Hearts and Minds

Also kidneys and livers

Reflecting

I had a great birthday yesterday because I did exactly what I plan for every Saturday: a trail run, CrossFit, and jiu jitsu.  My long-suffering wife lightly smoked a venison tenderloin in the Traeger.  Weather was bleak but that didn’t slow us down from tearing through a thorny bushwhack that only works in winter (and only barely works then).  I was freezing, soaking, muddy, bleeding, and happy.

Training

Started with a 5 AM trail run at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.  Then CrossFit –

This morning’s white board:

Every 1:30 x 5

1. 20 cal bike

2. Strict Cindy (5 pull-ups/10 push-ups/15 air squats)

3. 20 cal ski

4. Strict Cindy

Instead of switching back and forth between lifting shoes and CrossFit shoes, now I just stick with my Reebok Men's Nano X2 Cross Trainers which are pretty good for everything from running to lifting to rope climbing and added VersaLifts V2 Heel Lift Inserts for lifting.  It is a perfect, simple combination that I 100% recommend.  Try it (especially with the shoes 44% off; they are a steal for under $75 including shipping). 

Fueling

My big dietary plan for 2023: organ meat.  If you want to maximize the nutrient density of your diet, you can’t get away from it.  Eat hearts and minds (er um brains) and kidneys and livers.  If powerlifting is made up of deadlift, squat, and bench, then power eating is made up of hearts, kidneys, and livers.  This diet fits in well with blood donating/dumping; almost everyone is magnesium and iron deficient but with organs such things can get too high but donating blood gets you back to balance with new, thinner, de-ironed blood. 

But organ meat isn’t particularly palatable.  Not in appearance, taste, or texture.  I don’t want to oversell it.  A bowl full of chicken hearts… is about as appealing as it sounds.  So a few tweaks: chop up onions, garlic, and bacon to serve with liver and sear the outside enough to, ahem, improve the squishiness.  Even better: just have it blended with muscle meat.  My favorite is Regenerative Bison Ancestral Blend, bison liver and heart mercifully blended with ground bison. They also offer venison and beef with the same blend as well as chicken (peasant food but okay for variety I guess) ground with liver, heart, skin, and gizzard (sorry that last one will never sound appetizing).  Wolves eat the organ meat first; we should too.

Supplementing

Caffeine appears to help sprinting and it would be reasonable to assume other explosive sports.  I have 300 mgs before CrossFit from my favorite zero sugar or calorie pre-workout drink.  Besides directly helping performance, it increases the bioavailability of some pharma including oxandrolone, allowing for equal effectiveness at lower doses.

Closing

Having just turned 46, I’m only still middle aged if all goes well.  There are plenty of avalanches between now and 92 as well as a non-zero shot that my long-suffering wife agrees that the Audette Velos I’m thinking about is more of a “need” than a “want” (narrator: pretty close to zero) .  But whether it is 52 or 92, life is finite.  I’m grateful for every minute I get to spend with people I like and admire doing consequential things in beautiful places.

2023 beard going full Viking berserker.