Food on the Run
So I'm enjoying this running thing in my quest to faux-train for my faux-half-marathon, but I have to say that it definitely complicates some theoretically uncomplicated things more than other forms of less-endurance-centric exercise. Mostly, eating. It really complicates eating.
For one, I feel like I'm not eating *enough*to compensate for whatever expenditures I'm making, so the last few weeks I've been trying to rearrange my eating habits. With dancing, I do tend to eat more if I'm doing a lot of it, but not by nearly as much and the impact isn't quite so incredibly obvious. Additionally, running frequently comes in one big huge single chunk of *work-out* (warm up + stretch + run + cool down + stretch + maybe strength on some days which means maybe more stretching = a thick, chocolaty workout flavor chunk). I'm more familiar with little spurts of high energy, followed by recoveries, followed by more spurts... on and off throughout the day/dancing evening. Even in dance, you can pretty constantly adjust your level of exertion and involvement from moment to moment so that the heart rate is constantly returning to neutral before spiking up again: songs/dances build and ebb, songs/dances end every couple of minutes, dancers socialize, dancers grab drinks or food or excuse themselves to run to the bathroom, dancers have to find new partners every once in a while, and dancers do occasionally sit out.
My dietary habits have facilitated this spurting energy expense system by involving high nutrient, low-density "meals" every hour or two. Such culinary behavior suits my INFP novelty-loving nature: as with most things, the *option* of something is ultimately more wonderful than the actuality of a single thing. Committing to a mere three meals a day means not eating fifty more and how painful that is for me! Eating little bits of food all the time means cutting down on as few options as possible; I can always be anticipating the next little meal and its entirely new array of flavors and textures. Call me nuts - and I am - but this is why despite being an abstemious vegetarian with finicky preferences I get tongue-tied and knock-kneed over buffets. Any buffet. Any time. I might only get to eat half a wilted lettuce salad, but I was surrounded by a paradise of gastronomic-possibility. Heaven! It's also why I pour over menus even in familiar places and when only one viable vegetarian option is available. Just reading all those meal descriptions is the highlight of my eating experience. The idea of seeking out denser food for the sake of having-eaten is an odd departure from food-as-means-of-providing-theoretical-novelty-in-eidetic-form-of-pure-potential. Also foreign to me is this idea of concerning myself over whether I'm eating enough carbs. That's definitely a new one, since my vegetarian conversion all those years ago has left me in a perpetual paranoid panic that I am not getting enough protein.
Anyways, the imperative to eat more feeds into the other running/eating complications -- namely that running seems to require a fair amount of discipline about what and when you eat compared to more familiar physical endeavors. It's something about the mix of blood rushing from the digestive tract and the gentle stomach-jostling motion that accompanies an activity that is essentially leaping from foot to foot at a rapid pace. Eat too close to a run: cramps all day. Eat too far away, eat sugars that burn off quickly, fail to carry something edible and eat it on runs lasting over an hour: crapping out in a hypoglycemic haze (oh and risk of injury or the nebulous "overtraining"). Eat anything with too much fiber, fat, caffeine, fake sugar, magical fairy dust from the Nepton Plural Nebula, and essentially anything else imaginably difficult to digest: same crampy result.
I suddenly understand Clif bars, gatorade, and gels in a way I never imagined I would. No, suddenly they speak to my soul. They're kind of calories in that-for-the-sake-of-which-being-at-work-staying-themselves pure Aristotelian form. And easy to digest, being, as another put so well "partially digested already."
The rules of eating "for running" are admittedly fascinating, but mostly I'm just perpetually confused (hurray, Adella returns home to her natural state of "... huh??"). I'm told the body adjusts and the digestive delicacy diminishes over time -- probably doesn't hurt that "over time" runners just get into a workeable feeding routine, as well -- but I am definitely in the experimental stages. Running in the morning works very well, since I needn't pay for the dietary sins of earlier in the day and can start with a clean slate of BRAT approved foods. It does, however, necessitate running in the morning, not always my most functional time of day. I guess it's something I'll have to embrace on longer run days, for scheduling reasons in addition to dietary ones. Alternately, replacing my morning snack with a Clif bar seems to have helped for extended lunch-break runs. Of course theoretically a more reasonable approach to this all would be "my body thinks this is dumb; this makes me uncomfortable; maybe I shouldn't be running," but I'm far too stubborn for that.
For one, I feel like I'm not eating *enough*to compensate for whatever expenditures I'm making, so the last few weeks I've been trying to rearrange my eating habits. With dancing, I do tend to eat more if I'm doing a lot of it, but not by nearly as much and the impact isn't quite so incredibly obvious. Additionally, running frequently comes in one big huge single chunk of *work-out* (warm up + stretch + run + cool down + stretch + maybe strength on some days which means maybe more stretching = a thick, chocolaty workout flavor chunk). I'm more familiar with little spurts of high energy, followed by recoveries, followed by more spurts... on and off throughout the day/dancing evening. Even in dance, you can pretty constantly adjust your level of exertion and involvement from moment to moment so that the heart rate is constantly returning to neutral before spiking up again: songs/dances build and ebb, songs/dances end every couple of minutes, dancers socialize, dancers grab drinks or food or excuse themselves to run to the bathroom, dancers have to find new partners every once in a while, and dancers do occasionally sit out.
My dietary habits have facilitated this spurting energy expense system by involving high nutrient, low-density "meals" every hour or two. Such culinary behavior suits my INFP novelty-loving nature: as with most things, the *option* of something is ultimately more wonderful than the actuality of a single thing. Committing to a mere three meals a day means not eating fifty more and how painful that is for me! Eating little bits of food all the time means cutting down on as few options as possible; I can always be anticipating the next little meal and its entirely new array of flavors and textures. Call me nuts - and I am - but this is why despite being an abstemious vegetarian with finicky preferences I get tongue-tied and knock-kneed over buffets. Any buffet. Any time. I might only get to eat half a wilted lettuce salad, but I was surrounded by a paradise of gastronomic-possibility. Heaven! It's also why I pour over menus even in familiar places and when only one viable vegetarian option is available. Just reading all those meal descriptions is the highlight of my eating experience. The idea of seeking out denser food for the sake of having-eaten is an odd departure from food-as-means-of-providing-theoretical-novelty-in-eidetic-form-of-pure-potential. Also foreign to me is this idea of concerning myself over whether I'm eating enough carbs. That's definitely a new one, since my vegetarian conversion all those years ago has left me in a perpetual paranoid panic that I am not getting enough protein.
Anyways, the imperative to eat more feeds into the other running/eating complications -- namely that running seems to require a fair amount of discipline about what and when you eat compared to more familiar physical endeavors. It's something about the mix of blood rushing from the digestive tract and the gentle stomach-jostling motion that accompanies an activity that is essentially leaping from foot to foot at a rapid pace. Eat too close to a run: cramps all day. Eat too far away, eat sugars that burn off quickly, fail to carry something edible and eat it on runs lasting over an hour: crapping out in a hypoglycemic haze (oh and risk of injury or the nebulous "overtraining"). Eat anything with too much fiber, fat, caffeine, fake sugar, magical fairy dust from the Nepton Plural Nebula, and essentially anything else imaginably difficult to digest: same crampy result.
I suddenly understand Clif bars, gatorade, and gels in a way I never imagined I would. No, suddenly they speak to my soul. They're kind of calories in that-for-the-sake-of-which-being-at-work-staying-themselves pure Aristotelian form. And easy to digest, being, as another put so well "partially digested already."
The rules of eating "for running" are admittedly fascinating, but mostly I'm just perpetually confused (hurray, Adella returns home to her natural state of "... huh??"). I'm told the body adjusts and the digestive delicacy diminishes over time -- probably doesn't hurt that "over time" runners just get into a workeable feeding routine, as well -- but I am definitely in the experimental stages. Running in the morning works very well, since I needn't pay for the dietary sins of earlier in the day and can start with a clean slate of BRAT approved foods. It does, however, necessitate running in the morning, not always my most functional time of day. I guess it's something I'll have to embrace on longer run days, for scheduling reasons in addition to dietary ones. Alternately, replacing my morning snack with a Clif bar seems to have helped for extended lunch-break runs. Of course theoretically a more reasonable approach to this all would be "my body thinks this is dumb; this makes me uncomfortable; maybe I shouldn't be running," but I'm far too stubborn for that.