For lunch I ate some tuna over mixed greens, walnuts, and little tomatoes with some fresh blueberries, strawberries and mixed nuts. I’ve learned that if I don’t eat enough fat during lunch I tend to get tired midday so adding more nuts (my avocado’s are not ripe yet) works wonders.

Throw it in a bowl and call it a salad.

Dinner was a giant salad with poached eggs, turkey burgers and sweet potato veggie hash. Looks gross but tastes delicious.

We knew we’d be out of groceries when we arrived home and combated that problem by ordering from Amazon Fresh while waiting to board our plane. We ordered some sausage, steak, eggs, greens, and avocado and had them deliver it at 6am so we could cook as soon as we woke up. Talk about awesome. Whole30 has also taught me that planning is essential. I’ve taken to reminding myself that preparing good food is like setting an appointment with your boss. You don’t cancel on your boss unless there is a real emergency. I mean, really, who is more boss than your own body.

Day 23 lunch.

Day 24 dinner. Crockpot chicken.

Day 24 breakfast.

Day 24 lunch.

Day 23 breakfast

Preflight meal.

We had an early morning flight so ate a quick egg breakfast so we wouldn’t be tempted to buy something from the airport. We also packed some snacks of nuts, blueberries, and carrots for the plane ride.

Lemonade meal.

Arrived to LA and immediately found some food first and then coffee. Huge step for both of us, in the past we would have searched for coffee first and food was an after thought. Amazing what 19 days will do to your thinking. We ate at an amazing place in Venice Beach called Lemonade, it was like going to a super clean eating cafeteria. The husband had a great lunch of arugula topped with lemon and olive oil and drowned in seared ahi. I had yams, cauliflower and a salmon salad stuffed in half an avocado. So good!

Quality pool time.

After lunch we sought out coffee at Intellegencia and headed to Whole Foods to buy our arsenal of good eatings. A whole paycheck later we arrived at the hotel and had a wonderful 3 days of relaxation by the pool all while eating clean and making our families jealous of our awesome food. I thought it was going to be harder to eat clean while traveling and think it would have if we didn’t have a kitchen to prepare foods. One thing I did notice was that I tended to want a drink while at the wedding, not because I wanted a drink but because I wanted to hold on to something and sip like everyone else. Not a good reason to drink. The wedding pastries (traditional but gluten free and vegas pastries) looked delicious but found that I had to leave the room and go for a walk because the smell of sugar was so intense and not in a good way.

All in all, I am super happy and proud of our travel weekend. I was tempted and didn’t give in and learned a few things along the way.

Chili!

The husband made an amazing cocoa chili for dinner. I wanted to eat it all, but it’s so rich I could only eat one bowl. He made some cauliflower rice to put it on.

Recovery breakfast.

Woke up at 3:30am to have enough time to eat and visit the comfort station before having to drive an hour to the start. Last nights meal did not sit well with my stomach. Don’t know if it was too much meat, not enough fiber, anyway I had a lot of quality time with my bathroom magazines before leaving. Ate Spiced Yam Bake for breakfast as well as had a small cup of coffee with some coconut milk. Sorry no pictures from today, was too caught up with the race day excitement

On the drive to the start I drank a Kombucha tea and ate a banana. Lots of visits to the bathroom, I tend to have to pee a lot when I’m nervous and I was super nervous about my first race back after taking six months off. My goal for the race was to go out and run what my body felt comfortable with and have fun.

The race started at the top of Snoqualmie Pass and followed the Iron Horse trail down to North Bend. The first couple of miles are through a dark and damp old railroad tunnel where head lamps are required. It was pretty surreal to be running in the tunnel with 400 other runners. The whole time I was wondering what it would have been like to have built the tunnel back in the day. Through the tunnel the trail leads you downhill through beautiful wildflowers, over old railroad bridges and it seemed like around every corner were amazing picture worthy vistas. I had a great time, was eating my food (dehydrated raspberries, strawberries, mangos, fruit leathers, baby food in a handheld water bottle, and a water bottle filled with apple juice/water/salt) and feeling the love from the beautiful terrain and my fellow running friends. All was great until I hit the mile 11 marker.

Things started to get ugly at mile 11. I started to slow down and knew I was well on my way to a good ‘ol bonk. Quickly I downed more food and waited for my sugar levels to rise while walking down the course. (If you’ve never experienced a bonk, its different for every person, but for me I get really negative, my pace slows considerably and I start to weave and wobble, you’d think I was drunk if you saw me.) I waited and waited. Upon arriving at mile 13 I finally started to feel better and ran into my husband who gave me some more food from his stash. What a gentleman. It took a good 5 more miles to feel normal again. It was the biggest and longest bonk I’ve ever experienced. I don’t really remember miles 13-18 and was probably on the verge of passing out, not good.

After mile 18 things got a lot brighter and I was back on track to finish in a decent time. Crossing the finish line felt great, though it was a good 45 minutes slower than I was on track to finish in. I learned a lot from this race, the biggest thing is that I will continue to eat fast acting simple sugars during a race (Gu, Gatorade etc.). I’ve decided I will eat clean before and after a race, but during, I’d rather have a good time and eat what I know works than to continue to experiment. I know there are a few strict paleo athletes out there who do well with it, but for me it’s not an option at this time, at least for races more than 90 minutes.

All in all it was a great experience and am so happy to be back running marathons.

Day 14 Breakfast

Ate a giant breakfast of left over curried veggies and eggs and some amazing melon from my produce box.

Pre marathon dinner.

Dinner was a challenge. Usually before a marathon I eat a Chipotle pork burrito and have never had any GI issues from it. I am blessed to have a good working plumbing system that can be turned on and off when asked. I was worried Whole30 wouldn’t have any good options for pre race meals but I figured out this…Sweet Potato spaghetti. Looks crazy, right. It is so good and so easy to make. All you do is make your spaghetti sauce like you normally would (not the jar stuff though, that’s not real food) then using a potato peeler slice the potatoes lengthwise into thin strips. I then took those strips and cut them in half so they look like noodles. Add to the sauce and saute together until the potato slices are slightly cooked, you want them a little al dente. Delicious.

On a side note, I’ve noticed a huge change in how I am digesting food. Not to go into much detail and gross you out, but I’ve noticed my BM’s are more frequent and are significantly different in consistency. Just a fair warning to anyone thinking about Whole30, this might happen to you and it’s totally normal. Just go with the flow. Pun intended.

Rory thinks I am the worst thunder buddy ever.

Oh Seattle summers, Rory was not happy about the loud thunder or the fact that he was sopping wet.

Post run lunch.

After the run ate some eggs and veggie hash and a couple of ripe plums. I love plums, especially the Italian plums so have told myself I can only have them after a workout.

Indian curried veggies over salad mix.

Dinner was a yummy Indian curry spiced hash with ground beef in it. I had a bunch of veggies I needed to use up and this was the perfect meal to dump them all into.

Day 12 lunch.

I packed a small snack for post shift of a plum, apple and some sweet peas to tie me over until I could eat at home. Lunch was more left over hash, avocado and poached eggs.

Scallop salad.

For dinner I partially cooked some scallops in fresh lime juice then quickly sauteed them with some olive oil and red pepper flakes and threw them on top of a huge salad. We received this amazing butter lettuce in our produce box this week and used the whole thing. That reminds me, I should take a picture of our awesome produce bin next week so you can see for yourself my excitement each week. Seattle folks, New Roots Organics is where it’s at.

Ate some extra fruit for a snack after dinner, I have a 6 mile run scheduled for tomorrow and want to keep up with my speedy friend.

I prepared for battle by packing myself a breakfast/lunch. I ate 2 pieces of quiche and strawberries for breakfast and had a giant salad with lox, cherry tomatoes, and fresh squeezed lemon followed by some cherries and a small bit of nuts. It was very satisfying and helped with the painful reality that I would not be partaking in pastry pig out. I actually felt much better, don’t know if it was from the food I ate or from being high off of conquering my cravings.

Yum.

Boot camp night followed by the most delicious dinner prepared by my husband. Turkey burgers smothered in bacon and walla walla onions with butter lettuce, avocado and tomato and sweet potato chips made in the microwave drizzled with truffle salt. Everything was amazing.

We were invited out to the bar to watch the Sounders (our soccer team) that night and instead of eating out we invited our neighbor in to watch it from our house. It was great, we were able to control what we ate and she was able to enjoy drinking whatever beer she wanted without having to pay a huge tab at the end of the match. Win win for all of us, and a giant win for the Sounders too.