Monday, May 10, 2010

We should know better...

Trevor and I eat pretty well, most of the time. We have our days when we let loose and really enjoy our food. Usually that happens on the weekend, after we have put in some long training hours. Sunday night is our night and it usually involves ice cream (soy cream, actually) and cake/cupcakes of some sort.This past weekend, things got a bit out of hand. We should know better, we do know better. This is an example of how even the best laid plans, the best intentions, can fall apart.

Friday was a busy day and I didn't get to have my dinner as planned. A friend was in the store and commented about how Friday night used to be "Nacho Night". That got me thinking...Friday night used to be our night and we always had nachos. On the way home, at 8 pm, I called Trevor and said "I want nachos". I got what I wanted. We split the nachos from Taco Del Mar. Honestly, that isn't that much and it really should have been okay. Usually those nachos go right through me. I don't know what the difference was this time around, but they stuck in my like a cork.Saturday I got up and my stomach didn't feel right. I ate my usual all day long and I still didn't feel very good.

We were meeting Trevor's parents for dinner to celebrate Mother's Day. We were going to have pizza. I figured we were meeting at 5:45, I'd have a salad and one piece of pizza and we'd be home, on the couch by 7:30. Right.Due to traffic, Trevor's parents were over an hour late. I was starving when we got there, which is never good. I ordered a salad and that didn't fill me up, so we ordered some garlic bread. Then we had pizza and then, to make matters worse, we had dessert. We got out of there around 8:30. Way too late to be eating that much of that kind of food. I felt gross.We went to bed around 9:30 and got up at 5:30 for our 9 mile run.

I knew it was going to be a tough day. We went and met with our running group and off we went. My stomach was killing me the entire time, I was so bloated and my stomach was really cramping up. Trevor ran past me and let me know that he was feeling the same.To make matters worse, we had a 60 mile bike ride planned for after our run. YIKES. The upset stomach continued for the first 30 miles. We stopped at a gas station and took a break. Standing up seemed to help. We stretched a bit and then hit the road again. By the end of the ride, I was feeling pretty good. We hopped off the bike and went for a 1o minute transition run. I was SO happy to be done and was finally starting to feel a bit hungry.

I looked at Trevor and told him "never again". We need to be much more conscious of what we put into our bodies, especially as the miles on the run and the bike get longer. Our bodies will simply not perform the way we need them to when we injest such low quality calories. We agreed that this was a lesson learned and that we will do better next time. We were proud of ourselves for pushing through, even though we felt like crap. It was a good exercise - the day of any event, you never know how your body is going to do. Chances are better that it will do well if you feed it appropriately. We know that. We KNOW that. This is the perfect example of how knowing and doing are two different things.

We have a marathon this Sunday and I really want to feel as good as possible at the start line. This week, I will be paying much more attention to what goes into my mouth. Right now I have a ton of food cooking to get us through the week - lean chicken and sweet potatoes, shrimp and whole wheat pasta, turkey wraps, healthy snacks. The trick is being prepared. That's half the battle.

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