Last night I was reminded of how important eating is. Specifically, how important it is before/during/after a 10 mile run. Before my 2 hour Biggest Loser workout with Laura, I ate only a bowl of Cheerio-like cereal (but not Cheerios). I planned to bring one of those little packets of gu, but I forgot it, and that wouldn’t have been enough anyway. Exercising on an empty stomach is a lot like drinking on an empty stomach – they both sound more effective in theory, but end up making you feel like shit (I know exercising on an empty stomach doesn’t even sound good in any way, but I wanted to connect this to drinking somehow).
Last week I visited the opposite extreme – eating a very large, very spicy, dinner of Thai food immediately before running. I didn’t recommend this at the time, but now having experienced the other end of the spectrum, I can say it’s at least much better than going hungry. When you begin a run with an overly-full stomach, you know that the workout is only going to get better. Eventually the food will digest and the time between burping up Thai food will gradually increase. When you start out hungry, 10 miles is extremely long and painful, with no hope for improvement.
Hopefully I’m going to Goldilocks this bitch, and next week will be juuuust right. It shouldn’t be a problem, I almost never have these issues with quantity of food consumption before exercising. I’m tempted to try just eating a little before hand again, but then bringing a whole meal with me, and just eating a little every time I get hungry. I like the idea of eating a plate of spaghetti or something while running. Especially while running at 24 Hour Fitness and watching the Biggest Loser. I don’t want anything convenient, like a granola bar.
The problem of not eating enough before a workout can last long into the night, and even the next day. I woke up at 5:30 this morning because I needed to eat so bad, and couldn’t stop eating all day. It’s kind of nice, but mostly annoying to have to eat that much.
It’s unclear why we’re still doing these workouts. It would be much more pleasant to do my long runs on Leif or something. I think I’m subconsciously afraid of falling below the yellow line.
Or maybe Laura and I just have a bad case of megalomania (I know, an easy one, but it feels appropriate).
Miles run this week: 17
Miles run in 2010: 42
2 Comments
i dont know. i feel like we are awesome and just do a lot of long work outs!!!
also, i heard about something to do with our alcohol fake diet that made me never want to do it. wooooooo
i was totally trying to find the word the whole time and was worried when i was getting to the end and still hadn’t found it. you just HAD to sneak it in as the last word.
p.s. this is helping me study too!