Needs More Quinoa

Finished first full week of the new training schedule. Back on the two-a-days, completed my bootcamps, did my swims, did my spins. Feels good. Am tired, definitely out of shape, but I can start to feel things getting back to where they were before the tough winter. And I don't have any foot pain, which is great. Did six mile training run today with the team, which was a lot of fun because a.) I finally found someone on the team who paces the same as me (everyone is always too fast or not fast enough) and b.) I didn't want to puke my guts out after mile four.

Yes, those of you who have read my posts in the past few weeks know that for some reason out of the blue I started to get GI issues while running. It always seemed to kick in after mile four or so. Could be side effects from meds (my favorite excuse for everything now btw), bad hydration, wrong food, coffee.. who knows. So this morning I tried something different. I didn't eat for 2.5 hours before running, I had a breakfast with lower fiber -- almond butter and fruit spread on Ezekiel Bread, I didn't drink coffee until after my run and I hydrated really well for the past two days.

Maybe it was the fact that there weren't huge hills or 30 mph wind gusts with snow this morning, but I felt great. Slow, tired, but great. Fatigue I can learn to fight through. That is fatigue. But the sharp stomach cramps I had been getting were not okay. So, hopefully that problem is licked.

I did a great job this weekend preparing my foods for the week and have two very simple food tips to share:

  1. Cook up a batch of quinoa and stick it in the fridge. Add it to anything and everything to expand your meals. This week I replaced about half of the flour in a muffin recipe with it and added it to some left over black bean tacos I had made. Eat it cold or hot. It is amazing. Don't know much about quinoa? the UN declared 2013 the Interational Year of the Quinoa. No joke. Check it out.
  2. Roast up a few sweet potatoes. I peel them, cut them into about 1/2 pieces, lightly coat with olive oil or coconut oil and then bake on baking pan for about 30 min in 375 degree oven, turn, cook for 20 min more or so. These bits make a great snack and, like quinoa, can be added into almost any meal throughout the week. Use it instead of rice as a landing pad for chilies and stews. Yum. I like to just cut them thinly and eat them raw, but that's a topic for another post. Maybe I need to write just all about sweet potatoes sometime.
And.. not sure if these are so good for fixing my GI, but for those of you in the DC area, check out Gordy's Pickled Jalepenos. They went really well with that left over black bean tacos with the quinoa and the sweet potatoes.

Now I am hungry again!

Oh, and I promised the folks I raced with last weekend that I would share the recipe for the Banana Oatmeal Date cookies I made (no sugar except for the dates, no fat except for Almond butter). Here it is -- just replace oil referenced here with Almond butter and it's that easy. Hmm.. maybe put some quinoa in them!


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