Do Girl Scout Cookie calories count for runners in training?

 Runners burn a bunch of calories, especially during pre-race training season. Let’s be honest. That’s one of the reasons most of us started the whole running pursuit. Then we discovered endorphins and the thrill of chasing the next personal record (PR).

 

Enter the Girl Scouts with their tantalizing roster of cookies. Here they come!

 It’s that time of year again.

 Here's a cookie-by-cookie calorie run-down. Look at the calorie counts for these popular Girl Scout Cookie varieties. Instead of listing “serving size,” I’m showing the “per cookie” calories. The serving sizes are up to you! (Amounts are approximations, based on package information.)

 

Let’s assume the average runner (or jogger or fitness walker) burns something in the neighborhood of 100 calories per mile (with the amount varying by body build, weight, fitness level, and plenty of other variables). You can easily do the math to determine how many miles you’ll need to do to burn off those cookie calories.

 It’s definitely doable, if we don’t go overboard with cookie-binging. If we do, we’ll just have to train longer.

 Hey, it’s for a good cause anyway.  Crunch! Crunch!

 

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• Winter weight: 8 ways to stay trim during the holiday season

 

 

Image/s: Girl Scout -Pixabay, public domain. Cookie listing adapted by this user, including fair use product promo photos

 

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Sports nutrition: What runner foods do you hate?

Certain foods tend to be must-eats for runners. We get that. Sports nutrition lists vary, but the top-recommended picks for active runners (from sprinters to marathoners) usually include bananas, berries, eggs, legumes, nuts, peanut butter, whole grains, yogurt, and more. Most of those are pretty palatable for most of us, but we probably all have at least one that we cannot stand.

What runner foods do you hate?

I hate bananas. I really do. I don’t like them whole. I gag at the thought of banana pudding or banana cream pie. I cringe at banana pancakes or waffles. I refuse to put bananas in fruit smoothies.

I’ll choke down a half banana after a race, when a cheery volunteer hands it to me. I know my body probably needs it by then, especially after a longer race on a hotter day. But that banana is not exactly a treat for me.

The whole banana-eating experience reminds me of sitting at the family dinner table as a child, long after everyone else has been excused, simply because I haven’t eaten my now-cold-and-soggy vegetables (most of which I’ll actually choose and prepare and enjoy nowadays). But I digress.

Sure, bananas are packed with potassium and other good things for active athletes’ bodies. But there’s about a 30-minute window when bananas are at their prime. First they are too green and solid and hard to enjoy. By the time they are ripe and ready to eat, they are practically turning brown and mushy and altogether too sweet.

Bananas are a necessary evil for running, as far as I am concerned. I’m just not a fan.

OK, I don’t mind banana bread. But it’s not exactly a personal favorite. And it’s practically dessert, so it doesn’t count as standard runner fuel – at least not during training or racing season (which is pretty much all the time).

Honestly, I end up making banana bread every time I purchase more than two bananas at a time. The others are bound to turn brown before I gather the gumption to eat them. And I often give away the whole loaf, or at least half of it.

What runner foods do you hate?

Images:

Adapted from Creative Commons Licensing image.

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Race aid stations - What are they serving this time?

Runners, repeat after me: I will not eat or drink anything on-course that I have not already tested in training.

We get it. We know it. But we do it anyway.

And we are often very sorry we took the risk.

I’ve done it. I’ve grabbed goos and gels halfway through half marathons and regretted it. I’ve gulped electrolyte drinks without trying them ahead of time. And I’ve repented, while panting and clutching my gut in the final miles. 

Not gonna fall for it this time.

An upcoming half marathon race has announced that their on-course aid stations will be offering a new hydration drink, which is billed as carb-free, gluten-free, GMO-free, keto-friendly, paleo-friendly, sugar-free, and vegan. It's probably ideal for lots of runners. 

But I’m not buying it (or even grabbing a free cup mid-race). I looked up the ingredients, and the extremely popular sugar substitute this product contains does unpleasant things to me, even when I’m not running my heart out.

So you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be sporting a bottle of my own favorite electrolyte beverage for that event. And I’ll be reaching out to the water stop volunteers who are handing out actual water.

Better safe than sorry? Got that right!

Like other big races, I’m guessing this event will feature beverage give-aways in the finish chute. If a race volunteer hands me a bottle of this stuff, I’ll smile and thank him or her. Then I’ll find someone to give it to afterwards – someone who can drink it without fear of later mishaps and regrets.

Images:

Created by this user with online generator

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Marathon prep: Gotta step past a miserable training run

Stop me, if you’ve heard this one. I had a terrible, horrible, abysmal, no-good, rotten, painful, agonizing, dreadful, nasty, nightmare long training run. And I’ve gotta go do a full marathon soon.

I can hardly wait. But I mostly can’t wait till it’s over.

This marathon (my first) sounded like a super idea last fall, when the race countdown clock read “300 days” to go. Now we’re into the final three weeks before the big day. I don’t exactly have cold feet, even though I’ve had to ice them (along with various other body parts) more than once.

But I am definitely overthinking the whole deal, right about now.

I’ve been using a popular marathon training schedule and marking off miles daily (or pretty much so) on a calendar. About a week and a half ago, I did the second 18-miler in the program. The first one had gone pretty well, a couple of weeks before that. My splits were fairly consistent, averaging about 2.5 minutes per mile slower than my usual 5K pace.

“I can live with that,” I told myself.

Then I did the second 18-miler. It was a disaster.

The day kind of got away from me. I didn’t get out on the open road till afternoon, when the August sun was high and hot. The humidity was agonizing. Summer thunderstorms loomed in the area. An ongoing Achilles tendonitis issue still nagged me.

But the run had to be done, so I filled up my Camelbak and stepped out.

The first few miles were downhill. (We all know what that means.) But by mile 5, I was already sore and sweaty and significantly slower than usual. My guts began cramping around mile 9, even though I was hydrating religiously and nibbling on energy snacks along the way. By the time the rain began falling (around mile 12), I was already soaked and overheated and grateful for the relief. My phone died at mile 15, taking my music with it.

“Can this get any worse?” I moaned.

I crawled into my driveway at 18.1, as the sun disappeared along the horizon.

But my mood was even darker than my neighborhood at that point. I slogged my way into my air-conditioned home, where the drastic temperature change hit me like a truck. Immediately, I dashed for the powder room, where I threw up (from a very empty stomach).

‘Nuff said. (Or maybe too much.) You get the idea. I was miserable.

“How am I gonna do a full 26.2 miles, if 18 just undid me?” I groaned.

OK, it was a terrible training run.

Too bad. So sad.

All runners have horrible runs, once in a while, if we do this thing long enough. And the road to the marathon still beckons.

The final (and longest) long training run awaits. I gotta do a 20-mile run before the pre-race tapering starts in a few days.

“Scratch that bad run,” a veteran marathoner told me. “You punished your body and finished it. Good for you. That’s all that matters. Start fresh with the 20-miler. You can do this.”

Images:

Adapted from public domain photo

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