phones. The only reason we have a land-line is so the sitter has a line when taking care of our kids.
This led me to the Zoom 5900. It’s a pretty cool little device – it plugs into your pc through a usb cable and allows you to use a normal phone on Skype. This also means it only works when the computer it is hooked up to is on. Since I have a Windows Home Server (also known as WHS, which besides the XBox 360 is Microsoft’s best product of the decade) there’s no problem for me there. The issue is WHS is a modified version of Server 2003, and there aren’t a ton of drivers made for it.
So, in case anyone else out there is looking to try to install the Zoom 5900 on a Windows Home Server, here are the steps I followed to get it to work. It’s not hard, but it just took some digging around the internet to find all the parts.

  1. Download the old version of Skype and install it on your WHS. The new version doesn’t support some of the features through the Zoom 5900, so just trust me and get it. You’ll want to turn off the nag screen for updates and automatically download updates as well.
  2. Next head over to Zoom and download the newest drivers for the Zoom 5900. Make sure Skype is running.
  3. Now, here’s wehere you need to head away from the directions included with the driver. I ran into a problem where the WHS wouldn’t recognize the sound driver Zoom installed. It turns out after reading this post on the Magic Jack and WHS that my problem was how I was logged into Remote Desktop Connection while doing these installs.
    This solved the problem.
    Start–> Run–> %SystemRoot%\System32\mstsc.exe /console
    Click options –> Local Resources, and choose Leave at remote computer under Remote computer sound. Add your password and log in.

Once you logon to Remote Desktop Connection, you can set up the Zoom 5900 in Skype by following the instructions with the driver. Essentially it entails making sure Skype selects the Zoom Adapter driver as the sound source. After that, you are good to go – stored speed dial and all.
I have to say, so far it works great. I’ve only been running it for a day, but if it works this well for the next week or two it’ll be time to run the “family phone” on it for a while – and then eventually dump the main land-line.

Posted in Skype, Windows Home Server | 3 Comments

Buffalo Jerky!

By bryanbig | Published: December 27, 2009

Look at one of my favorite gifts from Christmas:

Bison Jerky is soo good, and Paleo too.

Bison Jerky is soo good, and Paleo too.


This was my first batch of bison jerky. As I set up my goals for 2010, I know I need to change my body composition. The more I read about it, the easier it seems. More veggies, more fruits, more lean animal food, less processed crap. I’m not 100% sold on the Paleo diet, but I think the basic make sense.
Anyway, I’ve had trouble getting over my “chip need”. I like to eat something like a chip – crunchy, and not wet like a pepper. Not that peppers are bad, just that they don’t seem to fill this need. Oh, but yummy bison jerky does.
Ground buffalo is ~$7/lb, from a farm a few mintures from here. Nice big dumb grass fed meat, like God intended it. After 8 hours in the dehyrdator, 6 oz of jerky comes out. Both my sons (6 & 2) loved the stuff – my daughter not so much. I myself am in heaven when I’m crewing it down.
I’m going to experiment with some different recipes; if I find one that rocks I’ll post it here.

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Flu no fun

By bryanbig | Published: October 26, 2009

I’ve got some cool projects I’m working on, and would have finished by now if not for the flu. Ugh. Stay tuned – I have some Computrainer file generators for you to use, and am working on an awesome deal on compression socks – we’re talking 50% below what some name-brands are charging. But that’s for another post – Tylenol PM and a pillow await tonight.

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Ironman Race Report – Part II

By bryanbig | Published: October 1, 2009

Sunday Morning – I had planned on drinking my shake at 2am, and then getting up at 4am.  I made a gametime decision at midnight and ate then – I figured there was a chance I’d fall asleep and didn’t want to kill it by getting up again in 2 hours.  That didin’t happen:)

At 4am, Tracy and I get up.  I went over everything on my lists/in my head – making sure everything was in the right bag.  For those of you that haven’t done an Ironman, you get a bunch of bags to put stuff you need for the race – one for swim-to-bike, one for bike-to-run.  These you dump off when you hand in your bike.  There are two bags called “special needs” for food/pickmeups/a pistol to end it all – that you can get halfway through the bike/run.  I had it all laid out the night before so it was a matter of grabbing them and going.  I made a pretty big mistake though – I put my run nutrition in my run special needs bag and was going to put it in the transtion bag when I got up to the convention center.  I managed to move my gummy bags over to the right bag, but forgot the waterbottle full of Infinit.  That’s really not a big deal for me since I have an iron stomach, but all my salt pills were in the pouch attached to the bottle.  That ended up causing some hurt later in the day.

Otherwise, pretty uneventful.  I was really anixous to get in the water in float, but the people looking to “race” that day wanted to save energy.  So we hung around near the entrance to the water.  Here’s a cool picture with some of the EN guys:

Do I look fat in this wetsuit? :)      From Ironman

The Swim (1:13): About 15 minutes before showtime, we get in and float around.  Frankly, that was the most peaceful time of the day. I was a bit nervous about the star but found a nice space of empty water, and let’s be honest – I am bigger than the average Ironman.  It’s more likely that I’d be bringing the pain, rather than getting it during the swim.   Luckily, that’s how it turned out.

There were a few people that freaked out as we hit the first turn.  A lot of people converge on that spot, so everyone goes upright in the water for 15-20 seconds – like being in rush hour traffic.  Remember, we’re all in wetsuits so you float a bit.  I could hear some guy screaming though – dude, just chill.

Anyway, I ended up going waaay to fast (at least that’s my story for now).  I swam a 1:13:08 – 10 minutes faster than the 2.4mi swim I did in mid August on the same course.  I didn’t feel like I was going fast, but I definately felt hot.  The water temp was about 76 degrees, so wearing the wetsuit and going out fast for me probably wasn’t smart.  I was shooting for around 1:20 -a nice leisuely pace.   Tracy took this video as I came out of the water – about 10 secs in I lumber on by.

I hadn’t planned on running up the helix – I knew it was going to be a long day and my goal was to get my heart rate under control.  I ignored my plans though and got caught up in the moment – frankly it was a ton of fun running and getting cheered on.  People are 2-3 deep the entire way up and they all were great.

The Bike (7:23):  I decided not to throw my powerfile stuff in here. If you care, you can view the bike power graph here.  The short of it was I did a poor job of keeping my power down during the second half of the first hour all the way until God took care of it for me after hour 3.  I had no idea I was burning that far above plan – I thought I was doing a good job the first hour, especially since I had to have been passed by over 500 people (no exageration) during this time.   I took comfort that all those people were going out too hard – but should have been better on my end of racing smart.

The consequence of blowing my power up? Heart rate out of control, and a big bad blowup coming down the road.  My Deep Dark Place came as we turned to begin lap two of the course – around 3:30 into the bike.  I seriously thought about packing it in there.  Everything hurt, I was going about MACH 0.002, and all around it was no fun.  I was able to get to the special needs stop, and I began pounding water and gummy bears while pouring water over my head.  I then realized it was waaay hotter than I was used to, and I hadnt drank as much Infinit as I had planned – primarily because it tasted like frog feces. Blech. 

Long story short – I did a mental reboot.  I decided my goal was now to get to the run in a position to shuffle run the whole thing so I wouldn’t join the ranks of the walkers.  I needed something to hang my pride on, and that seemed to work.  As part of my strategy I decided I’d stop for water every aid station, and keep my temp down.  This worked well.

The rest of the ride was uneventful for the most part.  a well meaning volunteer dropped my nutrition bottle with 30 miles to go – no biggy just switch to Gateraide.  This worked well until the Gatoraide I took at the very last aid station was launched as I hit a hard bump coming back into Madison.  Unfortunately, I was on the razor’s edge nutrition-wise because I bonked HARD the last 4 miles in.  If you check out the power graph, you’ll see how the blue line plummets the last 15 minutes of the ride.  There’s no real hill there – that’s just me gasping for life. 

The “Run” – 5:26:  I was in a bad place at transition.  I ended up losing my sunglasses, I didn’t have my nutrition, and I’ve never run more than 18 miles before.    Considering this, I think I did ok.  My strategy was to run between every aid station, walk the station as I eat/drink, and walk the hills.  I was planning on running the first 6 miles at 10ish min/mile, and pick it up after that.  That didn’t happen.  I averages 11:30’s the first 6, falling back to 12’s for 7-13.    I was just cooked by this point.  I had a good time, and I was amazed by how many people were outright walking it.  As proof that the Ironman is a walking event for a vast majority – my shufflerun 12:26/mile pace let me gain 230 spots in the final ranking.    I hit dark spots at mile 12-14 and mile 20.  Mile 12 is where you really hear the crowd cheering for the finishers, and you run up alongside those lucky souls who have finished for the day. However, I had to turn off to begin the next 13miles while they get to hit the showers. I wanted to punch their smiling, fit faces in. 

Mile 20 is like a blurry nightmare to me.  It’s nearly completely dark out by Picnic Point except for the aide stations and a goofy Ford booth.  All I could think of was this is what the night scenes from Gear of War wear built off of – beacons of light with bad,bad,bad man dark inbetween.  Even though I knew mentally I only had another 1-1:15 to go, it felt like I had years ahead of me.  The light never seemed to get closer – until it did.  Once I hit the turnaround I stopped to work out a cramp, and then it was onward to home.  That made it much easier mentally.

Finish: 14:24 – And then, after 9pm, it was all over.  I’d finished.

From Ironman

Two photos capture the moment.  First was this one with Tracy: she’d been there the whole day cheering me on, and I really appreciate it.  She also let me train the 3-5hours needed on Sat/Sun without complaining.  It takes a special woman to do that when you have three kids.

From Ironman

Then, there was the pizza….I swear to you that that generic soda and pizza were the best my lips have touched.  And let me assure you that I have purveyed many pies and drinks in my day!

From Ironman

Post race: I have had the post-Ironman blues.  Hard!  It’s weird to have no real goal to hit.  I also know I won’t have a chance to redeem my performance until 2011 at the earliest, so I’ve been babying up and stewing about that for a bit.  It’s time to man up and just enjoy the fact I did it, I am an Ironman, and look forward to the future.  Thanks again for everyone that supported me along the way – I hope to be able to return the favor again in the near future.

Last pic – REMEMBER TO GET SUNSCREEN EVERY CHANCE YOU CAN! I had it put on at swim-bike and bike-run transitions, but it wsn’t enough.  This still hurt 2 weeks later.

From Ironman
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One Week After – My Ironman Wisconsin 2009 Race Report Part 1

By bryanbig | Published: September 20, 2009

Now that my body feels pretty much healed up and my head seems to be screwed on straight, I feel like I can give a race report to the rest of the world that won’t make me sound like a whiney little biatch. Trying to look at it objectively, I did okay for my first time out. I want to thank everyone that gave me support – both financial and well-wishes – during the day.  I’m really lucky to know as many good people as I do, and the day only confirmed it.  I want to thank my family as well – without the help of both sets of grandparents the day would have been even harder for Tracy.  It was great to have my mom and dad around on the course, and Tracy was a real trooper.   She put up with the long training rides and runs, the going to bed by 8:30 most nights, and my general insanity the last few weeks into the event.  Love you, T!

I have to say one of the things that makes Ironman so much fun is just how significant each decision is during the day.  The only analogy I can draw to illustrate from other sports is in golf – you face decisions on where to push or place safe on most holes.  Your score on a hole will be very different if you decide to layup rather than drive over a river at 225yds, depending on how well you execute.   Most people should layup, but few do.  This leads to scrambling to save a score.

Now imagine that what you do on the first shot of the first hole will have a direct effect on ALL the remaining shots of the round.  That’s Ironman-racing.  And much like my golf game of old, I shot around “bogey-plus” for the day.  I got into trouble early, stuck to the plan to try to recover for about an hour, and then blew apart my day.  Once I realized what I had done I did what I could to make sure I’d be able to run the run – but this came at the cost of a slow bike ride.  In the end, I finished my first Ironman Wisconsin in 14:24.   My “C-Must accomplish-to-feel-successful” goal was to finish the race.  I didn’t tell anyone but Tracy, but my A-goal was to finish somewhere between 12:30 and 13:30. I knew it would take a nearly perfect day of racing for me to do that, but Endurance Nation’s execution training certainly provided me with the knowledge to attempt to pull it off.  Last Sunday wasn’t to be that day.

I’m going to cover Thursday-Friday in this post, and then Saturday up to the race itself in the next one. It just fits better that way.

I came into the week in a bit of no-man’s land. I’d been feeling pretty crappy for 3 weeks running, but just starting to get back to full-strength. This was unfortunate because it seemed like my biking power peaked the end of July and had fallen off by mid August. I was marking it up to cumulative fatigue, but after two mediocre race rehearsals I wasn’t sure what I was capable of doing during the race. My runs were holding up fine – slow, but still near the peak for the year. Now the cold had made me bag a few bike workouts into and during taper, which I was pretty sure wasn’t going to make me faster :) .I knew I could get through the bike but wasn’t expecting the 18+mph (~6:10hrs split) that I was after seeing my results YTD on my long rides around the end of July.  I had ball-parked a 1:30 total swim, 6:35ish bike (17mph), and a run from 4:30-5:00 as what I could expect for my effort.  I really didn’t know though since I’d never done anything this long before – no marathons, no half irons.

Thursday Night: In the following video the opening introductions were from the team dinner on Thursday night. I was in charge of organizing it and it took up more time than I expected. We ate outside at the Great Dane and I enjoyed two of their finest dark malt beverages with my meal.  Calories baby! I think most everyone enjoyed the night – if not they are more than welcome to try their hand at cat-herding by running it next year :) There’s a lot of cool race footage in there as well including some of this insanely hard-working fast guy that has shown me the template for success in 2012.   He earned his win through hard-work and dedication – congrats Matt.

After dinner I scooted quick so I could get back to Barb and Kevin’s.

Thanks again Barb and Kevin for everything you did during the weekend. I really appreciate it.

Thanks again Barb and Kevin for everything you did during the weekend. I really appreciate it.

They were nice enough to let me stay over, and I didn’t want to keep them up waiting for me since I didn’t have a key.  (Thanks again guys!)

Friday: I drove on down to the Monona Terrace to get into the water to do the practice swim by 8:30am.  A bunch of EN’rs were there, so I swam with them.  I didn’t feel awesome, but the water was much cleaner and less stinky than the day before.  I forgot my watch but swam a 1.2 mile loop somewhere between 40 and 45 minutes.  That seemed like a good pace for raceday – in retrospect that wold have been perfect.  It was also the pace  I swam during the Madison Open Water Swim race three weeks prior.  Luckily, the drunk guy that drowned Tuesday night didn’t surface until Sunday after the swim – I was a little freaked that I’d be the lucky guy to find him.

We dried off and headed upstairs for the Four Keys Talk by Rich and Patrick.  I can’t be more plain about this – IF YOU ARE RACING IRONMAN YOU NEED TO GET THE DVD OR SEE THE TALK.  Period.  It’s common-sense information but nearly 95% of the people racing were doing the exact opposite of what they should on race day. It was cool to see how many people just walked by and stuck around to keep listening.  Eventually the Ironman officials “soft” kicked us out because a pro was about to have a press conference behind us.  There were probably 100 people at the talk by the end of it.

Of course, my red shirt didnt fit (I grabbed a kids large, no dice there) so Im the Zen-master in the middle.

Of course, my red shirt didn't fit (I grabbed a kids large, no dice there) so I'm the Zen-master in the black in the middle.

Ended up going to lunch with Jesse and his wife, Josh and Tony at a random Thai restaurant on Willy Street.  I was a little nervous about spicing it up 48 hours out but the food was really good.  I love Thai anyway, and it didn’t disappoint.  Josh made a good call.   We walked back up to the Expo (I bought some cowbells), and then parted ways.  I checked into my hotel room and tried to sleep but it wasn’t happening.  I made sure to get off my feet and laid around waiting for Tracy to get into town.

That night, I skipped the mandatory meeting at the Terrace and instead had a wonderful cookout with Barb and Kevin/their kids/our kids.  They were great neighbors, and the kids had a good time playing with their old friends.  I’m glad we don’t have a trampoline though; they’d never get off of it.  I stopped over at the waterpark with the kids and then went back to the room to try to get my last good night of sleep.

This is where it sucked.  I couldn’t fall asleep – I think I finally did around 12:30.  I knew it was going to be my last night of rest so I just transferred all the anxiety forward.  Brilliant!

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Ironman is fun

By bryanbig | Published: September 14, 2009

This will be quick because I’m exhausted, I’m typing on my crackberry and I’m off to bed. I’ll have much more detail later. My quick thoughts were my swim was WAAAY too fast for my fitness, I burned too many bike matches in the second hour which then made me shift from a goal-time focus to a just finish one. While I made a ton of rookie mistakes I need to remember I was a rookie. I also had a ton of fun for the most part.
I’ve got a real bad case of sunburn which almost drowns out the rest of the body pains.
More pictures, stories to follow. I’m hoping there are some of me on the 2nd loop of the bike where my neck said “no mas” to holding up my head in the aerobars. It had to look funny.

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