Turns out I run better on an empty stomach, which seems counter-intuitive since I'm hungry all the time these days. I've done two long runs in a row now with food in my stomach, and they have definitely not been the best. A week ago, I ran 13 miles after eating a single granola bar, but I felt kind of heavy and my stomach didn't feel good, not sick exactly, just too full. I blamed it on the humidity, which may well be the problem, but yesterday I ran 10 miles and felt even worse.
Since I had eaten breakfast over three hours earlier, thought I'd better eat something before running. I've been wanting to try out some of the specially formulated fancy energy snacks that real runners use, so I bought several to try. I did the same several months back with sports drinks, wherein I discovered that green Powerade is my flavor of choice.
I sampled this waffle cookie before my run. It tasted great, kind of a soft, slightly crisp, honey-vanilla cookie. I didn't even eat the whole thing, but I still didn't like how I felt.
Many runners swear by the energy boost they get from a snack in the middle of a long run, and since solid food doesn't seem to agree with me, I thought I'd try this running gel. Yes, gel. As in gel toothpaste. As in hair gel.
It's disgusting! Like eating a slug. The taste (lemon) was fine, but the texture is creepy. It's really sticky and it took 10 minutes to get all the goo out of my mouth. And I don't think it did a thing for my energy. I walked a fair bit of my ten miles, even after ingesting the magic goo.
Next up, Jelly Belly's for runners (are they really any different from the regular candy?) and orange chews. I like chewy candy so I'm hopeful that they'll be better. But it might just turn out that I need to run on empty.
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