I’m drowning my sorrows and preparing for tomorrow’s race with pizza.
And red wine…and strawberry ice cream. Okay, I’m totally kidding when I say that I’m carb loading for a 5K. The truth is that I’ve just been craving pizza all week and something about Friday night pizza feels like complete perfection.
Running nutrition lesson…despite the fact that I would never “carb load” for a 5K (that should be saved for events longer in duration than 90 minutes like longer distance tris and bike races, half marathons, marathons, etc.), did you know that carb loading is really MOST beneficial if you do it for lunch the day before a big race instead of dinner? It takes your body about 18 hours to convert carbs to glycogen so it’s best if you start carb loading about three days out and then eat a normal dinner the night before the race. This also ensures that you won’t be bloated and feel gross by eating such a heavy meal the night before.
Random tangent. Learned this tidbit of information in my CrossFit Endurance training. We also talked about Coke as fuel in a marathon but that’s another story for another day!
Dinner tonight was a veggie pizza with mushrooms, artichokes, broccoli, olives and sundried tomatoes on whole wheat crust and an arugula salad on the side.
Let’s talk about why I’m drowning my sorrows in pizza, wine and ice cream. Remember how I promised you a mobility post yesterday? Well, my world kinda blew up so you got a review post instead. I called a plumber to come and fix my stopped up sink. (Draino and the plunger were no match for me blow drying my hair over the sink. Gross.) Well, he also discovered that I had a broken pipe in the wall that was leaking into my wall and crawlspace that could burst and flood my house at anytime. He immediately shut off my water and then told me he couldn’t fix it until the next day. That was fine but I had to evacuate my house and pony up a lot of money. It just feels like one thing after another after another after another. But what can you really do? I’m lucky that he caught it before the pipe actually burst.
On a totally unrelated topic, I was invited to experience Les Mills newest format for small group training today – the GRIT Series. Y’all know that I am a Les Mills evangelist and that BodyPump has changed my body and my life. I was super excited to try this new innovation that focuses on a more one-on-one experience with a coach and a 30-minute high intensity interval training workout. It’s designed to be one trainer/coach with 5-10 people. I was even more excited to arrive and find that our presenter/trainer was one of my BodyPump trainers five years ago when I got certified! It was so much fun to reconnect with him.
GRIT has three workouts – strength, plyo and cardio. We did the strength workout today. 30 minutes have never flown by so fast. It was full of great music (think lots of Dubstep-esque beats…LOVE), burpees, squat jumps, clean and press, squat cleans, pushups and so much more. The workout was AWESOME. Although I don’t think I can bring GRIT to Metro right now, it is an amazing new program and I applaud Les Mills for constantly staying on top of fitness trends and keeping it fun and fresh.
It remains my life dream to become a Les Mills trainer.
And now it’s time to make a kick ass 5K playlist, eat strawberry ice cream and read in bed.
