Nutrition: Learning the Hard Way

I know I should be eating healthy (fruits, veggies, bagels, turkey, etc.), but I love bad food. I love ice cream, skittles, sugar, sugar and more sugar! For the most part I'd say I do a decent job of balancing the fruits and veggies with the sugar. I also haven't been drinking much alcohol for the past 6 months or so, which has just made me feel really good. Unfortunately, I think this is where my trouble started.

Saturday I went for my longest run - 9 miles. It was great. I was kind of nervous, but I came throught it well. I had knee pain starting around 6 miles, but I hung in there and it subsided for the most part by the evening. The only bad thing wa that after my run I was just completely drained. I had no energy whatsoever. I did, however, have a party to go to.

Dave, myself and our friend Keith headed over to Big City in Allston to meet Brian for an Oakley party and to see Porsches on the Autobahn. It was a great time! A little too much of a great time for me maybe. You see, I tried Shipyard Pumpkin Ale with 100% intention of only have a couple. However that couple turned into 5 (remember I haven't had more than 2 beers in a night in about 6 months). I was hammered. So hammered in fact that the three of us stopped at McDonald's (AH!) and I had nuggets, fries and a coke. This is not health food. This does not keep my immune system in good shape. This food does nothing for me! In retrospect, I'd like to throw up thinking about how I ate it. Oddly enough, it probably kept me from throwing up that night. Anyway... Saturday night was fun, but Sunday was not.

I spent Sunday on the couch for the most part with a stuffy nose and sore throat. I figured this was just from drinking, but when I woke up on Monday the stuffiness and spread to a combination of stuffy and runny and the sore throat strengthened. Not to mention the chest congestion had started. Fun? No. Not at all. And so I spent Monday on the couch again.

I learned my lesson. I cannot test my immune system during this time. This is a time for training. I have to keep everything healthy. No more treating my body like crapp. This body has to get me 26.2 miles to the finish and it has to get me one heck of a lot of miles before that day too so it's time I start taking better care of it. Don't kid yourself though, I'll still treat myself to sugar and beer, but now it will be a treat, not a binge fest. Lesson learned.

First Team BMC Meeting

I attended the first Team BMC meeting last Tuesday. There is a wide range of experience on the team from people like me who have never run a marathon all the way to one woman who has 15 under her belt. It was good to meet the people that I'll be spending some long Saturday mornings with this winter. BMC set us up with a fundraising website - you can view mine here.

Speaking of winter... it was 65 degrees outside on Saturday! I hope all winter is like that! OK, so then it poured on Sunday, but hey at least I had Saturday. I went out for a beautiful 5-miler. I used the pace feature on my Garmin (thank you, Dave!). Everytime I went to slow or to fast it beeped so loud! I actually forgot to turn this feature off at the gym tonight and I think I annoyed the guy next to me for awhile. Oops... sorry guy next to me!

I am planning to run in the Braintree High School Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. It's a 5K, which is right in line with my training for that day. I'd like to run a PR, but we'll see. I haven't been running to fast the past couple of weeks, but I'll still give it my all.

So I need to plan some fundraising so if anyone has any ideas, please leave some comments! This is my first big solo fundraising experience so any thoughts would help. Thanks!