Runner Nutrition at its Finest

What's creepier than a hand
with a face that talks? 

Today, I ran 12.6 miles. It was a faster pace than I have sustained for a while and it felt good until my foot started hurting at mile 9 at which point I fell behind. My ending time was still a respectable 8:30 pace for the entire time, but I felt lousy that I didn't keep up. My post race nutrition is noteworthy though.

If you have followed me for a while, you know that my running nutrition is newsworthy in its high levels of good cholesterol mixed with moderate amounts of protein and carbohydrates right up there with Chef Boyardee in the canned goods section of the grocery store. I have to blame this on my parents for never cooking Hamburger Helper. I had a friend who is a successful engineer, his mom is a highly regarded university professor, his dad an accomplished man who worked for the state also served in the National Guard. They all got to eat Hamburger Helper growing up. I would always pray that if I got invited to eat dinner with my friend's family that we could have Hamburger Helper. I would then come home and tell my mom who would get a disgusted bitter beer face on and exclaim in a high pitched voice, "Hamburger Helper is as bad as McDonalds." I happened to long for McDonalds too so this comment really didn't make much sense to my young mind.

After the Saturday run, I cooled down at the running store and signed the wife and 15 year old up for the Thanksgiving Day race. I drove to the Great Harvest Bread store and used one of my buy one get one free coupons (I think I have over 100 left and they have no expiration date) to pick up two loaves of bread (pumpkin chocolate chip and cinnamon pull aparts). Upon returning home, I was tired and ready for a shower and some food. The food resulted in a protein drink with bits of green things with a couple eggs and maybe some hashbrowns  steaming hot corn dog. Yeah, one of those ones that come in the big giant package that is found at Costco. I justified this in that it probably has a good amount of protein and the crust around it i'm sure isn't just regular flour...it's got some cornmeal mixed in. Obviously it is good.

I could have stopped there, but I moved on to some leftover sweet potatoes from dinner last week. These are the kind of sweet potatoes that when you eat them you feel as though you have died and gone to heaven. In addition to the sweet potato, it has a carmelized pecan topping on it. I could eat these every day and then when I show up on The Biggest Loser you can look back at this post and see where it all went awry. Ana Konikova (like I'm going to spill my guts to Bob..ha!) and I would be having one of our get-to-know you visits that they hold and I'll talk about my sweet potato problem.

In the end, here is my post run nutrition for the morning.
2-Foster Farms Corn Dogs
1 serving sweet potatoes
water/leftover gatorade from my fuel belt

Now, I'm going to follow this up with a pizza from Costco or Papa Murphy's because I don't want to cook.