Thursday, September 17, 2009

The best thing about running...



I know that while running and training you are supposed to keep a strict-ish diet and be sure to get proper nutrition and energy from carbs, protein, fruits, and vegetables. But anything that allows me to eat lots of great food somewhat guiltless-ly is #1 in my book.

For example, I accidentally ate a pint of ben & jerry's last night. Obviously it was an accident, I filled up a bowl, ate it, wanted more, went back to the pint and found that within minutes it was empty. I have no idea how this happened.

But, I ran 10 miles yesterday morning, and instead of taking a day off, I ran an easy 3-miler this morning. It was nice to just run, and not have to worry about pace or distance. At the same time, it was a little more boring. Back to topic, I don't feel too guilty about the 800+ calories my girlytimes-induced cravings led me to consume. Especially since last night's dinner consisted of vegetables and chicken sausage. I meant to eat a sweet potato, but I had always made them in the microwave, and didn't realize it would take an entire hour or so too bake it in the oven. Since I had already finished the pint before it was done, I put it in my refrigerator for this weekend.

I was going to reschedule my long run for mid-week (Ha! 20-miles before work. I would be a very irritable zombie all day), but I really, really, really, was looking forward to Nando's Peri-peri chicken after work today, so I kept the long run scheduled so I could eat to my heart's desire. Yes, you read that right.

When you run 50 miles a week, you are allowed to eat what you want, given you get enough nutrients and its all well-balanced. My diet doesn't change all that much, since I would like to trim a few pounds from my body, but it helps to have guiltless exceptions. I realized I haven't blogged much about my running this week, and its because Garmin Connect was having issues with its website and I can't upload activities. Here is a round-up, I'll post links later:
  • Monday: Day off. I got home from work planning to run 6-miles and my body was a little sore and exhausted.
  • Tuesday: 7.5 miles and a stair-workout. I did a tempo run, which was a lot of fun. And ran up and down the stairs by the memorial bridge for two songs. Then I did push-ups up the stairs, three at a time which is painful and exhausting. The way back after the stair-workout is always very difficult. I try to keep a good pace because my body should be trained to run when its tired.
  • Wednesday: 4-mile morning speedworkout, first two-a-day with a 4 mile hill workout in the evening. The morning speedworkout was... average. Not that great, but acceptable. The evening's run was really great. I was going to do a stairworkout on the Capitol buildings' stairs (which I always thought would be inappropriate until someone asked my why I didn't), and then I found that they are roped off half-way and men with big guns are standing at the top. So instead, I ran up and down the hill. I wasn't too tired and I decided I really liked two-a-days...
  • Until I went running Thursday morning. I had 9.5 miles and a stair-workout with pushups planned and it was a quasi-tempo run. I was dying. I was exhausted. It turned out to be a decent run in terms of me feeling very worked over by the end, but my average pace was worse than my long run. But, pace didn't mean as much since there was a lot of recover time involved. I did two quick miles, a quick .5 miles, and about 2 miles of tempo running.
  • Today, I had a very easy 3-mile jog just to loosen up my legs. I also discovered that my weird sleeping habit of waking up 5 times in the middle of the night happens on my rest days, so I hope this will help me sleep well tonight.
  • Tomorrow, a 20-mile run.

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