Juneathon Day 24: Practically A Rest Day And A Question About Nutrition

My marathon training schedule said, Bike: 30 minutes. It hardly seemed worth getting my bike out of the garage just to go on a 30 minute ride, then I thought but what about people without bikes? Surely most runners aren’t cyclists too? Perhaps it meant 30 minutes on a stationary bike but I didn’t want to go to the gym just to do 30 minutes on a stationary bike (if you want to know my thoughts on stationary bikes, you can read my stationary bike haiku here), so I decided to ponce about the countryside for half an hour on my pretty Lady of the Manor Bike.

Pashley Poppy

My beautiful Lady of the Manor bike

Before I ponced about the countryside (where I saw a crow peck at the remains of a squished pigeon, ick), I’d been to Tesco to buy a Trek Bar for Sunday’s Great Kent Bike Ride; not that a leisurely 30 mile bike ride needs any particular fuelling but because I don’t usually (for ‘usually’, read ‘ever’) have breakfast and so I knew I’d be starving well before lunchtime and, anyway, Trek Bars are yum.

This got me thinking about sports nutrition and supplements in general, especially as I’m *cough* marathon training (this is only the second week, the novelty will soon wear off, I promise) and nutrition will have to play a part in that somewhere.

I took running really seriously when I first started. I read all the books and even before I’d run my first 5k, I’d started looking at gels and protein shakes. I know, I know… stop laughing… I was an enthusiastic beginner, all excited about my new hobby. I’ve still never had a gel, but when I started running home from work, I fuelled up beforehand with a Trek Bar (like I said, any excuse) and then I discovered MaxiNutrition vanilla protein shakes in Holland & Barrett, which tasted like ice cream, so I decided I needed one of those on completion of each running commute.

Because I’ve barely ran over the last few years, I haven’t taken any notice of what I’ve eaten afterwards but, I suppose with my mileage hopefully increasing over the next few weeks, I’m going to have to start thinking about pre-, during- and post-run nutrition. Any tips? What do you eat and drink when you’re marathon training?

Stats

Cycling: 30-ish minutes / 6-ish miles

 

 

 

Janathon Day 12 – it’s all going well

I’ve always been a fair weather cyclist, only venturing out for a leisurely ride on hot days, usually poncing about the countryside on my pink Pashley Poppy.

pashley_poppy

Since getting my Boardman though

boardman

and feeling guilty with it spending most of its time in the garage (although not as much time as my little Raleigh Shopper which I haven’t been on for years),

raleigh-shopper

as my £30-from-gumtree mountain bike

mountain-bike

is the one that gets the most use, getting me to the station and back or taking me into town, I’ve taken the opportunity when it’s arisen to get out for a longer ride on the Boardman.

Over the last few weeks, these rides have been a trip to Wye and back (around 20 miles), 28 miles last Sunday and then a record ride for me – 40 miles yesterday.

I was feeling mega-super-hardcore about my 40 miles, until I remembered @naominf RAN 45 miles the day before. Mega-mega-super-super-hardcore.

Although my Janathon exercise effort was to be applauded,

cycling

my diet certainly wasn’t. My food intake for the day was:

Breakfast: satsuma, nectarine, plum

Lunch: Creamy hot chocolate and a toasted teacake

Post-bike ride: 2 x hot chocolate (I was freezing) and 3 biscuits

Pre-dinner snack: 2 x Ferrero Rocher

Dinner: pizza and garlic bread

Post-dinner: 1 piece of peanut butter fudge, 3 squares salted chocolate, Tesco mint thin

Think I need to go and make some granola bars so I have something a bit healthier I can munch on instead of Christmas leftovers.

I also need some cold-weather cycling kit as the three-quarter length cycling tights I bought in the summer weren’t quite up to the job of keeping me warm. Any suggestions?