Sweet Potatoes FTW! - MCM Mama Runs

Who knew that this…

sweet_potatoes

Would equal this…

11_miles

After my awful, very tired, long run on Sunday, I knew I needed to get more carbs in. If I weren’t in a major training plan right now, maybe I’d be willing to have a couple of weeks of missing my mileage, but I can’t afford that right now. Despite eating what felt like a ton of food, I lost 5 pounds in 5 days when I went Paleo. While I do have about 5-10 pounds that could stand to go, I had no intention of losing weight like that. I know it was mostly “water” weight, but I have to think that losing it that fast was a definite indicator that I was just not eating enough carbs to sustain my running.

Enter the lowly sweet potato (and a can of pumpkin LOL). I pretty much added sweet potato to everything on Sunday. Monday morning I had pumpkin pie for breakfast. Ok, maybe there was no crust and maybe I made my grandmother’s pie recipe with coconut milk and no sugar, but it tasted like pie. Then, right before I headed out on my 7 mile run, I ate a banana.

Notice that I planned 7 and ran 11? Yeah, I was surprised too. (And so hungry afterwards that I barely took the time to wash my apple before I started eating.) It was not an amazing run, but it was a solid run. I ran a bit faster in the early miles than I would have if I’d known I was going to do 11, so the last mile was a bit of a trudge. But I love getting my long run in on Mondays and now I’m back on track.

21 miles over two days, 27.7 over three, 43 miles already in January 2013.

7 thoughts on “Sweet Potatoes FTW!”

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that is FTW!!

Awesome! I eat tons of everything when I train hard and still the weight drops. I do feel without energy if it drops too fast. Eat, sleep, run is my motto. And then eat some more.

Keep up the good work! I can always tell when I’m not eating enough because I feel terribly sluggish on my runs. With that said, I sometimes find it hard to balance eating enough and also feeling sluggish from eating too much!