Feed Me!

What does an athlete eat after a 20 mile training run? 

I confess that a big part of my motivation and a reason I exercise to the extent that I do is so I can eat more.  My relationship with food is almost obsessive.  No casual observer of my eating / exercise behavior would characterize it as normal. 

But I am discriminating in what I eat.  I would never eat Paula Deen’s signature dish; a hamburger, topped with a fried egg and bacon sandwiched in a doughnut.  That’s 936 calories in a handful of bites!  We’ll see how many more of these artery cloggers Paula pushes now that she has been outed for having Type 2 diabetes.  She kept that dirty little secret for two years.

Life is filled with choices.  I chose to run 20 miles this morning.  We choose to fill our recreation time with physical activity.  We also have a choice of what we put down our gullet. 

What are some alternatives to that hamburger?  You could eat nine medium bananas or four large baked potatoes or a cup and a half of Haagen-Dazs Mocha Almond Fudge Ice Cream.  If you run a lot, you could eat all of that in one sitting.

Things I like to eat pre-long run:

Peanut butter / honey / banana sandwich

Baked potato with cheese

During runs over 20 miles I usually ingest a gel.  20 years ago when I was bike racing, our team was on a training ride to Bennett and back, a distance of about 100 miles.  I noticed one rider had what appeared to be a wind breaker rolled up in his jersey pocked.  We stopped in Bennett to eat and refuel.  While we gnawed on cold, hard Power Bars, that rider unwrapped a big ham and cheese sub.  Real food tastes so much better than engineered nourishment. 

Things I like to eat post-long run:

Scrambled eggs with grits

Waffles

Pancakes

Hash browns

Oatmeal with raisins, chopped nuts and brown sugar

 

My diet is almost entirely vegetarian, but I am a big fan of braised meats like Beef Bourguignon, Braised Pork Shank and Coq au Vin.  I eat a lot of pasta.  For breakfast during the week I eat a mixture of grains including steel cut oats, kashi, quinoa, bulgur wheat and barley.  For the most part, I eat like a

cow.  The incidence of heart disease in cows is so low it is statistically non-existent. 

So, what does an athlete eat after a 20 mile training run?  Anything they want. 

When they finally lock me up in the asylum for deranged runners, they’ll put me on a diet of pizza and pancakes; things that can be slid under the door.