Pages

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The scale is a liar.

Sorry I've been gone. I visited my sister for a belated birthday celebration and then got hit with the apathy bug afterward.

Anyway, I learned a couple of important lessons these past few weeks. The first one is about your diet while running, specifically things you eat before running. I don't want to jinx it (like I jinxed the Chafing Gods - it is Chub Rub City all up in here. But I'll spare you the details...), but I always thought I had a GI tract of steel. I usually never get heartburn (unless I eat an entire family sized bag of Flamin Hot Lays by myself in one night), I don't notice my stomach/intestines/etc when I run (I have never -knockonwoodknockonwoodknockonwood - had to crouch in the bushes/frantically look for a bathroom/waddle home), and with the exception of one unfortunate time eating Domino's pizza, I pretty much never have an upset stomach. 

I don't know how familiar you guys are with Asian food/Asian fusion food, but shabu shabu is my current obsession. My sister found a really good restaurant near where she lives. This place is not traditional Japanese in the slightest but it is delicious beyond reason. It is a hot pot style meal where they bring out plates of raw meat/veggies/seafood/horse and you cook it in pots of boiling water and dip it in sauce and enjoy! I don't like meat so I always get the vegetarian entree. It is literally (and I literally mean literally) a plate bigger than your face piled high with vegetables. Fiber mountain. I wish I had taken a picture. But with food, I devour first and ask questions later.

I ate the entire mountain. And then ran 7 miles a couple hours later. Not one of my smartest decisions. And I always wondered why/scoffed at the people that stopped eating salads a couple days before races. I understand completely now. Lesson of the day: don't eat 8764 grams of fiber and then expect to be in tip-top shape for your run. It wasn't even like I needed to run to the bathroom every 46 seconds. It was just a giant rock sitting in my stomach. I definitely didn't make it all 7 miles at once. I usually hate taking walk breaks, but this time I let it slide.

Anyway, moving on. Here is a picture of my other obsession:

His name is Xiao Liwu and I want to give him a giant hug.

I know for a fact that pandas are the coolest animal in the world. Part of my birthday celebration was going to see the pandas at the San Diego Zoo. I wish I had a bigger purse because I was definitely thinking about packing this little guy in there and hightailing it home.

So with all of my traveling/fiber-eating/panda-watching, my running schedule got a little messed up. But I reworked it. I'm getting nervous for the upcoming half marathon (SLO Marathon on April 7 - if any of you are going to be there, HOLLER AT ME!! I want to get cake at the Madonna Inn after!!) but there's not much I can do except run my feet off. So I was supposed to do my long run this last weekend. But then this little guy showed up in our laundry room:

I named him George. He's not actually little. He's kind of a tank.

We rescued him off a utility pole when he was a kitten and he's been hanging around ever since. For the past few months, he has been spending more time at the neighbor's house. I've been trying to woo him and convince him to spend more time with me. Trying to make a feral (but friendly!) cat love you = Sisyphean task.

The next lesson I learned: sometimes life happens. Sometimes feral cats happen. Sometimes logic and reason escape you and only leave you with enough time to do some speedwork instead of a long run. Just roll with it. I did my long run a couple days later. I have enough things in my life to stress about, I'm not going to add my improvised running schedule to that list. I run to be happy. Petting a fluffy, friendly cat also makes me happy. I'm lucky enough that I got to do both, even if it wasn't exactly how I planned it.

He is the heaviest sleeper ever. He also looks like he's dead. He's not. Can you see his tongue sticking out?

I finally did get my long run in. I was waiting for my mom to get off work so we could try out a new Zumba class so I went to the CVS next door to get some sort of sports drink. When I was staring at my options, I didn't feel like getting a sugary Gatorade. But then I saw this hiding in the corner:

Vitamin drink before.

It's like Vitamin Water. Except it actually has vitamins in it. And it's sweetened with stevia. I have no idea if it actually works. The bioavailability of vitamins/minerals is a little unclear right now (euphemism for: scientists don't know crap at the moment, but hopefully that won't always be the case) but at least I felt good about drinking it.

Vitamin drink after!

Anyway, apparently certain vitamins degrade in water, you the cap holds all the vitamin powder and you're supposed to shake it up before you drink it. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Finally, (and to put an end to this monstrous post) I have decided to stop weighing myself. I was feeling pretty good yesterday. I had done three pretty difficult workouts in two days, so I got the bright idea to check on my weight.

Highest. Weight. Ever. (Literally ever. Sigh.)

A frantic Google search seemed to indicate that there was a link between delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and weight gain. I weighed myself again this morning, and I was down 4+ pounds. Clearly my scale hates me. But more importantly, clearly body weight fluctuates a lot in a short amount of time. And perhaps most importantly, body weight is not a measurement of one's intelligence, goodness, morality, personality, or ambitions. It's just your relationship to the earth's gravitational pull. The earth and I are a little closer than we used to be. Oh well. So today I'm grateful for being grounded - for literally being able to have my feet on the ground running and also for being able to take a step back and get some perspective.

Thanks for sticking with this ADD post. I promise to make my posts more focused in the future.

PS - I'm bad at keeping promises.

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

What is your favorite food?

What do you do to refuel?

No comments:

Post a Comment