The season ends with a win!

I decided to add another competition to my schedule this year. Yesterday was the 3rd annual Mai sibling cookie competition, and I was able to register last minute. My preparation was less than ideal. I didn't even get in a good warmup. I could definitely handle the cookie eating, but I havn't made a cookie since last years competition where I was thoroughly whooped by Calvin and his christmas tree things for the "best presentation" award (over my stupid cardimom deep fat fried rings of frustration). This year I decided on a more standard cookie and going full force for the "best taste" award. So what tastes good you ask? Chocolate. Check. Coconut. Check. Oatmeal. Check. Copious amounts of sugar and butter. Check. The result?

BAM! The coveted "best taste" award.

I had stiff competition this year from Christine, who made a fabulous chocolate 'thin mint' type cookie. Carolyn, Jillian, Josh and Calvin were all clearly gunning for the presentation award. In the end, Carolyn took the award with her delicate christmas tree cookies over Jillian's decorated chocolate cookies. Calvin's cookies were suppose to be brown and red, but he put too much brown in or something and ended up with an all brown candy cane. Josh mistakenly forgot to add 2 cups of flower to his recipe and ended up with a buttery mess (I still would have eaten them had he not thrown them away). He ended up going with a celery and peanut butter cookie. They were still good:)

My masterpiece before 15 min @ 375

Jillian, Josh and Christine hard at work

The final judged plates. Clockwise from top are:

Curt: Oatmeal choco chip coconut cookies

Calvin: Chocolate Snickerdoodle candy cane cookies

Josh: Celery with Skippy and chocolate

Christine: Chocolate 'thin mint' delite

Jillian: Chocolate reindeer cookies

Carolyn: Christmas tree sugar cookies w/green filling

Strange Dream

Christine and I are enrolled in some sort of character building seminar. One session of the seminar is to bungee jump off a high dive platform and dip your head in the water. We are waiting in line for our turn to bungee jump when I am approached by a woman who brings me aside and says,

"Do you know who I am?"

"No" I say

"I'm Hunter Kemper's wife. Are you sure it's a good idea for Christine to be bungee jumping?" (keep in mind I've never met Hunter Kemper's wife).

"why?" I ask

"you know, with her 5 months pregnant?"

And then I wake up. Meaning??? Discuss.

Seven pound update

1 week in and it hasn't been too bad. I've been pretty darn good about my goals if I do say so myself.

Update on the goals:
Instead of cream in the coffee I'm doing milk... I tried straight-up black coffee and it's downright gross.

The breakfast thing is pretty hard. I wake up really hungry and really want that second bowl of cereal. I have not been able to add the fruit... I'm doing a couple eggs and the sausage instead. It's probably not as good as fruit, but it's way better than another heaping bowl of cereal.

The night-time eating, as expected, is the hardest. It's just new for me to go to bed not full. Reading before bed has helped me get my mind off that, then I'm usually OK. Right now I'm reading a Lee Child's book my dad gave me called 'One Shot'. Good escapism.

The biking before eating is kind of weird. It's hard to get started on an empty stomach, but after 5 min. it's fine.

Starting Weight: 199
End of week 1: I'll say 196. I weigh myself at the same time (right when I wake up), and I was actually 195, but I didn't really believe that I could drop 4 lbs in 1 wk, so I weighed myself over the course of the day and it averaged out to be about 196. Well on my way.

On another topic, tonight we're going to the play 'A Christmas Carol' starring my former room-mate Tyler who's playing the Ghost of Christmas Past. Should be fun, I've never actually seen A Christmas Carol.

Over and out. Curt

Buffalo Triathlon... Revisited

So I had completely given up on finding any pictures of me from the finish line at Buffalo. At first I didn't want to see any, but after I completely recovered, I got curious. But looking at my brightroom photos, all they had of me was from the swim and bike. Well... after getting a 'order reminder' from brightroom, I took a stab at looking through the 'lost and found' photos and found some interesting shots. I had to post an updated slide show.... I apologize for the swear words in the music, but it just fit so well.

Seven Pounds

So I saw the trailer for the new Will Smith movie 'Seven Pounds' and figured it was a good target for me. Lose 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why? I may not be huge, but I think even 7 pounds would help not only with my running speed, but also with injury prevetion with running. I put a lot of abuse on my legs and feet slamming 200 lbs repeatedly into the ground. Why now? I don't want to try to lose weight when I'm training, which will start in January, because I've tried that before and it ends up sapping me of energy.

So here are the numbers:
27 days to create a caloric deficit of 24,500 (7x3500 Kcal)
Average of 907 calories a day.
46.5 hours of cursing myself for doing this.

My seven step plan to accomplish this.
1. Replace 1 of my bowls of cereal in the morning with fresh fruit and 2 turkey sausage links (or some other source of protein)
2. No more gas station food or McDonalds. Either bring all my food to work for the day, or buy a subway sandwich.
3. No more cream in the coffee. I can take it black for a month.
4. This is the big one. After dinner, no more oatmeal or cereal. I will allow myself 1 serving of fruit or veggies (apple, carrots, orange). Drink plenty of water or tea to remind myself that I'm not really hungry.
5. 3 days a week, I will get up and exercise on the bike trainer 45 minutes easy before breakfast.
6. Continue to run, but keep the heart rate below 150 for the majority of the runs. (Too much high intensity running and I won't have energy for the holidays).
7. Pilates 2 times per week, high repetition weight training 2-3 times per week.

Starting weight: 199.0
Goal weight: 192.0

Starting.... tomorrow! Happy Thanksgiving!

Funny moment of the night #2

Christine: "my parents want to know if we'll come over for dinner, they're making me wong"
Curt: "um... OK, they're making it special for you? Or did they just make it?"
Christine: "they made me wong!"
Curt: "Well great, but did they make anything for me too?"
Christine: "THEY MADE ME WONG!"
Curt: "WHAT IS WONG?!?!"


Note: I later found out that Mei Wong is a vietnamese noodle dish that turned out to be pretty good.

Funny moment of the night

While watching the youtube coverage from the 70.3 World Championships triathlon, Christine saw a guy hopping into the water warming up for the race and said, "does he have one leg?" "Uh.... no. I'm pretty sure he has two" I say. Then randomly they show a one-legged guy with a prostetic walking across the beach, which was very coincidenal. "Now that guy has one leg" I say. Then they cut to the start of the pro race with 100 pro athletes bounding into the water to start the race. Christine says, "Whoa!! Do they all have one leg!?!?!" I couldn't stop laughing.

Maybe you had to be there.