Hello! After writing “only” 3 posts about the vegan slow-carb diet last week, I decided to dial it back even further to one weekly recap post so that I can do more “reporting by exception” (any fun food and exercise experiences that were new this week) and how my diet and exercise went overall.
SUNDAY
Just a day of puttering in the kitchen. I had planned to go to yoga, but the usual instructor was off, and they had someone else filling in with a different kind of class that I knew would be too active for how sluggish I felt, so I skipped it. One week later, I’m definitely ready for more yoga. Specifically, yin yoga. (Just checked the Müv Fitness schedule, and Brenda’s back today, yay!)
MONDAY
Exercise: 6 mile run at 4:30 a.m. followed by Body Pump with Chris and Randy at 5:30.
I freely admit that on Monday, I had a bit of a slip-up and ate a few pieces of dark chocolate. Blame the monthly visitor for that one. Otherwise, the diet continues along, and as a result of getting paid on Monday, I was able to replenish my supply of dry beans and fresh spinach and threw in some frozen ones to hold me over until my next Foodshare pickup on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
TUESDAY
Exercise: Spartan workout. This week’s theme is “old school” workouts with little to no gear required. Even though my default for cardio cross-training is the stationary bike, I like that the Spartan workouts focus more on agility without quite being Crossfit (sorry Crossfitters, I had a bad experience when I tried it out a few years ago). Box jumps, body-weight squats, bear crawls and other fun movements like what I can look forward to when I face the Beast in Spartanburg in two weeks.
WEDNESDAY
Exercise: The morning low temperature dropped pretty sharply this past week following the Indian Summer conditions we had the first half of the month (it was basically summer the whole time here, except for a couple of days in September when Tropical Storm Irma brought us some early fall weather). It was around 45 or 47 degrees when my alarm went off, almost 20 degrees colder than my Monday morning run. I almost didn’t go running, wanting to just stay in my pajama pants and be cozy indoors, but then I remembered that waiting until the evening would interfere with plans to cook and work on some of my freelance assignments. So, out the door I went on a 6-mile round trip from my house to the synagogue on North Trenholm Rd. and back, barely breaking a sweat the whole time.
THURSDAY
Thursdays are normally a day off from exercise, so I got up at the usual time but stayed in my pajama pants and resumed working on freelance stuff and was just able to finish an assignment and send it off to the client before it was time to get ready for my day job.
Exercise: Despite my best effort not to exercise on Thursdays, I did take advantage of the nice weather right after work (mid-70s) to do burpees in the back yard – 5 sets of 30 burpees plus 30-second side planks. I find it especially beneficial to do lots of burpees during the weeks leading up to a Spartan race, since this assimilates part of what I already know is going to happen on race day. (One of the “features” of all Spartan races is that each failed obstacle carries a 30-burpee penalty. I usually end up doing burpees 4 or 5 times at the shorter races, so I can probably look forward to doing them 8 or 9 times at the Beast.)
After the burpee workout, I made this for dinner.
FRIDAYÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Exercise: I woke up a little frazzled and not inclined to do another Spartan workout, so I climbed half-awake onto a stationary bike when the gym opened and stayed on it for about 45 minutes. This was my first time doing stationary bike in a couple of weeks (lately it’s been all running and Spartan workouts), so I could really feel all the additional squats and box jumps when I got on the bike.
In the evening, I carbed up as best I could with leftover urad dal vadai plus some stir-fried red cabbage and green beans.
SATURDAY
Exercise: 17 miles at Harbison, my first trail run since FATS three weekends ago. Even though I went up by 4 miles from last weekend’s run through Forest Acres (I’m starting to ramp up for One Epic Run in December), and factoring in that trails are more challenging than the roads I’ve stuck to these last two weekends, it felt so, so good to be back out on the trails! More on why I love the trails here.
Also, Saturday is my slow-carb diet cheat day, so as soon as I got home from running, I made myself an Elvis smoothie: peanut butter, a whole frozen banana, a Red Delicious apple (the red flecks are from the skin), cinnamon, ginger, Demerara sugar and almond milk. (It’s not a dainty portion; my glasses are pretty big.)
Yay smoothies!
***
I had toyed with the idea of keeping the slow-carb diet going until One Epic Run, but I think I’m going to switch back to my usual vegan diet (the one that includes grains, potatoes and fruit) after the Beast on November 4. I’m just concerned that if I stick with it and then go out to do my 25-mile training run on Veterans Day, beans and veggies the day before won’t be enough fuel, and I don’t want to have to take extra Gu during the run to make up for the relative lack of carb-loading. I survived yesterday’s run, as well as the other runs since the transition to autumn began around here last weekend, but I think the weather has had just as much to do with my pace returning to normal as any adjustment I might have made to not eating the foods that are verboten in the slow-carb diet. Still, One Epic Run is a 24-hour event, and I don’t want to be lacking energy when I get there.
And five weeks of vegan slow-carbing is enough for experimental purposes, right?
Let me know what you think! Would you ever consider doing a vegan slow-carb diet? Why or why not?
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