Category Archives: fuel for workouts

Bike rides and birthdays!

What a wonderful Saturday!  I actually didn’t sleep very well last night.  It was hot and we had changed the flannel sheets off the bed, so not sure if that made me restless or what, but I would like to have slept in some before the ride.  Nevertheless, coffee and breakfast always make things better 😀

Superfoods to fuel up!  After a leisurely breakfast and some housework, we packed up some snacks and were ready to hit the trail.

Biker thighs are ready 😉  I look 4 feet tall in this picture, but I am really 5’2″.  Today was a 40-mile scheduled ride.  The bike path along this route is actually a wide shoulder of a main road for most of the way, so it isn’t quite as nice as the regular path.  We cross over the bridge leaving town here:

To avoid the instate overpass, we detoured around Moreau State Park, and I jumped up and down when I saw these along the side of the road:

Yay!!!  Little pops of color.  Actually, you can just see the faintest shimmer of green in the trees as the buds are starting to pop.  Green is coming!  The ride there is very hilly and challenging, not to mention the headwind.  We stopped half way and had a snack.  Phew!  20 miles from home and we arrived.

Today is my sister’s birthday, so we met her in Saratoga and took her out to lunch at Ravenous:

The crepe place!  Yum.  I had a crepe filled with scrambled eggs (redundant, I guess), cheddar cheese, and broccoli!  Served with pommes frites:

Happy birthday Colleen!!

John and I decided to walk around town after eating and window shop.  Saratoga is really a very cute city.  A little spendy, but cute.  I kind of would like to live here, just for a little more nightlife :mrgreen:

Needed dessert, and a new cupcake shop opened up called Betties Cakes.

It’s very retro.

Yum:

One thing I appreciate about this place is how there are 3 different sizes of cupcakes.  They actually bought this business from Spa City Cupcakes and redesigned everything.  I got the medium size cupcake, which was the perfect size:

The flavor?

Blueberry pancake, which is a blueberry cupcake topped with maple buttercream frosting.  I  had it alongside a cup of coffee.  It was outstanding!  I could have sat there happily with a bowl of this frosting and a spoon. 😳  This just makes me want to open a cupcake shop….

After this, we hit the road back home.  Interestingly, it was much faster coming back than getting there, and we shaved 10 minutes off the time.  I don’t know if it was just the tailwind or if the hills were more up on the way there?  Maybe both.  Or maybe we were powered by cupcake. We cruised home pretty easily, although the last hill to our house is just a killer.  I was kind of tired at that point.

Distance:  40.5 miles

Time:  3 hours, 5 minutes

Average speed:  12.7 mph  (11.9 first half, 13.6 second half)

Top speed:  27.7 mph (Hills – woo hoo!)

I felt great after we got back.  I could go farther, but not sure how much.  It feels so good to have these kind of bike legs in early April!  All that winter work paid off.  I know I can bike 100 miles this summer.

Calorie burn for this ride is probably about 1,000.  I give myself between 20 and 25 calories per mile, depending on how hard the ride is, just to be conservative. Snacks consumed during this ride included a homemade granola bar, some dried pineapple, and an apple.  Then another granola bar after we got home.

Dinner time!  Easy cooking stuff since we are a little tired.  Brussel sprouts, strawberries and Pierogies!

I ate these all the time when I was younger and forgot how good they are.

Company coming over tonight and lots of relaxing in store.  We are having Easter lunch/dinner at my sister’s tomorrow, but I also have to work, as per every Sunday.

Did you have a fabulous day?

5 mile run and feuling for exercise

Got up today and decided on another 5 mile run (or jog, I guess… whatever).  I fueled up with a wheat english muffin, 1 half with PB and the other half with the last bit of almond butter.  This is toasted, but doesn’t look like it in the picture.

muff

So this is about 150 calories.  I found it to be good fuel for the run.  Not too much, but just enough to keep me energized.

I knocked some time off the last one!  I did the 5 miles in 57:15  (last time was 59:01).  Still not pushing it, but staying comfortable.  Yay – and it burned 600 calories!

I only fuel for longer workouts.  If I was only going for 3 miles, I would have just done that and come back and eaten breakfast.  During the week, I exercise first thing in the morning.  Now that I am done with the triathlon, I am settling into a less intense workout program, which is kind of nice!  When my workouts last longer than an hour, I fuel up before hand.  Except for running – anything over 3 miles gets morning fuel.

If I exercise later in the day, I do not fuel up as I have been eating all day prior to that.

While if you exercise on an empty stomach, your body will have to dive into its fat stores to gain energy, but this is wasteful (IMHO).  That makes the body work harder than it should just to get energy, let alone burn it – making your workout less effective and making you more tired.  Your muscles store about 300 calories of glycogen at any given time – which is your fuel for workouts).  That covers about 3 miles of jogging (100 calories per mile).  Anything over that and you should give your body some fuel to consume that is mostly simple digesting carbs with a bit of protein and fat so your body doesn’t “flash” through it with a glucose spike.

This is why carbs are really important in a diet when you exercise just as much as protein.

Great pre-workout snacks tested by me?

1/2 bagel with nut butter

Zone bars

english muffin with nut butter

cheese and crackers (if you can eat that in the moring.  I don’t like cheese when I first get up, although I could eat it for the rest of the day all day long).

Banana and nut butter

Stonyfield yogurt smoothie

I have found these fuels to be the optimum ones that give me energy without feeling full and not making me ravenous when I am done.

What are your workout fuels?

Pre-workout fuels

So for the past couple of months I have been experimenting with different preworkout snacks to see how they affect me. I don’t have a snack if my workout is less than an hour or if it is later in the day. This is only for my early morning workouts (which is 4 to 5 times a week).

What I have tried:

– empty stomach
– Luna Bar
– Zone Bar
– Balance bar
– Soy Joy
– peanut butter and dates
– protein shakes
– apple

The results so far:

– empty stomach: Surprisingly no problems with the workout, although I am totally ravenous when I get home.

– Luna Bar: Doesn’t make me full and gives me some energy.
– Zone Bar: Doesn’t make me full and gives me some energy.
– Balance bar: Makes me thirsty and gives me some energy.
– Soy Joy: Not enough, seems piddly in size for the calories.
– peanut butter and dates: Quite nice, doesn’t make me full, and nice and chewy.
– protein shakes: Excellent, although sometimes make me a bit full.
– apple: Bad – my stomach was growling fiercely 20 minutes later.

So, looks like straight carbs are out. The apple was a poor choice for me. I almost couldn’t concentrate I was so hungry. The protein shakes and the dates with nut butter were the most satisfying.

Interestingly enough, on days where I work out a while after breakfast, like going for a bike ride or a run on weekends, the 2 best breakfasts were oat bran with protein powder and the 1 minute muffin. I seem to do best with a mixed balance of all 3 macronutrients.

What preworkout snacks do you eat?