Slaughterhouse 30

START TIME: 9:55 PM
END TIME: 11:01 PM
WORD COUNT: 840

“Is it possible to live the life of both an athlete and a connoisseur well? What compromises might one be required to make that invalidate being considered one or the other? This presumes that you are not being held to the level of a Michael Phelps as an athlete or have an income that requires your toilet paper be made by Prada.”

I have weird dichotomies in my life.

As many of you know, a great deal of my time and energy is devoted to being a triathlete. Right now I have anywhere from 16 to 19 workouts a week, spanning anywhere from one-half to two and a half hours, as many as three times a day. It’s not uncommon for me to burn 2400 calories in a day, lose five pounds from morning to night (don’t worry, it comes back), and generally push my body through a lot of physical grief.

This means a lot of steamed spinach, a lot of vitamins, grilled chicken, hot sauce, tortillas, turkey burgers, celery sticks, and a weakness for Diet Coke. This is food for fuel and not for pleasure. (And when you exercise like I do, you’re allowed the occasional piece of pepper jack cheese.) Lunch is usually a can of soup, loaded with hot sauce, eaten at my desk. All of this is focused on an equation of calories consumed minus calories burned equals expected weight loss. This is all viewed against a backdrop of several spreadsheets that track my overall weight, lean mass, body fat and water percentage, and expected caloric maintenance, as well as training times over the past three years. It’s a very right-brained exercise.

And a few of you know that I’m “the human Rolodex,” the one who can ask three questions and determine the perfect place for you to eat, and who extends this knowledge base over five or six cities. My years with Four Seasons had me comparing notes with people who understood food and prepared this sort of thing for a living, and I got that job based on the fact I was a regular in The Café at the Ritz-Carlton, Chicago. The whole reason I work in Las Vegas is because of a French onion soup in Chicago. I have spent time in professional kitchens and have nothing but awe for chefs and their talents. I’ve been a training evaluator when they opened Four Seasons Las Vegas, making sure that a brand-new waitress correctly served me a Bombay Sapphire and tonic, chatting with my boss and senior management in a hotel that wasn’t open and didn’t have any guests, all the while thinking, “If I weren’t so tired, I’d be laughing my ass off that they’re paying me to do this.” I was 23 at the time.

So really, how can I be both? Foie gras and wind sprints don’t mix, do they?

Well, no, not at the same time. Some of the more decadent pleasures in my life need to be scheduled; you will not find me at the Irish pub across the street on a whim. I make sure that I don’t train as seriously from my last race in December to about mid-March. This lets me get any indulgences out of my system before I get down to the serious business of preparing for the racing season. My diet does not become absolute law until April or so, and there are always exceptions. It’s not unusual for me to run for four miles before going home to shower and head out for a wine tasting. As long as I get the requisite amount of work in, I don’t care. Life is not always about numbers on a spreadsheet. When I decide that I've earned something that's a little bit over the top and have had just about enough of living small, I have to jettison the expectation that I will continue to progress forward at the same rate. It's the same as taking a couple days off.

And that’s why one of the rules I follow with dogged determination is the tradition of the Last Supper. My meal the night before a race is always the same; shrimp cocktail, grilled swordfish, a vegetable, two slices of bread, and a large bottle of San Pellegrino, as hydration is key the day before a race. Since I want to make sure the seafood doesn’t make me sick, I have to be at a very credible seafood restaurant. In Tempe it’s Eddie V’s Edgewater Grille in Scottsdale. San Diego always finds me at Blue Point Coastal Cuisine.

Chicago, in a very short while, will be Parker’s Ocean Grill. Fully aware of what I’m going to do the next morning, I make sure to enjoy the lights, the calm, and the laughter of good company or the quiet of dining alone. In Tempe one of the waiters is also a triathlete and we wish each other luck, same as we have for the past four years.

I always close my eyes for a second and take my brain away from the thrashing pile of limbs that is the swim start, usually a little more than twelve hours away. The other patrons can’t see the permanent marker drawn onto my arms under my blazer, and neither can I. In the space of 24 hours both sides of my mind are satisfied. I couldn’t ask for anything more.