1. Running. Duh.
2. Singing: I have a secret tendency to break into song after 8 miles. Low blood sugar is only partially responsible.
3. Dancing: My 96 beats per minute playlist lets me pretend to live out my dancing fantasies. Mostly in my head. With an occasional interpretive arm gesture. Or jazz hands.
4. Biology. Because anaerobic respiration and ATP for life.
5. Cooking.
6. Eating. Because I'm hungry all the time.
Which brings me to the focus of this post!!
Running consistently cannot exist as an isolated hobby. It's a lifestyle. You have to take an active interest in eating well in order to recover and stay healthy. Of course eating well is important for everyone!!- but also there's real science behind how muscles respond to certain nutrients in the minutes, hours, and days following a workout. (Think, 4:1 carb:protein ratio. Phytochemicals. Unsaturated fats. ::cough:: beer. Etc.)
One of my favorite things to impart upon my students in biology and anatomy is nutrition. (I try in Forensics but the conversation doesn't come as easily. It's tough to talk about what you should be eating for breakfast when you are also trying to analyze blood spatter and estimate time of death, right?) Anyway, we talk about the importance of being knowledgeable about what you eat and the meaning of nutrient-dense food. I share recipes and articles and we discuss the corrupt USDA and FDA systems, and how you can't trust a food label to tell you whether it actually contains 0 trans fat, or whether it's actually good for you. (Did you know Vitaminwater/Coke got sued for portraying themselves as healthy? Their response was that no reasonable person would ever assume it was a healthy product. They lost.)
And don't even get me started on McDonald's.
The kids always come out assuming I'm vegetarian. KIDS!! You don't have to be a vegetarian to make smart food decisions! (Mrs. L, I know. But you're a vegetarian, right?) Facepalm.
What biology has taught me is that the more you know about food, the easier it is to make better choices. Finally last year I swapped my usual turkey sandwich lunch, for a gigantic salad with all kinds of goodies in it. The result? I stopped getting sick. For years, I'd had colds every 10-12 weeks. Last year, I didn't get sick at all. It is conceivable, in my lifetime, that I've contracted a very large portion of and therefore immunity to all the common cold viruses. But I'm more inclined to guess that the salads were providing some nutrients I'd been missing.
It will be great if Jon and I can do everything we can to stay healthy this year, in his inaugural year of teaching an intense schedule. When he gets busy, he simply doesn't eat, and it drives me CRAZY. It's been a theme off and on in his routine and it works for him. But I just don't get it. He came home from school today and reported he'd eaten the oatmeal I made him for breakfast, at lunch time, and never got to his salad or snack. How can I fuel him better on the go?!
LUCKILY I recently received Shalane Flanagan's new cookbook called Run Fast, Eat Slow, which includes among other things a very delicious recipe for "Superhero Muffins." I used Jon's too-busy-to-eat day as an excuse to whip up another batch at 9 o'clock tonight.
This is a seriously awesome cookbook, btw. There's a great 20+ page introduction in which Shalane and her runner/chef/co-author friend describe the choices they made in writing the book and the value of their pantry/recipe staples. I may have started to cringe at their overuse of the word "nourishing" but their message was spot on.
I will totally be sharing their writing, and the Superhero Muffin recipe, with future students. And in the meantime, I'll be feeding Jon and Zoe "super muffins," "supergirl muffins," or "superman muffins," as Zoe calls them.
A few notes about running for another day include how maintaining a summer running schedule is not a strength of mine, how the bunion on my right foot (much nastier than the word sounds) is slowly trying to kill me, and how I fear the surgery that is inevitably lurking years down the road, and how as a result I just switched from the Baystate full marathon to the half marathon. Le sigh.
So for now, we'll focus on nutrition. And I'll leave you with this gem ;)
