Review; Clif Bar ‘Panforte’

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Clif Bar & Company Founder and Co-CEO Gary Erickson created GARY’s PANFORTE, a limited-edition CLIF® Bar full of fruits, nuts and spices that was inspired by his early cycling adventures over Northern Italy’s Passo di Gàvia.

In case you are wondering what Panforte is it is a traditional Italian dessert containing fruits and nuts, and resembling fruitcake or Lebkuchen.

It really is like a nice thick slice of fruit cake and reminds me of sitting in quiet café in San Gigimignano with an espresso in hand watching the wind whisper through the the cypress trees. Perhaps not the best for running given it’s density but perfect for a post run refuel. Even better I found after an hour in the sun tucked into the back of your cycling shirt it’s nicely warmed up soft and chewy. It’s so tasty in fact that I would go as far as to say it’s their best yet!

GARY’s PANFORTE will debut on store shelves nationwide beginning in June and remain available while supplies last…to that end I have five bars to giveaway to one lucky reader who can answer this question…I will draw a winner on Sunday.

What is the height of Passo di Gàvia?

June Gloom!

I had every expectation that June would be a good month; an easy couple of weeks in May, a solid Olympic race at the end of the month followed by a new PR in the 10k looked to set me up to get to the half year point with some serious miles behind me. Then I put my back out and twisted my knee and before I knew it the month was over.

So here are the deets;

• Swim; 13,640 yards (7.75 miles) 6:40 hours
• Bike; 242 miles 14:06 hours
• Core/PT 4:00 hours
• Walking; 15 miles (Seaworld, San Diego Zoo and Safari Park) 11:00 hours
• Running; 35.55 miles  4:50
• Total; 300.3 miles 16:36 hours

I need to remind myself that it’s not all gloom and doom here are the numbers for the first 6 months or the year, it leaves just under 400 miles short of where I wanted to be but that was an arbitrary target. I expect these will double and more over the coming 5 months.

• Swim; 158,400 yards (90 miles) 73:23 hours
• Bike; 2141 miles 130:41 hours
• Running; 358 miles  51:52
• Other; 32 miles
• Total; 2621 miles 275:16 hours

As you can tell I am having my own little pity party in Miseryville; population one. I am sure once my knee clears up and I start a new training program everything including my mood will pick up. I have pretty much decided on a plan that will get me to IMAZ, it’s a 20 week plan that I will cut 3 weeks out off, one thing that it does include specifically which appeals is strength and core work. It should be no surprise that both of these things are needed to to maintain form over a long day and hopefully they will also help keep me from falling apart on they way.

If it’s not one thing it’s another!

UGH! This is not the post I was hoping to write, after basically taking 10 days off other than a bit of swimming to get my back and hip straightened out and parking any real notion of training while taking my boys on a weeks vacation including 15 hours spent walking around Seaworld and San Diego Zoo and Safari Park over 3 days I throw out my knee while messing about with my boys in the swimming pool. Nothing major but major enough to mean I skipped this Sunday’s scheduled 4 hour brick and spent several hours wrapping it in ice, thank you Moji!

With Vineman in two weeks, the fitness is seeping out of me and the weight creeping on, not the solid month of training that I hoped June would be and not a good start to July.

Post Vineman I have a week’s downtime after which I start a 17 week plan to get me to the start of Ironman Arizona.

Hopefully in one piece!