Tart Cherry Juice Concentrate

So after reading the latest blog post from No Meat Athlete's Matt Frazier (http://www.nomeatathlete.com/), I decided to jump on board.

This 16 oz bottle cost me $14.99 at the local natural foods store, but it's located on Amazon, for a little over $10 which is a pretty good price. I blended 1 tablespoon of the concentrate with some almond milk and a banana and it was delicious! My next try might include two bananas for a thicker smoothie and some cacao powder for added deliciousness and nutrients.  

According to the NMA post, after a week of consuming the cherry concentrate, Matt's shoulder, which has pretty much always been a bother, began to improve and he was able to sleep through the night which was apparently a rarity. I figured that since I had slight knee pain that comes and goes (ever since sprinting for my HS track team) I might as well give it a try. What I think is really going to be a plus though is the boost in recovery for athletes. I have quite a season of ultras (possibly 4 or more in the next 4 months) and I think I can use all of the antioxidants and muscle recovery boosters (vegan and natural) that I can find.

I'll be sure to keep you all update on how I feel the cherry concentrate is working. Basically, I'll be letting you know how my body felt during a run after a previous day's hard run/workout. Given that the knee pain isn't too persistent, it is not likely I will notice any effects until a month or more after I realized I haven't felt pain, if that's the case.

Read more about Tart Cherry Juice Concentrate here: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/benefits-tart-cherry-juice-concentrate-7126.html



So while Val and I were driving down to Asheville, I heard on a Rich Roll Podcast that Killian Jornet (the most amazing sky runner on the planet) has a book out that was published last year! As soon as we got to the B&B, while Val was getting ready for dinner, I got onto Amazon and ordered the book. It just came in the mail yesterday and while I have a couple books I need to read for teacher orientation that starts in less than 2 weeks, I will be weaving this book into my reading sessions for sure!


Check it out and order Here


My runs today were a bit sporadic. I had no idea what the weather was going to be like in the morning after a couple of days of weird stormy weather here in central NJ. I figured I'd wake up early and just see what my body felt like doing. I did just that and as I was grabbing the newspaper form outside, it began to rain and the skies didn't look to pleasant. I decided that I will just get in a quick 3 miles and then take off again in the afternoon after the skies cleared up a bit. So all in all I got in a good 10 miles today after a pretty tough 13 total miles (including a track workout) in yesterday's humidity.

Needing the protein, but avoiding energy/protein bars for the time being, I whipped up some tofu scramble which, come one, definitely looks like the real deal! And by "real" deal, I mean the old egg version deal that I would love for you to cut back on. If you cook up scrambled eggs for you or someone else at home pretty often, I encourage (okay, I challenge) you to try substituting firm tofu for eggs.

It's super easy to make. Cut the tofu into small cubes and as it is cooking, just keep cutting or dicing as you would some eggs. Add whatever vegetables you want and if you are a cheesy scrambled eggs person, add some vegan cheese or add nutritional yeast like I did. Find them at the links or look for them at your local natural foods store.


That's all for today!

Happy Running everybody!

NC take me back!!!

Oh how nice it would have been to wake up at Lion and the Rose in Asheville this morning. Being back home after such an amazing vacation still hasn't quite sunk it like it usually does. 

After a 2 hour run using my aerobic system (fat-burning, slow pace; a post for another day maybe this week) and 13 miles of nonstop sweating, I could definitely have used this breakfast that our innkeeper from the B&B provided one morning.

 Veganized huevos rancheros

But after listening to several No Meat Athlete podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-meat-athlete-radio/id476196931) and Rich Roll Podcasts (http://www.richroll.com/category/podcast/) I decided to minimize how much food I eat that comes out of a package (i.e. processed foods). I mean there are things I don't want to cut out such as tofu, tempeh, and non-dairy milk, but for the most part it has been going well. I felt great this morning when I woke up for my run which hasn't been the case in a while. And I figured after all the sweets from vacation I could use something to work toward. I'll post after about a week or so of minimizing processed foods and let you know how it's been going. 

                  We met this guy, Matt, in Asheville!

 http://www.richroll.com/category/podcast/                  http://www.nomeatathlete.com/

You'll probably be seeing a lot more about RRP and NMA in the near future given that I'm so inspired by these guys recently. Hopefully you'll start to follow them too, but just don't leave me behind in the process!!


A bit random, but I took this picture the day before I left for vacation and figured it's not too late to share it. This is indeed a peacock and it is but 1 of about 4 or 5 that stay around this home I frequently pass. Pretty sure there is one female and 3 or 4 males and they are even more beautiful than the ones you see in a zoo because well..they're not in one.

Lastly, before I publish this post, I just need to express how much I love that I signed up for my 6 hour ultramarathon  rather late! I mean it's only 11 days away and I have barely thought about it! Feels so great not to have been counting down for 3 or more months. And I already have more ideas for ultras lined up, but I shall not post about those until I am positive!

That's all for tonight. I'll leave you with a crazy story I came across last night regarding the 3rd place finisher at the famous Hardrock 100 in Colorado. The first link is about Killian Jornet who is a monster ultra runner who broke the course record with super ease just last week and the second link is about the 3rd place finisher. Enjoy!

Killian's win:

http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/trail-running/kilian-jornet-shatters-hardrock-100-record_107922

3rd place finisher's crazy occurence:

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/runner-survives-lightning-strike-to-get-3rd-at-hardrock-100

Beer City, USA

Man oh man! What an incredible week it has been! Val and I decided to visit Asheville, North Carolina which is also known as Beer City, USA for all of its local breweries. I stopped drinking beer about 2 years ago after gaining so much weight during my early years of college, but I decided I couldn't visit Beer City without trying one.


 Val had to capture the moment.

We decided to visit Asheville, which my dad kept thinking was Nashville (as in Tennessee), because of a seed that was planted in Val's head after reading about the city on NoMeatAthlete.com This vegan, ultrarunner, blogger is a pretty big name in the plant-based world and Val and I are certainly part of the platform that supports his work and his message.




We reached out to him (Matt Frazier) and he invited us to a music fest that was occurring Friday night which was such a cool experience. We thoroughly enjoyed the vegan (not quite healthy) food, the music, the beer (yes, more beer) and the company of Matt and his friends and family.

I think Val summed up the trip perfectly when responding to a question Matt asked us Friday evening:

           Matt: So what have you guys been doing so far in Asheville?
           Val: Eating!

Yep. That's how I would sum up our experience. There were so many restaurants (Laughing Seed, Rosetta's Kitchen, Plant, Mellow Mushroom) and pubs for vegetarians and vegans to dine at we kind of went a little food crazy. I'm pretty sure about 40% of the pictures we took are of us eating!


 
Here I am at Mellow Mushroom about to share with Val the best vegan and GF pizza we've ever had.

 And here, I couldn't help but convince Val to share a Tofurky dog. I mean when are we able to get a tofu hot dog from a hot dog stand??!!


Even both the B&B and the AirBnB hosts offered up vegan breakfasts (The Lion and the Rose B&B) and vegan snacks.

We really did have a great time in and around Asheville. After soaking up the main city, we went out about 40 minutes to Brevard to stay there for two nights. There I had an awesome black bean burger on the best white bread (baked in-house) I ever did eat and Val got to meet a Naturopathic Doctor (her career goal) for the first time.  We got to check out Dupont State Forest where part of The Hunger Games was filmed and saw, climbed, and hiked around beautiful waterfalls.


Beautiful High Falls in Dupont State Forest


There's Val being Val.

I hope those reading this who have a chance to vacation somewhere new and different would consider checking out Asheville. We really did have one great vacation and even talked about moving down there one day. Even if we don't, we will definitely return to Asheville and certainly make our way to Brevard to see one of the best surprises of the trip: a Corgi that lived where we AirBnB'd. We have talked about getting a dog and settled on a Corgi long before this dog, Riley, surprised us in Brevard.



Now quickly onto the running ...

If the trip can be summed up in "Eating", then the running can be summed up in "Hilly". Not only were we thousands of feet higher than I'm used to running at, but I was climbing elevation that I definitely was not used to. It's all in my head I'm sure, but I feel like my quads are 5x bigger just from the 25 or so miles I ran and hiked in the 5 days we were there.

The running and hiking on the trails has me sold on leaving NJ and living in a place where I can take a quick drive or bike ride and run mountains and trails as much as I want. This is going to happen.

As far as fueling goes, I'm pretty sure all the food we ate was enough to fuel me for days of running so I didn't have to worry on that matter.

I guess that's all for now.

It's kind of hot out, but still....get out and do something!!

Happy Running!

Then get out of the kitchen

Can't handle the heat? Then get out of the kitchen.

I don't know where that phrase came from (and maybe that says something of me), but I sure heeded those words these past couple days. 

Yesterday, I was all set to run a tempo run (holding a faster pace for a certain amount of time; e.g. 7 min/mile for 30 minutes). Knowing it was going to be a hot day I know I shouldn't have waited until 9 to start my run, but that's exactly what happened. After my mile warm-up, I began to tempo (run my set faster pace) and could only hold tempo pace for a mile. The next 4 miles was a mix of jogging and walking and excessive sweating. The sun definitely earned my respect yesterday. 

And today....forget it. Because I'm going camping for the 4th of July weekend, I decided to move my long to today so I can just relax over the weekend. So up I was at 4:45 this morning for this amazing 5 hour run I was psyched to do. 10 minutes into my run I felt like I was running in a sauna. The humidity was disgusting and after much internal deliberation, I decided to shorten the 5 hours to 2 hours. Again, mother nature won the battle.

Look. I hate cutting runs short. I think if you have a plan, it's important to stick with it. This helps build discipline which needs to occur during training for a successful culminating event. But it is more important to be safe and to listen to your body to prevent any regrets. I had planned runs, but the weather just wasn't going to let me follow through with them so I needed to adapt. These decisions are what we, as athletes and people, need to be able to understand, do, an be okay with.

I'm a huge advocate for exercising outdoors and enjoying what nature is all about instead of taking it to a treadmill to avoid a few raindrops for example. But as the summer temps start to rise, I just hope you are all staying smart and safe to make sure that you can continue to do what you love to do while keeping your body and mind healthy.

I know I promised a continuation of hydration and that will come. I just thought I'd discuss the topic of staying healthy and smart during the summer heat. Also, even while you are running for shorter periods of time or even earlier in the morning to avoid the heat: stay hydrated!

Happy Running and, as I am leaving tomorrow morning for the weekend, Happy Independence Day! That is what the 4th of July is all about remember?

Hydrate me!

It's finally here!!!! The day after Monday. The day before Wednesday. You know what day that is! That's right: Tuesday. Which would normally never be significant in any way unless it was an election year in the US, but today, this first (Tues)day of July, is indeed a significant day. "Why so, Vegan Runner?" you may ask. Well I'll tell ya, Curious George.






USA vs. Belgium. That's why.

So if you are one of those lucky ducks who, you know, have jobs and are being productive with your lives, here's just another World Cup reason to shut down at work from about 3-5.

Now, yesterday I promised that I would discuss the importance of hydration today and I'm going to keep said promise. I'm not going to hit you with a bunch of scientific terminology or exercise science jargon. I plan on keeping this simple, because that's really all it should be made out to be.

When it comes to hydration, remember this: you need to be hydrated each and every day. Hydration isn't about not feeling thirsty. You may drink a glass of water and feel as though your thirst has been quenched. This may be true, but it doesn't mean that your body is sufficiently hydrated. You should be drinking water every day, with every meal. So many people throw out numbers such as 8 cups a day or x number of ounces a day; it can get pretty jumbled. Just do this: drink a glass of water in the morning and just about 2 full medium/large-sized glasses of water with every main meal you have. This should be simple enough to remember and easy enough to follow.

Using these glasses as a guide, the left two glasses are fine to use to gauge the appropriate size of a "full glass". The flowery glass is a bit too small in regards to the above explanation. 

If you are especially active during the summer in terms of how you exercise or you work outdoors, you may need to be drinking more water.

For runners or endurance athletes that train outdoors such as triathletes and cyclists, it is important that you are replenishing what is lost when you sweat. Sweating is beautiful. I truly believe this. I hate sweating when I'm in a shirt and tie going to work or somewhere nice, but sweating in any other circumstance is just a wonderful mechanism of the human body. However, while we sweat to cool our bodies down, we not need only to drink water to replenish water lost, we need to take in vital electrolytes that are lost when sweating excessively.

This is the reason, as youngsters, our parents bought us bottles of Gatorade and, later, Powerade before our soccer games or softball practices. These drinks are great because they have adequate amounts of sodium, potassium, chloride and other electrolytes found in much lower quantities in these sports drinks. The negative side of these two brands: sugar. These sports drinks mimic juices which is why children love them so much. There is way too much sugar in these drinks which are often consumed by children when they are not even exercising.

Take a look at this image:

Yes, these are sugar cubes and you can see just how much sugar is in these bottles.

Just as our palates mature and we grow out of Easy Macs and chicken fingers, so too should our selections for sports drinks become a bit more sophisticated.

I introduce to you....the electrolyte tablets.

More on this tomorrow! For today: 2 glasses of water with your lunch and dinner. And a glass at night wouldn't hurt either!

Happy Running.

  Go Team USA!

Clif me!

Happy Monday everybody.

The weekend is over and I hope it went just swimmingly for each and every one of you. In terms of running and relaxing, I have to admit that my weekend was just full of all of that.

Quick recap:

Saturday long run - 4 hours and 15 mins; 29 (blissful) miles

After the run, went to Sprig and Vine Saturday for lunch with my parents and Val. This completely vegan restaurant is located in New Hope, PA and is probably my favorite place to eat as of now. The food on their Sunday brunch menu is to die for, but their lunch and dinner do not fail to please by any means. 

The rest of the day was just spent relaxing at home and being lazy. I guess after running 29 miles in the morning I can reward myself with a few sloth-like qualities. 

Sunday back-to-back long run: 3 hours; 19 (not quite as blissful) miles

Rest of the day? HA! You think I was up for anything after all the running ?? Well I actually wasn't in pain or anything, but that's the thing with training (especially during the summer): it saps you of energy or desire to do anything other than to sit around in your niece's pool or lay on the couch watching World Cup. Just me? Doubtful.

Occasionally I come across someone I haven't seen in quite a while and my running is brought up in conversation. I'm frequently asked how much I run a week or if I get tired or what I think about during 4 hours of running.

I run a decent amount each week.

I think about anything and everything. If I kick a rock, I probably think about what it must feel like if I was a rock and was just kicked 15 feet. Sometimes the rear of cars take on face forms in my head and I imagine them smiling, grinning, or otherwise looking at me in a strange way as they speed away. But most of the time I probably could honestly say that I think about food. Val and I are hardcore foodies and I love eating after a very hard workout or long run; I enjoy the food so much more and can appreciate the food as nourishment for my body.

And that's how I avoid getting so tired during a run: eating.

You see, eating isn't just for after workouts and runs. I can't run 3 hours or more without replenishing my body with much-needed calories. During my 6 hour ultra marathon at the end of July I'll probably burn about 3,500 calories. There's no way I can keep going without making up for all that calorie burning and sweating.
Now that I am ultra-training, I am beginning to re-appreciate products such as Clif Shot Gels and Clif Shot Bloks.

The Mocha gel in the picture is by far the best-tasting gel of any brand I've ever tried and goes down so smoothly. These gels may have a weird consistency that takes some getting used to for some people, but I highly recommend them for anybody doing cardio work for longer than an hour at a time. Always wash them down with water.

Clif Bloks? It's like eating gummy snacks that are meant to fuel you for hours on end. A pack of Bloks can fuel me for 90 minutes to 2 hours of running and they do not cause me any kind of GI (gastrointestinal) issues whatsoever...plus, they taste so goooodd!! So far Strawberry is my favorite, but I'm excited to try this Tropical flavor I came across. Way to go Clif!

But eating is hands-down my second concern when it comes to my running. First on my priority list: hydration. I'll feature that tomorrow.

Before I end today's post, I just need to express my extreme sadness that this is a reality in the world I live in:



I came across this article in my morning newspaper. The doctors and researchers interviewed for this piece discuss the growing numbers of morbidly obese teenagers and the additional ailments that obesity causes such as sleep apnea and high blood pressure. They claim that these ailments and other effects of obesity are why these teenagers and families are seeking these surgeries and why more and more surgeries are being permitted to be done on teens.

We've got a serious issue here, people. If surgeries for teenagers to lose weight becomes the norm, what kind of message are we sending to our youth? What is this really telling our children? Have we stopped teaching our children how to take care of their bodies? Is self-respect only about not calling yourself dumb or not believing in yourself? Does having self-respect not mean respecting our bodies mentally, emotionally, AND physically?

As I type, I'm getting more and more disgusted about what "Obesity surgery for teens" actually means for our society. It is this reality that drive me to want to start a youth running club sometime in the near future. It is or this reality why Val is pursuing a Naturopathic Doctor degree to help people holistically rather than through prescriptions and operations. I hope you are disgusted, too. And if you are, what will you do about it?

Newly Hired and Re-inspired!!

I'm back!

First off...this:                      

Ok let's just get this out there for all you Jaimee's out there: runners can't run in long shorts! At least, we shouldn't. Short shorts give runners' legs more mobility and quite frankly, the limited fabric just feels so nice! I love me my 3 inch inseam shorts. I even fold the waist down when I'm feeling really good!


As the title hints: I am proud to have accepted my first teaching position for the 2014-2015 school year. The past 5 months have been absolutely crazy in terms of how much time I spent looking for jobs, let alone trying to finish grad school.

Well friends, the deed is done and I could not be more happier with where I have landed: Trenton, NJ. Right in my backyard (I reside in Hamilton, NJ). I might even have an opportunity to coach soccer which was my life-long sport before my current life-long sport took its place...hope that makes sense.

Okay....let's get to this running business.

So I've been waiting for this moment for about 8 months or so and it's finally here. I have registered for my next ultra marathon: Montour 24. It is the Montour Commission's inaugural run of this magnitude and while it's main event is the 24 hour, I have opted to run its much less daunting, little, tiny version of itself: the 6 hour. What I think is still going to come around and bite me in the rear end of my you-know-what is that I and other visiting and loco...I mean local...runners will be running on a 1.5 mile looped course. Yes. 1 and a half miles. For 6 hours. Just going around. And around. And around. And around...you get the idea.

Best part? I paid to do this. But I gotta be honest...I'm kidding myself if I say I'm not absolutely psyched to finally get back into ultra running. Just training alone has gotten me into a much better mood about my fitness; the increased sun exposure helps a lot too.

And living at home has been great for my diet as well. Basically I am fortunate enough to be back with my parents while I save up for a year. As such, my Whole Foods shopping dad has been stocking up on raw nut mixes, fruits, and veggies like he's feeding a family of 4 again. And since my sister is out on her own with her family, I guess I'll just be eating the other plate. No problem here.

That's all for now.

Here's to hoping you all get out and run this summer! If you're in the area, it's going to be a beautiful weekend for some outdoor exercising!

Happy Running!