Archive for October, 2007
All right, I’ve got a little beef with the “family” restaurants—Applebee’s, Chili’s, Cheddar’s, TGI Friday’s, Olive Garden, Zio’s. Of course, I’m trying to be a gazelle (a Dave Ramsey term) and be mindful of what I eat, so when Chris and I decided to go on a date for dinner, I raced to the restaurant’s web site to look up the menu’s nutritional information. What did I find? Nadda.
WTF? Every fast food restaurant (and even some sit-down places) I can think of has their nutritional information posted:
And since those family restaurants don’t have nutritional information on their sites, here’s what I could find thanks to other health-conscious consortiums:
And if there are any restaurants I’ve missed, here’s an index of restaurants with links to nutritional info. I guess, in this age of information, I don’t understand why I can’t have the nutritional information from the franchise restaurants I love. It just seems silly that fast food restaurants can have their nutritional info available while these other restaurants don’t. Don’t they know that obesity is an epidemic in this country? Some of us want to go out to dinner prepared for the decision ahead of us, for crying out loud!
October 19th, 2007
Sunday was my longest run before the half marathon: 12.5 miles. Less than three weeks to the big day!
- Shout out to Heather Myer—thanks for letting me borrow the Shuffle and Harry Potter; he made the miles fly by!
- Shout out to The Shock—thanks for the gift certificate for the massage; I’ll be cashing that puppy in on the 5th!
- Shout out to the hubby—the sponsorship of the new sports bras is super appreciated; you’ll be greatly rewarded.
- Shout out to Linden—congrats on your half marathon; it was awesome to talk to you on the phone Sunday morning.
Heather and I ran a speedy 5-miler (58:06) this morning, and we’re meeting again tomorrow. My shins have hardly hurt this week (I think the Advil over the weekend really helped), and I bought (courtesy the mother-in-law) my first pair of straight-leg pants on Friday. Yikes! I never thought I could pull that look off, but I’m darn cute in my new jeans!
October 17th, 2007
I’m not sure if it was the nutrition seminar last week, but this week I’m on this nutrionista kick. I’ve been following the Abs Diet with mediocrity all summer—which means I followed the plan during the day and quasi-pig out in the evening. This week I am not only following the plan as tediously as possible, but I bought a food scale to measure my turkey and cheese (and Baked Cheetos).
And this is the rundown of my eating plan while I’m at work:
- Breakfast: Fiber One bar (150) + hard-boiled egg (70)
- Mid-morning snack: V8 (35) + 25 almonds (210)
- Lunch: Turkey (45) and cheese (80) BBQ sauce (50) sandwich (bread–100) + fruit cup (70) + Baked Cheetos (65)
- Mid-afternoon snack: Apple (75) + peanut butter (188)
Then in the evenings we’re eating some whole-grain carbs and some good protein. Of course, last night I sort of ruined my day with a sugar cookie at Churchill’s (but hey, I was working hard on that thesis).
So now I’m watching The Biggest Loser, and I’m glad that I resisted the urge to stop at McDonald’s for chicken McNuggets and fries on the way home…but something fried sounds good. I still have my mid-evening snack left…I’ll have to raid my cabinets for something yummy—but healthy.
EDIT I gave in and went to Sonic for cheddar bites for 360 calories. But they were SO worth it!
Oh, and thanks to Taryn for the heads up about the Champion bra sale (and if you buy a bra, be sure to get the discount code from Taryn’s post—it saved me $8 plus shipping)! I bought two for the price of one! Oh, happy day, indeed!
October 17th, 2007
I ran in Nixa this morning. Usually I run in Springfield, but I hate driving 20 miles on my day off just to run, and I had plans to hang out with my mother-in-law Martha, so I opted to run my scheduled 5 miles/60 minutes around my neighborhood. I won’t go so far to say that running in Nixa was a mistake, but my experience reminded me once again why 1) I run on the trails in Springfield and 2) I hate living in Nixa.
The first problem with running in Nixa is the subdivisions. Nixa has grown exponentially in the last 15 years, and unfortunately the city planners didn’t have the foresight to better plan these subdivisions. Now I’m not opposed to subdivisions; I understand that they’re prerequisite of sorts for suburbia, but they all dead end! How am I supposed to run on secondary streets if they don’t go anywhere?
Since I can’t run on secondary streets, I’m stuck running on the main roads where the lack of sidewalks and speedy drivers are a problem (more in a moment). My main beef with the roads, though, is that they’re not level, which raises the risk of shin splints—hmm, something I’m fighting. In order to get more than 3 miles out of my neighborhood, I have to venture onto some more “country” asphalt roads, and though they’re within Nixa city limits, they’re not maintained very well nor do they have street lights, which prevents me from running in the early morning or after dark.
Since I’m running within the city limits on the main roads it would be nice to have sidewalks (or even extra-wide shoulders), but there are no sidewalks on the main roads—hmm, they’re in the dead-end subdivisions. And if there are sidewalks, they’re just around the schools, which is good for the kids, I suppose.
And while I’m running on the main, unlevel, sidewalkless roads, I have to be on extra alert for speedy drivers. The roads are hilly and busy, and every time I hear an automobile coming, I pray, “Please see me. Please see me.” Usually they do, but on the occasion one doesn’t, I practically have to dive into the ditch to prevent being hit (and sometimes after these incidents I wish I had a rock to throw at the stupid drivers’ windshields).
As I fear for my life as I run, I wish Nixa had trails, but Nixa doesn’t. Even Ozark, Nixa’s rival suburb, is developing trails near its new community center and downtown district; Nixa, as far as I can tell from my reading of local publications, has no plans to build trails, so if I want to run on trails, I have to go to Springfield (or Ozark soon), which is 20 miles out of my way four days a week. (And of course, there’s zero mass transit in place between Nixa, Springfield, and Ozark, so I’m stuck driving my gas-guzzling SUV to and fro).
OK, I’m off my soapbox. I guess running 10 miles away in Springfield is better than not enjoying any of my runs at home.
October 13th, 2007
Tonight I attended the Nutrition for Runners Seminar at the CoxHealth Meyer Center. Here are the highlights from David Dade’s presentation:
- Main Point Performance is directly related to nutrition.
- Training increases the heat your body produces thus increasing the need for nutrients.
- The right training diet provides energy at the right time in the right amount.
- Your diet should follow the 4:1, carbs to protein ratio:
- Carbs: 60–70%
- Protein: 15–25%
- Fat: Less than 25%
Training Diet
Carbs: We can only store 1600–2100 calories in glycogen stores (carbs breakdown to glucose which are stored as glycogen). There is no limit to how much energy we can store in fat. We get our running energy from our muscle glycogen. Training increases our glycogen stores and teaches our bodies to store it efficiently.
Protein: Used for muscle repair. Eating a lot of protein will not make you bulk up.
Fat: Don’t be afraid of it.
Pre-competition / Event Day
- Practice your nutrition during your training. Don’t try anything new near the event.
- Eat complex carbs and lean meats.
- If you have a nervous stomach, drink liquids like chocolate milk, Ensure, and Boost.
- Drink 16–20 oz. 2–3 hours before the event.
- Drink 7–10 oz. 10–20 minutes before the race.
During the Event
- Again, practice your nutrition before the event.
- Ingest 120–240 calories/hour
- Start replenishing as soon as the event starts.
- Ingest sodium with liquids.
- Don’t only rely on water.
Recovery Nutrition
- Replace energy, fluids, and electrolytes.
- Eat within 30 minutes of finishing.
- Eat again in 2 hours.
- It takes 20–24 hours to replace glycogen and the first few hours after your run are the most important
Those are the highlights, and the seminar further convinces me that runners are awesome. We have no dignity whatsoever—I mean what other group of people can have such a candid discussion about “runner’s trots” and bowel movements?
October 11th, 2007
The Sunday before Linden left, we went on our last long run—6.5 miles. This is the “sad” picture we took at Panera afterward. We’re not pretty, but we make good, “I don’t wanna run alone” faces. Thanks, Linden!
P.S. I’m getting more used to running alone/running with a different friend, but my longest run—13 miles— is this weekend before the real race on 11/4. That’s a long time to be alone with one’s thoughts!
October 10th, 2007
Art Created by Prisoners at Drury University Is it just me or does this headline make it sound like the art is created by Drury University prisoners? And if the art was indeed created by Drury University prisoners, are those prisoners students or faculty or neither?
October 10th, 2007
The marathon world record was set on Saturday in Berlin, and this video will knock your socks off! We all need someone on a motorcycle next to us cheering us on as we go. (Linden, if you’re reading this, yes, I thought of you on a motorcycle cheering for me this morning during the 7.5 miler.)
In related running news, the Chicago Marathon was today and was shut down four hours in due to the heat. One guy collapsed and died. Yikes! I’m anxious to hear from lifestudent and her experience with today’s race.
And I hung up wedding pictures this weekend two years after my wedding. Not only were these the first pictures to be hung, these were also the first wedding pictures we’ve printed. We’re pathetic, we know!
October 8th, 2007
Well, it’s official. I’m running the Bass Pro half marathon. I mailed in the registration form on Saturday. And if signing up for a half marathon wasn’t enough, I did some more research on the Little Rock marathon and printed off the Hal Higdon marathon training plan.
Linden and Rob left for Germany on Wednesday, so Sunday was my first long run alone. I was already nervous when I went to bed Saturday night, and my anxiety made it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep. There was just something about running 12 miles without that other person at my side that freaked me out. And to make matters worse—because I was already sort of upset when I woke up—I couldn’t find my watch before I left. In my frenetic search, I woke up Chris, who got up and searched with me, but we couldn’t find it (I had accidentally tossed in the dirty laundry) and I worked myself in a tizzy of defeatist self talk.
I was really feeling sorry for myself when I left the house, but about half way to Bass Pro, I got a text message. Figuring it was from Chris and hoping he had found the watch, I opened my phone to find a message from Linden!
Good luck on your 12 miler today! I’ll be thinking about you and praying for strength. Even though I’m not with you physically, I’m there mentally. Love, lam
That was just what I needed to get me to Bass Pro, but as I and the rest of the OMRR training group left the parking lot, I teared up and started wondering if I could really do the run, but about half a mile in, I met up with Larry, who is also training for the half marathon. We walked and ran and chatted for about four miles until I started hitting a stride and went off by myself.
Eventually I headed off on my own and had a pretty decent run by myself. Another girl was ahead of me and I made a game out of “catching” her. I caught up with her at about mile 7, we bounced back and forth for a few miles, and I finished about ten minutes ahead of her. I finished up the 12 miles in 2:28:00.
The chafing wasn’t too bad this week, but the legs were pretty tight for the remainder of Sunday—I found myself going up and down stairs sideways. After the 12-miler last Sunday, this week’s 7-miler will be a breeze!
October 3rd, 2007
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