Day 6: This body needs carbs

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Ahh, Saturday. We had a sleepover at my mom's house last night. My brother and his family were over too and the kids went ballistic with the excitement of it all. We all stayed up WAY later than usual. Myra was up just a little later than usual so I got up with her at 8am. Marek slept until 11am! I think that kid has my food and sleeping genes. God help him.

I made myself some food.

Breakfast: two fried eggs, ham and avocado.

I played with Myra all morning, mostly painting, while the big kid slept.

Snack: Banana, orange.

Lunch turned out to be more like extended snacking, which is usually not good.

Lunch: 2 small slices of ham and later, back at home, a bit of leftover rice and chicken.

Back home and Catherine came over for our run swap. She left first while I watched the kids. While she was gone the kids asked for some pretzels for a snack. I started thinking about what the doctor said about my glycogen stores being low and, well...I had some pretzels. I was worried about my run and just wanted to have some easy fuel to help me out. Excuses, excuses, I know. But hey, I'm still not eating caffeine and I'm 99% there on following the program, so - er, maybe 97% - but anyway, I'm doing great overall so I feel okay good about my choices.

Snack: Pretzels and plaintain chip combo

Oh yes, and a few plantain chips too.

So Catherine returned looking a bit worn out and mumbling about how, "I forgot about the pain." What a pep talk, eh? I ignored her, used my inhaler and promptly changed my clothes to leave. I'd been planning on only running 3 miles given the whole bronchitis thing and just how hard running has been lately but Catherine's 7 miles inspired me so I picked a slightly longer 4-mile route.

The run started out hard. It was my legs. They hurt. I'm not used to that. And I started thinking again about my doctor's theory (she's a runner too) that they've been hurting because I need more simple carbs. So they hurt, but I'm tougher so I kept going but I remember thinking, "this body needs carbs." I'll spare you all the details but it's enough to say that things eventually turned around. At just under 4-miles I started feeling good. No, not good...great!

So I passed the block I was supposed to turn on to head toward home and instead kept right on running. I decided to run an even 5 miles. I was coming to the end of another block and checked my Garmin to see if I was nearing the 5 mile mark when lo-and-behold, I was at 5.15 miles. And I'm feeling awesome! Let's make it 6 why don't we?!

I re-routed myself again and kept right on running. Oh, the fact that my pace was getting faster and faster didn't hurt my feel-good vibe either. Check out my splits.

A funny thing just happened. I thought, "let me pull up the elevation to see if the big hill was in the first mile or second" (a bit of both) and saw how for the first two-and-a-quarter miles I was running slightly uphill (and at one point, more than slightly).

One of the neat things the Strava does is tell you your Grade Adjusted Pace (GAP) for every mile and overall. So I averaged 10:27 on the run (which I LOVE, by the way) but taking into consideration the elevation changes, 10:17. It makes you faster on uphills, slower on downhills. Here, it's easier to show you.

You can see where I gained elevation the GAP was faster, but where I lost, it was slower. You know I get a bit preoccupied with the numbers but the bottom line is, I ended strong. I felt great in the last couple of miles. Oh sure, I was hurting a bit in the last half-mile but mentally I was so happy to be enjoying the run that it didn't bring me down.

I got back and started cooking.

Dinner: Teriyaki chicken, rice, brussells sprouts.

I was momentarily tempted by some ice cream pops in the freezer but it was fleeting and easy to bat away. I'm enjoying my now stronger resistance muscle and I don't want to weaken it. Old/new again habits are forming and I know this is a tender time. Keep on keeping on, that's the best thing I can do.

I'm still not sure about changing up the food plan. For me a big part of this challenge is to stay entirely away from processed foods. I don't want to start eating breads and pasta and all that. I'd really like to keep that part of this up for 28 days. But what my doc said is niggling at me so we'll see. It's going to come down to how I feel with the exercise. She'd said some people's bodies are really good at breaking down complex carbohydrates and turning them into fuel and others are not so good and do better with simple carbs. Maybe I'm in the latter group? Too early to judge, it's only day 6, right? And I've been eating white rice, that's a simple carb right? So who knows what my leg soreness is about.

If you feel like weighing in on all this, I welcome your opinions in the comments. I always learn so much. Signing off...until tomorrow.

ps - I had an off-leash dog encounter during the fire-road portion of my run. Nothing happened, and I'm sure he was a friendly dog, but it still got my adrenaline going. Hate that!