Reasons to run: A Lesson in Nutrition

A couple of Fridays ago, I laced up the shoes, packed a bunch of PowerGel, filled the water bottle and headed out for the final long run in preparation for the Ogden Marathon.

Feeling good after my last one, a 19-miler, and looking forward to the sweet goodness of tapering my mileage that would be the next three weeks before the marathon, I set out.

The course I plotted was a very familiar but hilly 23 miles. No problem. I had done this route many times before and was looking forward to putting my feet up some three-plus hours later.

The first 11.5 miles were uneventful. It snowed and blew a little, and the hills were nothing I wasn’t expecting.

Then at mile 15, things began to change, slowly at first, then at an accelerated pace. I started to notice I was losing steam, and my legs were not their normally perky selves.

At mile 18, I stopped quickly at a Chevron station for a water refill and felt almost as if I had finished a full marathon. At 19, I began taking more frequent walk breaks. These breaks became even more frequent and longer in duration as I struggled to reach the next mile marker.

With two miles left, I was hoping a nice police officer would happen by whom I could flag down for some assistance. That never happened. As if the running gods were saying, “You made this bed, now sleep in it” (which actually sounded like a good idea), I was forced to continue on.

Alas, it was all I could do to hobble home and crash on the couch to evaluate what had caused such a sudden “brick wall” during this run.

The worst came to mind first, that I possibly had some weird terminal illness and was destined to a life of medication. No, it probably wasn’t that.

Once reason took hold, I started to realize what I had eaten, and everything made sense.

That day, I had a fruit/vegetable smoothie for breakfast, nothing for lunch and at 2 p.m., right before my run, a bowl of granola.

The day before held my gross error. I had eaten a fruit/vegetable smoothie for breakfast, a frozen bean burrito for lunch and no more than 10 chips with guacamole for dinner. To top off the day, I had two smores with my Cub Scout son at his meeting that evening.