I’m sorry for such a downer post yesterday! Call it a mid-college crisis, plus being sick. I’m feeling much better today. I gave in to my cold yesterday and took it super easy. As a result, I’m much better today! I’m much less worried about my classes now-I’m going to some extra reviews, and I pretty much figured out next quarter’s schedule, something else that has been hanging over my head! Just spending a few minutes to figure things out made me feel much better!
Plus, the next part of my Bio class is Biochem, which I love. I bought a Biochem book for fun in high school, so I should be able to kick butt on this next midterm!
Thinking about all this made me realize something-I need to get back down to my roots and what I am interested in. That being said, I want to watch one of my favorite Youtube videos this weekend (wild Friday night guys), and I want to blog about some different topics. One reason I started my blog was to share my knowledge about the scientific processes of metabolism and Nutrition. I did like one post on that! I want to do some research and do another post soon, because that really is what I love!
Now, onto the food! As you probably know, I ran my second half marathon on Sunday! My legs were feeling wayyy better today, so I did my first post-run workout. I did a 60 minute spin class I wrote myself a while back, but I definitely scaled it down. It felt good to sweat, but it was definitely nothing too crazy! I decided to skip the 7am class I would normally go to in favor of sleeping in and having more freedom with my workout. The extra sleep was much appreciated!
Since I just ran a half marathon, I thought it would be fun to share what I ate before, during, and after the race for WIAW (and of course, thanks to Jenn for hosting!).
2 days before the race/the day before the race, I drank kombucha, which I decided was a really great idea. My stomach felt awesome in the days going into the race, but I definitely wouldn’t drink this on race morning!
My pre-race dinner was very simple, and not exactly the typical runner’s dinner. My stomach hasn’t been loving grains lately, and since I don’t eat them a ton, I decided I didn’t want to have anything too different. A salad with chicken it was!
I prefer my carb loading in froyo form. That’s a thing…right?
Before I knew it, it was 4:40am and I was having to shove food down my throat! I used to eat a Thinkthin bar and a piece of fruit pre-run, but I tried something different as part of my “mini Whole30” which ended up working even better for me because it was easier on my stomach, and therefore I could eat closer to race time (so I didn’t have to wake up so early!). My new pre-run breakfast is in theory a 2 ingredient pancake-egg whites and a mashed banana-plus cocoa powder-but since I’m a college student with no kitchen or in this case, was staying in a hotel, I make mine in the microwave. In a bowl. We can just pretend it’s a pancake, ok?
During my race, I ate most of 2 packets of Cliff gel. Pro-tip: it’s probably not the best idea to wait until the day before race day to restock on your race day fuel, especially when said fuel is only found at like one place. Let’s just say on Saturday I was frantically driving around town looking for some. I’m a big fan of CLiff because of the simple ingredient list. There aren’t weird ingredients, so it doesn’t taste weird. I actually took one of these without water for the first time during the race, and was glad I did because it gave me an instant energy boost. I took them at miles5 and 10.
Immediately after the race, I drank a chocolate milk that was being passed out. It was the best thing ever. It instantly perked me up. After gathering everything and meeting up with my parents, I returned to the hotel and had the next best thing ever.
A whole wheat bagel with chive and onion cream cheese and a hard boiled egg. We toasted the bagel in a pannini press. It was awesome. Those 2 items I think were key in my recovery, and the fact that I drank the chocolate milk right away helped as well. A couple of hours later, I felt completely refreshed (ok, this is an exaggeration. I could walk.) and had enough energy to run the end of my sister’s marathon with her, despite the extreme pain I had been in a couple of hours prior (tired pain not injury pain). The next few days were pretty much me eating all carbs everywhere. While it was probably not great to eat a lot of carbs and sugar, and hardly any veggies, I did recover really quickly. I’ve always found that if I eat a lot after a strenuous event, I recover pretty quickly. Here are some other carbtastic things that I shoved in my face refueled my body:
Free post race whole wheat cookies.
An epic pumpkin yogurt cup.
Lots of granola bars. This is partly because I was in a post race and cold induced daze and had no ability to plan meals/I had no food in my fridge.
A muffin my roommate baked while I was gone and saved for me. I love her!
Ok, I’m including this just because I packed it in my lunch today and it’s special to me because I earned it for free by running a half marathon. AKA-they passed them out after the race. I’m allowed to form emotional attachments with fruit, okay?
MASHED POTATOES. This was post race dinner. Delicious.
Aaand the best thing ever-PUMPKIN BREAD! I was planning on making this after the race, but that didn’t happen, so my mom made it for me and brought it to me over dinner-this dinner:
And here’s a million pictures of my pumpkin bread. Each loaf is half topped with a cream cheese/honey mix. 
And now I promise I’m going to go eat some vegetables, like a good girl!
How do you fuel before, after, and during a race?
That pancake looks like what I try to make too! Haha 🙂 Have a great day!
Pancakes after. Always 🙂
They would be hard to make in a hotel though! Next time 🙂