#and I would like it shown for the record I posted a slightly less polished version of this a day early

[the-stick-scribblers]

you will not be spared

The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. - This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. This light of autumn: you will not be spared.

“Where's your lover boy?”

He looks up at Margo through his bangs, bleary, and looks right back down again at the table, shaking the cocktail mixer until the ice sounds louder than the beats. She doesn't take the hint.

“Ron? Scooby? Thelma?” Margo's hair is tumbling out of her bun in artful curls, three hours into the party, and the sheen on her forehead could be sweat or highlighter. She's either having a great time, or she snuck away to the bathroom at some point to make it look like she is. Hard to tell. “Watson? Sam?”

He snorts. “That one's made up.”

"Really." Margo's immaculately smudged eyelashes blink at him. ”Wait - really?”

Eliot stares back at her with matching incredulity, although it's less about her and more about...whatever the last pill was he took. Or the laced hors d'euvre from Josh. Or the French 69 he downed right before. Which, yes, but now the house needs more grapefruit. He snags the closest frosh and sends them out into the rain to the store to fetch, locking the door behind them with a satisfying click.

“I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you?” Margo is still raising her sharp eyebrows and talking behind him, and he presses his forehead against the door's old wood to help him focus. It isn't cool. In fact, it's hot, and wet, from the party and his sweat or someone else's, but the pressure of it is soothing.

Margo pokes him between the shoulder blades, and he groans. “Lord of the Rings?”

“Dismal response time on a homoerotic classic. I'm cutting you off.” She does, in fact, taking the newly-filled wine glass from his hand and downing it in one go before snapping her fingers and sending the entire boozy setup to fuck knows where. He groans again. “Back to the point: Quentin. You’ve seen him?”

“No,” he lies. “Why?”

Margo doesn't huff, but the tightening of her lips and the stilling of her shoulders indicates if it were just the two of them, she would. “Because Alice is over in the corner chasing everyone away with murder eyes, which is so not the vibe I arranged for today, and because you've had eyes for him like a damn tracking spell since the day he got here.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that - sweet Prince's ass.” The current DJ, stationed as she is on a platform at the side of the hall, has been steadily inching her equipment away from Alice's literal rain cloud for the past five minutes and is now making a hasty retreat with the whole setup as the rain turns to little droplets of glass. Someone enchants a worn out stuffed bear to replace her; Margo raises her voice with admirably little effort to match the sudden explosion of EDM. “My point is that I need to go find this party a better DJ. And you could use some fresh air.”

“You want Quentin to DJ?” It's such a preposterous idea - Quentin with his hair pulled back and frowning at the sliders, Monsters and Men and Evanescence intermixed with tasteless nineties rap, eyes creased in adorable, if mistaken, concentration  - that Eliot giggles. His curls, startled briefly awake, flop away from his eyes with less grace than Margo's but exactly as much sweaty determination. “Hard pass.”

Margo's fond glare turns steely. “I wasn't asking.”

“I wasn't agreeing.”

“El,” she snaps. “Out.”

"Fine. So bossy.” He rolls his head back to clear his eyes so he can glare at her and doesn't bother grabbing an umbrella, just unlocks the door and shrugs his vest straight. Margo, exhausted but regal, watches him go with glittering eyes. As soon as his heels cross the threshold, he's locked out.

The storm is unusual for New York, but not for Iowa. The heavy water suits his headache better than the house and for the first time since the fight this morning he lets himself relax into it. He's drenched within thirty seconds. It's the surest sign he's not an urban native, and a gesture he'll deny if anyone's still sober enough to see him from the cottage, but right now being soaked is a necessary allowance. He stands in the yard, face up to the shards of gray sky, until both the anger and the drugs dull and his thoughts stop sounding so much like fog. Then he starts walking.

Visibility is long past poor. If it weren't for the occasional flashes of lightning at the edges of his vision, he'd decide he must be blind. But it doesn't matter - Margo was right. He could find Quentin blind, with his eyes shut, backwards, from a different world, blindfolded, from sense alone. He lets his feet take him through the mud on autopilot and is grateful for the annoyance. Any stronger feeling is a guaranteed fucking catastrophe, and that quota was full last Tuesday.

Quentin is, as predicted, at the Wall. More accurately, he's lying on top of it, one leg dangling off the far side, apparently still deciding whether this will be the night he jumps. The air here smells more like dirt and stones than whiskey, but it leaves Eliot with the same heady sense of wrong, the same ugly desire to flee somewhere warm and small and maybe not comfortable, but safe. Out of sight, out of mind. Whose sight, whose mind? Who knows? But his shoes are already ruined. He hikes up the hill and settles on the Wall next to Quentin's feet.

Neither of them look at each other.

Instead, Eliot looks out. Brakebills sprawls behind them like a map on fire; New York, always a season behind, touches the horizon the other direction. There, it's mid-summer. The heat coming off the millions of people pounding thousands of yards of pavement casts the city as a mirage - heady, overwhelming, the only good thing to ever make Eliot feel small.

Quentin, on the other hand, is violent in his vastness. Eliot aches to look at him. But looking is all he can do - Q is too busy smoking to talk and the rain is stopping and Eliot has to fill the silence or he'll go back to drowning by himself, so he rips off the scab and pokes his pride where it hurts most.

“I'm sorry,” he starts, because why not. “I shouldn't have used your shampoo.”

Q doesn't move.

“And you weren't wrong about the TV schedule, and it's my fault Penny's tacky crime show got deleted. I'm sorry I used all your tea lemons for tequila shots when we ran out of limes.”

Nothing. But that's fine, Eliot has been fucking up his whole life. He can keep going for as long as this takes. Or until Margo relents and lets them both back inside. Either way, it could be a while.

“I'm sorry about the water bill last month, although I'm not sorry for turning the stairs into a Jacuzzi slide; but I am sorry for not warning you before I pushed you down them even though I think you ended up having fun. I'm sorry for thinking your Law and Ethics notes were the student handbook and using them to mop up when the toilet clogged. I'm sorry for lying about doing that and for blaming it on Todd.”

From the corner of his eye Eliot sees a bit of Q's mouth quirk. The blue smoke that escapes transforms itself into a ship and loops a languid voyage around Eliot's head before heading off to the fairer day of Manhattan.

It's metaphorical, and enough like forgiveness that he should stop now and enjoy their tentative peace, soak it up and keep it under his skin and let it make a home there. Unfortunately, because he's him, he can't.

Maybe it's the drugs, or maybe it's inevitable - he and Q have so much in common. The way they dismiss sadness with sarcasm. The way they talk about their lives exclusively through vignettes of self-deprecation. The desperate, pathetic need to belong to something other than where they've been. It makes sense even to his foggy brain that they share this rambling sense of loss, too. The apologies tumble out of him darker and faster, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the weak afternoon sun and so he can't see Q watch him tear himself apart.

“I'm sorry for fucking it up with you and Alice. I'm so, I’m- I’m sorry. I'm sorry things are so goddamned fucked up right now. I'm sorry you're here for it, for me being such a fuck-up for, and for Mike, for- I-”

He's fumbling at his chest pocket, chilly silk scraping against trembling callouses, coming up empty. His breathing should be muffled by the heaviness of the wet earth but it's not, it's jagged, ugly and too loud in his own ears. A stray ember nestled in Q's smoke drifts past his shoulder and stings his neck like a brand, and now his ears are ringing, his veins like ice, and-  Then he's got it, the soggy cigarette he lets everyone think is for show, and he shudders with relief. He snaps his fingers.

Nothing happens.

Again - a jolt in his trembling fingertips, but.

No flame.

Nothing happens. He's somehow fucked up even this, even a year one spell. Oh god.

Words keep bubbling up his throat but he grits his teeth before they can escape so they choke him, instead, and suddenly he can't breathe. Tremors spread from his fingers until his whole body is shaking uselessly and he wants to run and he wants to let himself fall but he can't do either. His mouth is disconnected. His fingers belong to someone else. He is drifting, drifting, out of control, off to the side. The cigarette drops into the dirt. He can’t breathe.

Pressure on his left thigh brings him back to himself.

Someone's leaning over him, anchoring him, holding a lit cigarette to his mouth. He sucks at it on instinct, and as the smoke fills his lungs he feels himself settle back into his skin. The coughing isn't graceful, but it's proof of…something. Not being dead yet, maybe. “Q?” he rasps.

“Yeah. I- Yeah.” Fingers dig further into his thigh and Eliot opens his eyes. There’s a smudge of ash on Q’s jaw and he wants to reach out and wipe it off and wipe off Q’s worry lines, too, but he doesn’t trust himself to stop there.

Instead, Eliot takes another drag.

Q is still looking at him, forehead creased. “El?”

Right. Words. He exhales, and the smoke curls soft around them both. “Yeah.”

“I’m-” Q starts, then huffs, then he lets go of Eliot’s leg and abruptly leans away. But before Eliot can miss the touch he’s back, hands shoved away in his pockets but huddling close despite it. Eliot wasn’t cold before. But now everywhere Q isn’t touching may as well be ice for all he notices it, completely numb next to the fiery sensation of Q’s shoulder against his, his wrist against Q’s, the startled synchronicity of their combined pulses coursing through him and electrocuting his heart with each painful thump.

He passes the cigarette back. Q takes it, not greedy but no hesitation either, and in the sunset Eliot watches shamelessly the way his lips hold it steady as he lingers on the inhale like he’s filling himself up, like he plans to become forest fog himself. When he exhales it’s almost on accident - smoke slips out through the corner of his mouth and hovers in the air so they both look smudged and a little hazy. That fits. Eliot feels a little hazy, too.

And lightheaded.

It’s probably fine.

Quentin is here. It’s good.

He shuts his eyes, and takes another drag of smoke.

((AO3))

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Tesserae

For an older prompt:  (I've waited two months for this I'm so excited) Post CW—Imagine a pining Bucky picking up on how Tony seems genuinely relaxed and comfortable (dare he say happy?) around Bucky, and being really, really excited about it... then noticing how Tony minutely flinches, shies away from, and is generally afraid of Steve. Which Steve notices of course, and feels terrible about it. Imagine Bucky trying to help fix things between them like they've both helped fix him.

Sometimes when things are broken all you can do is find a new way to be...though that's not necessarily a bad thing. 

AO3

                                                    --------------

If someone had asked Tony when, exactly, the Avengers Project died – which nobody did, but not because they didn’t care, in Tony’s opinion, but because they all thought they knew – he would have said it happened way before that bunker in Siberia. It even happened before the fight at the airport, but it wasn’t when Steve found out that Bucky had killed Tony’s parents and didn’t tell Tony, because he really believed that Steve hadn’t decided not to say anything. Steve had said, “I had been trying to find the right time to tell you,” and Tony truly believed him. After all, how many times had he tried and failed to tell Pepper about the palladium that had been slowly killing him? How long would it have taken him to tell her about the Iron Man project to begin with if she hadn’t walked in on him? No, in Tony’s opinion, the Avengers as an idea died the moment when Steve found out that SHIELD was rotten to the core with Hydra and decided not to come to Tony for help. Because no matter how Tony turned it over in his mind, he couldn’t come up with any explanation other than Steve had thought that there was a chance, no matter how tiny, that Tony was Hydra too.

Tony could see, logically, how a person could be forgiven for suspecting he was part of Hydra– he’d been the first person recruited by SHIELD for the Avengers, he knew Pierce and several Hydra senators on a first name basis, and he’d even been one of the consultants on Project Insight. If it had been anyone else, he would have been the first to say that a bit of caution was warranted. But it wasn’t anyone else, it wasn’t a stranger, it was him. He would have hoped that anyone who knew him would know better. He would have thought Steve, despite their quarrels and differences, would have known better, but apparently not.

So instead of picking up a phone and asking for help, or even giving him a warning of what was coming, Steve let Tony hear about the political and military cataclysm in DC on the news, same as everyone else. And then on top of that had been the Ultron mess –

The drafting pencil in Tony’s hand snapped as he remembered the look on Steve’s face when they’d been talking about arms dealer, the accusation and contempt he’d seen there for a flash of a second. It had been painful enough to the first time around, but when he’d realized that Steve had lost trust in him years before then, the moment had taken on a new significance.

Tossing the broken pencil to the side, Tony sighed with frustration and scrubbed his face with his hands before running them through his hair. “JARVIS, turn the music up,” he said, tired of listening to his own thoughts running in circles. Before Steve and Bucky had shown back up at the tower, looking for help, Tony had more or less managed to set aside the ball of resentment that had taken up residence under his breastbone. But now it was like Steve’s presence in the tower was like the pea under his mattress, bringing up all the old pain and making it fresh again. He knew that people probably thought he’d moved past it because he and Bucky had become…well, he wasn’t sure what they were, exactly, but in any event the truth was that Steve’s presence was rubbing salt in the wound.

Stretching his neck and shoulders, he bent back over the drafting table, trying to focus on the latest redesign for the quinjet. It worked for a while; he managed to lose himself in equations for lift and drag and thrust and torque, occasionally tapping his foot to the music, until out of the corner of his eye he saw the lab door open.

JARVIS automatically lowered the volume as Bucky walked in, but not before Tony saw him wince at the wall of noise. “JARVIS, turn the music off,” Tony said, offering Bucky a sympathetic smile. “Headache?”

“Kind of,” Bucky said, smiling back wanly. “Just a little anxiety, I guess.”

“Ah.” Tony knew how that felt. He tapped his pencil thoughtfully on his drafting table and said, “Would you like me to tell you what I’m working on?”

With a grateful nod, Bucky sat, propping his chin on his metal hand, and listened while Tony’s voice ran over him; he could tell that Tony was pitching his voice low and making an extra effort to modulate his tone so it was a rhythmic patter, and the end result was Tony’s explanation was as soothing as listening to the rain. Bucky could feel his muscles unknotting and the fizzy, aching tension in his head subside as he relaxed under the weight of Tony’s words.

“You should do one of those ASMR recordings,” Bucky said, so drowsy he was barely able to hold his head up. “I could listen to you read a phone book.”

Tony snorted. “Usually people can’t wait for me to shut up,” he said dryly. He reached into his mini-fridge under his desk and pulled out two bottles of water, offering Bucky one as he opened one for himself. “Natasha called me hyperverbal.”

“Really? Not that I’ve noticed,” Bucky said. “You strike me as more quiet and thoughtful than hyperverbal.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, toying with his drafting pencil, “I guess I’ve changed a little, since then.”

                                                  ***

One night, the time of night that could be called either late night or early morning, Bucky shuffled into the shared living room and found Tony curled up on the couch, watching TV. Bucky came around the couch and saw that he was watching Mythbusters. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure,” Tony said, sitting up a little to make room on the couch. As he sat, neither one of them said the things that had already been said enough: couldn’t sleep? No, me either. Bad dreams? Yeah. Instead they skipped straight to the companionable silence. After a few minutes, Tony handed a half-empty bowl of slightly stale cheesy popcorn over, and Bucky polished off the bowl while Jamie and Adam tested whether or not someone would be thrown backwards when shot by a bullet or if a car would explode if you shot the gas tank. Bucky took issue with the episode that tested whether a car would flip over if hit with an RPG, which led to Tony telling him about the time he took down a helicopter with a piano, and then suddenly the sun was coming up, rosy fingers of light drawing lines on the ceiling. Tony and Bucky were sharing a blanket, their feet tangled together in the middle of the couch, when Steve came through on his way to the kitchen.

“Morning, Buck. Morning, Tony,” he said cheerfully, barely slowing as he walked by, but it was enough. Tony sat up, and even though he piled the extra blanket on Bucky as he stood, Bucky felt the chill of his withdrawal.

“I didn’t realize how late it was,” he said lightly. “I’ve got to get to work.”

Bucky tilted his head thoughtfully as he watched Tony leave, staring at the doorway with a frown even after Tony was gone.

After that, it took a few days to get Tony alone, but eventually Bucky tracked him to the kitchen, finding him making coffee and slicing oranges for breakfast. “Good morning,” Tony greeted cheerfully, and used his knife to push a few orange slices towards Bucky as he grabbed another from the basket on the counter. “How are you doing?”

“Pretty well,” Bucky said, eating one mostly so he would have something to do with his hands. “You?"

"Can't complain," Tony said cheerfully as he sliced. "Slept well and there aren't any fires to put out, so I can actually take my time with breakfast." He gestured with the knife at where Bucky was fiddling with the orange peels. "You seem like you have something on your mind though."

"I just had a question for you.”

"Go for it."

“Is…um, is everything okay, between you and Steve?” It had taken Bucky a while to realize that Tony was systematically avoiding Steve. After all, they are all busy people, and Tony’s schedule was probably the craziest out of everybody’s. So it wasn’t until Bucky started making an effort to spend more time with Tony that he realized that the only thing that was consistent about Tony’s schedule was that he wasn’t anywhere that Steve was. Steve liked to work out early in the morning, but Tony hit the gym in early evening. Tony would eat in the common area, but never when Steve was there. If they were ever in the room at the same time, Tony would leave, sometimes so quietly that Bucky would look over in the middle of a conversation and find that Tony was gone.

Tony’s movements slowed. “Sure,” Tony said neutrally. He rinsed off the knife and set it next to the sink then poured himself some coffee. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

Bucky squinted at him, wondering if he meant here as in the Tower or here as in alive, and decided it was probably the former. “So you accepted his apology? For, you know…” He gestured vaguely.

Tony barked out a laugh at that, sharp and bitter. “What apology? His bullshit letter, or the hangdog one he gave me when he was forced to come back and ask for help?”

Bucky blinked, startled by sudden vitriol. “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “I just noticed that you don’t really ever seem to be around Steve, and I was wondering if it was on purpose.”

“Yeah, it’s on purpose.”

Bucky hadn’t really thought through this conversation; he especially hadn’t anticipated that Tony would just come right out and say it, so he was caught a little flat-footed. “Why?”

Tony’s mouth twisted. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Well, I mean I know…” Bucky exhaled. He looked down at his hands, flattened them out on the granite countertop next to the orange slices and cutting board. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You forgave me.”

“You’re different.”

“Yeah.” Bucky swallowed thickly. “I’m worse.”

“No,” Tony said immediately. He put one hand over Bucky’s and squeezed it, meeting his eyes so Bucky could see that he meant it. “The difference is you didn’t decide to hurt me. Steve did.”

“But he said he was sorry, and he’s trying-“

“Did he say he was sorry? And even if he did, what good, exactly, is an apology?” Tony stared Bucky in the eyes and dropped the coffee mug on the floor, not even flinching when it shattered and coffee went everywhere. “Is an apology going to clean up this mess?”

The look in Tony’s eyes made Bucky’s stomach turn. “No.”

“Will it fix the mug?”

“No.”

“So what do you think Steve can do with his apologies?”

Bucky stared at the shattered mug. “Is there anything that…I don’t know, could help? Could fix it?”

Tony exhaled. “I don’t know, Bucky. Some things just can be fixed.” He waited for a long moment but Bucky didn’t know what to say, so eventually he turned away to get a broom.

                                              ***

“Did you know?”

Steve sighed, resting his head in his hands. “I suspected. So I made sure to give him his space. I figured that’s what he needed.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“We?” Steve lifted his head and sat back against the couch. “It’s not your problem, Bucky. I’m glad that you two have grown close, but I don’t think Tony and I will ever get there. Too much bad blood.”

“But it’s bothering you,” Bucky said. “And it obviously bothers him. Nothing’s going to get better unless you try.”

“What can I do? Apologize again? You told me what Tony thinks of my apologies.”

“Just try talking to him. At the very least you need to clear the air.”

“I don’t know, Buck.” Steve looked down at his hands. “I don’t know that I really have the right to Tony’s forgiveness, after everything.”

“Do you forgive him? For everything in the bunker?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve said, sounding like it was something so obvious he hadn’t really thought it needed saying. “Baron Zemo went through a lot of effort to find a wedge to drive us apart, and Secretary Ross and the Accords was the hammer to the wedge. If I hadn’t kept that secret about his parents, Zemo wouldn’t have had that wedge in the first place. How do I begin to make up for something like that?”

Bucky rubbed his eyes, hearing Tony’s ragged Do you even remember them? echo in his thoughts. “Just try? Please? For me?”

“Why is this important to you?”

“Because…” Bucky took a deep breath. “You and Tony are the most important people in my life and I think that Tony…that Tony could be more. Maybe. But with all of this…”

Steve’s eyes softened. “Oh, Buck. Really? With Tony? That’s great, I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah.” Bucky smiled shyly. “I don’t know if he…you know, because of everything, but we’ll see.” It almost seemed like too much to hope for, that Tony could put their ugly past behind them to make a future. But he didn’t think anything good could happen when there was so much pain and anger festering in Tony’s heart.

“Ok, I’ll do my best,” Steve said. “Hopefully I won’t make it worse.”

“And maybe do it outside so there’s nothing to throw at you.”

[entirebodyexercise]

6 Weight-Management Practices the Pros Follow

The most intelligent means to handle your weight for endurance efficiency is to emulate the techniques of the fastest men and also women in the world. This post is from Racing Weight, Matt Fitzgerald's tested weight-management program developed specifically for endurance athletes.

The leanest bikers, joggers, and triathletes are typically likewise the fastest endurance ones. This pattern holds even within the choose ranks of the experts. One study reported that in a tiny group of elite Ethiopian runners, all which were very lean as well as extremely quick, those with the least body fat had the most effective race times.

Genes account for a portion of the difference in body fat levels in between private endurance professional athletes. There is a propensity among us age groupers to overstate the value of the genetic payment to leanness in the pros. We want to think that the world-class males and females that were honored with the ideal DNA can consume whatever they want without placing on body fat.

In reality, the majority of the leading cyclists, joggers, and triathletes work very hard at managing their weight and also body make-up for efficiency. Just what's more, they have the tendency to depend on the very same methods to remain lean. As well as presume just what? The identical methods of weight monitoring that work so well for the globe's best endurance professional athletes are could assist daily rivals like us accomplish our optimum racing weight as well, also if that weight is a couple of pounds more than the pros'.

I have actually invested a great deal of time researching the diets and also weight-management methods of world-class endurance professional athletes. In 2009 I collected the top 5 as well as linked them into a methodical program in my publication, Racing Weight. Given that then I have actually determined a 6th key method and also added it to the recently released 2nd edition of Competing Weight. Allow's have a look at these 6 methods.

Step 1: Enhance Your Diet regimen Quality

After graduating from the College of Wisconsin in 2007 as a five-time NCAA champion, Chris Solinsky moved to Portland, Ore., to run expertly for Nike. He likewise decided to boost his eating practices. As opposed to adopting a diet plan with a name (e.g. vegan, paleo, gluten cost-free) as well as lots of odd rules, he merely boosted the total high quality of his diet plan in commonsense ways, consuming more veggies, less icy pizzas, etc. Consequently he shed several pounds and accomplished an efficiency innovation, establishing an American record of 26:59:60 for 10,000 meters in 2010.

Increasing the total quality of your diet plan is the most basic and also most efficient means to drop excess body fat and move closer to your optimum auto racing weight. That means eating more of the 6 groups of top quality foods-- vegetables, fruits, nuts and also seeds, lean meats and also fish, whole grains, and also milk-- and less of the 4 categories of low-grade foods-- polished grains, fatty meats, desserts, and fried foods. In Racing Weight I provide an one-of-a-kind scoring system that allows professional athletes to easily rank the top quality of their diet and methodically increase it.

Step 2: Manage Your Appetite

At the height of his training for the Ironman Globe Championship annually, triathlon tale Peter Reid maintained no food in his kitchen area-- none-- to make sure that he would not be tempted to overeat. It was an extreme action, but Reid knew his excellent auto racing weight was 164 to 165 pounds (or 7-10 pounds below his natural off-season weight) as well as he recognized that he can not reach his auto racing weight if he completely indulged his hunger. It's tough to argue with the outcomes: three triumphes and also 3 runner-up surfaces in Kona in between 1998 and 2004.

Research carried out by Brian Wansink, writer of Meaningless Eating, and also others has demonstrated that many people automatically consume a lot more food than they need unless they take mindful actions to regulate their "food environment" and eat even more mindfully. These procedures do not should include removing every one of the food from your cooking area, yet they may include eliminating every one of the low-grade temptations from your kitchen and replacing your present meals with smaller dishes on which you serve on your own slightly smaller sized portions.

Step 3: Balance Your Power Sources

The globe's ideal runners originate from Kenya and Ethiopia. The diet plan of the normal Eastern African jogger is 76 to 78 percent carbohydrate. Compare that to the diet plan of the typical American, which is just 48 percent carbohydrate. Research going all the method back to the 1960s has constantly revealed that a high-carbohydrate diet regimen best sustains intensive endurance training. The low-carb diet plan craze of the late 1990s and very early 2000s has actually cast a lengthy shadow, triggering many age-group athletes to consume as well little carb to properly support their training.

Actually, not every endurance professional athlete needs a high-carb diet plan. Carbohydrate demands are carefully connected to training quantity. The more you train, the more carbs you require. Use this table to determine the day-to-day carbohydrate intake target that's right for you.

Step 4: Monitor Yourself

When Bradley Wiggins won the Excursion de France in 2012 he considered 158 pounds and had 4 percent body fat. Four years earlier, when he won his last Olympic gold medals as a track cyclist, Wiggins weighed 180 extra pounds and his body fat level was a few factors greater. His slendering was a major variable in his Scenic tour de France victory, and he achieved that slendering partially by continuously monitoring his weight as well as body composition.

In business there's an expression: "Just what gets determined obtains handled." If you're attempting to minimize your weight and also body-fat percentage, it only makes sense to determine these points regularly. The pros do, and research study has shown that nonathlete dieters who evaluate themselves typically lose extra weight compared to those that avoid the scale. I suggest that all endurance athletes evaluate themselves at the very least as soon as a week as well as use a body fat range such as the Tanita Ironman to estimate their body-fat percentage as soon as every four weeks.

Step 5: Time Your Nutrition

A normally huge man that when tipped the ranges at 200 extra pounds, professional triathlete T.J. Tollakson stays lean by frontloading his everyday power consumption according to the adage "eat morning meal like a king, lunch like a royal prince, as well as dinner like a poor man."

With respect to weight monitoring, when you eat is nearly as vital as just what you consume. The most crucial times of the day to eat are in the morning as well as within a hr after exercises since calories consumed at these times are much less likely to be stored as fat as well as more most likely to be integrated into muscle mass tissue as well as made use of for prompt power needs.

Step 6: Train for Competing Weight

Nearly all specialist endurance athletes train by just what's called the Lydiard approach, which entails doing a high volume of training, concerning 80 percent of it at low strengths, 10 percent at modest intensities, and 10 percent at high intensities.

While a low-volume, high-intensity strategy to training has gotten popularity among age-group endurance professional athletes recently, it is not the most effective means to train for endurance efficiency or achieve a lean body structure. Research gives clear support for the Lydiard method that is made use of virtually generally by the elites.

Obviously, couple of age groupers have the moment, power, or durability to educate as much as the pros do, yet that's not the factor. The point is to maintain a training quantity that is close to your personal restriction and also to maintain the strength low for four from every five exercises. If you do this you will shed far a lot more calories as well as develop greater cardiovascular fitness than you possibly could by doing the small volume of training you can take care of if you go hard (or also reasonably difficult, as a majority of age groupers do) in many workouts.

When it pertains to training and also consuming to obtain your optimum auto racing weight, the very best point to do coincides thing you carry out in races: adhere to the pros!

Racing Weight, 2nd ed.

See more!

Racing Weight, 2nd Ed.

How to Obtain Lean for Peak Performance

Matt Fitzgerald

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Hypnotizing Punk Loops and Binary Art in Pittsburgh

Detail of Ryoji Ikeda, “data.matrix” (2016) (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic, unless noted)

It seems like every month Pittsburgh gets name-checked on one hot list or another. I’m guilty of having put the city on a list myself once for Condé Nast Traveler. But too often two of the best spots, Wood Street Galleries and the new Cruel Noise Records (formerly Mind Cure) go unmentioned as reasons for the city’s high thermal ranking. Enough of that. When I visited the Iron City in December, I checked in on both places to see what they were offering up. As usual, that was a good plan. Wood Street delivered an old favorite, Ryoji Ikeda, and I’m thrilled to report that Cruel Noise has risen to meet the challenge of the very high bar set by its predecessor.

Wood Street Galleries

While the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Warhol Museum, and the Mattress Factory are the three art institutions in Pittsburgh that garner most of the attention, installation-focused nonprofit Wood Street Galleries has been putting on one killer show after another and getting much less notice for its troubles. In 2006 I was grabbing a breakfast sandwich on my way to the Warhol when I happened upon a Doug and Mike Starn show residing in two floors above the Wood Street light rail station. Let me say that again: I happened upon a Starn Brothers’ show. This is how it works at Wood Street. I almost never check to see who’s on their schedule when I’m going to be in town because I want to allow myself the surprise. While usually not as renowned as the Starns, the international set of artists I’ve seen on exhibit there over the last 10 years have consistently delivered the goods. Last year I was blown away by Hetain Patel’s videos and Nandini Valli Muthiah‘s photographs in the Focus on India show. The gallery has become a must-stop spot every time I’m in the city.

Ryoji Ikeda at Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh.

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Ryoji Ikeda, data.matrix

When I visited in December I was able to catch data.matrix, sound and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda’s second installation for Wood Street. It consisted of the binarily tidy number of 10 television monitors in a row against a wall and some surround-sound speakers. I was disappointed at first, thinking that it was a retrospective with a different project being shown on each monitor. That thought was happily obliterated when suddenly the speakers and all 10 monitors united in a digital chorus of hums and clicks, 0s and 1s. The digits and coordinates on the screens ascend, descend, and spin at speeds not quite out of the reach of human vision. The sounds emanating from the speakers are both brittle and warm, high and low. Ikeda has a way of turning all those flying digits into an overwhelming full-body mesmeric engine. All that data, running through and around us. We know we’re in there. To see it manifested like this is a thrill. We are ones. And zeros too.

Cruel Noise Records

The 7″ wall rack at Cruel Noise Records with Gene Simmons’ head on top

A 10-minute ride from downtown Pittsburgh, Polish Hill’s Cruel Noise Records occupies the same sacred space that once housed Mind Cure, a beloved and expertly stocked record shop, so there was some fear that Cruel Noise might not be able to measure up. I’m happy to say that that fear was entirely unwarranted. The new shop has picked up the old one’s mission with gusto and added a few twists of its own. While Cruel Noise keeps the pressure up with the high quality and wide array of genres that made Mind Cure such a standout, it puts its fist into your wallet with a more hardcore punk focus than Mind Cure. The bins are also filled with metal, noise, jazz, and plenty of generally strange things. The walls are covered with punk classic essentials and new releases that are built to fight, and all this wall action is balanced with evidence of owner John Villegas’ wonderfully unhealthy KISS obsession. Cassettes and records rule the roost (no CDs!), augmented by a tastefully tasteless selection of punk staples like shirts, buttons, and zines. In addition to running the shop and a label of the same name, Villegas DJs an absolutely crucial podcast about his punk and metal faves of the moment. It’s a good place to hear your future music collection. Did I mention that the shop does mail order? Buy or die.

I buyed.

Unknown artist, Crass Loops, Volumes 1 & 2

“What is this?!?!” I hopefully asked Villegas. The spine of the cassette case read “CRASS LOOPS” in the familiar font used by the British punk band Crass. Turns out, it was exactly what it said it was: Some enterprising mad genius made sound loops of short sections of Crass recordings. Crass was an anarcho-punk band and art collective who ruined things between the years of 1977 and 1984, so it’s a pretty fine action to destroy the destroyers. A beat or a riff is repeated, sometimes half a phrase of lyrics. Over and over for 40 minutes it rolls, hypnotizing in its repetitions. Crass was always about boring into and underneath the surface of things, and these tapes do just that in their own way. I was only able to obtain Volumes 1 and 2 that day, but there is a third out there, which, in a slightly Dadaesque turn, is apparently based on Discharge samples. Glory to the d-beat.

Cassette spines for ‘Crass Loops Volumes I & II‘ and Chiller’s ‘Demo 2016‘

Chiller, Demo 2016

Speaking of the d-beat, the other thing I picked up was Demo 2016 by Pittsburgh hardcore band Chiller. Scythe-like guitars lead the way with this Iron City crew. Chiller isn’t afraid of a good melody, but not so much that they ever let that get in the way of a good song. This album is just eight tracks in 10 minutes. Not enough time for fat. Just enough time for destruction.

Brown Angel, Shutout (image via Bandcamp)

Brown Angel, Shutout

Another Pittsburgh band I was happy to see in the bins was the noise-doom-metal unit Brown Angel. Their music sounds like what would happen if you sat on the edge of a pit where piles of bad heroin were being set afire and decided to practice your deep breathing. This new album, Shutout, was mastered by James Plotkin, who keeps the terror and dread as real for the listener as it obviously was for the band when they were recording it. Guitarist Adam MacGregor’s thick rotting slabs of riffs and sinewy leads tear at each other from awkward angles, equal parts Justin Broadrick and Fred Frith. As obtuse as his guitar playing can be, Macgregor’s desperate vocals are frighteningly direct. Mike Rensland’s bass and John Roman’s drums keep all the chaos anchored deep in the most horrific of basements. These are not nice times and this is not nice music. Shutout was one of the best albums of 2016,  partly because it knew what 2017 had in store for us.

These are just two of my under-the-radar faves in Pittsburgh, but trust me when I tell you there are plenty more. Hell, the same building that houses Cruel Noise holds two other gems: On the first floor, there’s the great punk coffee shop Lili Cafe, with killer joe and a simple but tasty menu (get the egg, cheese, and tomato sandwich), and on the floor above Cruel Noise is the utterly bonkers (in both selection and content) Copacetic Comics. Just down the road from that triple-threat of a building is the rock-and-roll dive bar Gooski’s. Back in the city, down the street from Wood Street Galleries is the adventurous art gallery SPACE and the small but mighty cartoon and comics museum Toonseum. Pittsburgh is famous for being at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers, but you’ll find the most interesting action in the smaller streams that feed those three rivers.

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