Feeding My Competitive Soul: Running on apple

I got my car back last night and let me just tell you---boy am I glad this week is over.
First off, I am very grateful that I live in an area that has public transportation available. And I’m even more grateful to work for a company that was so understanding of my situation.

However, this week without a car S.U.C.K.E.D.

It took me, on average, around 2 hours each way to commute to and from work each day. That’s right, 2 hours one way. One night it took me over 2.5 hours to get home. Lovely. Needless to say, I didn’t run or make it to the gym after my quick Tuesday night run. There was just no way. So after passing out at 10 last night and waking up at 9 this morning, I figured a good run was in order.

It’s been snowing all day … a wet, sloppy kind of snow that isn’t really run outside friendly, so I went to the gym to use the dreadmill.

Before I left I decided to continue with my pre-run experimenting and had an apple before I left. (Honey Crisp apples, although I love them, are friggin expensive! 5 apples were $6.32. I had to put 2 of them back because I just couldn’t justify it)

It was suggested that I try drinking orange or apple juice before I run since solid foods might be making me bloated and actually hurting my run. All we had was OJ and the last time I drank OJ on an empty stomach was a baaaaad day for me. So I figured eating an apple would serve the same purpose…we’ll come back to this later.

I planned on running between 5 and 6 miles since that’s about all I can take on the treadmill, but I was only able to run 4 miles in something like 38ish minutes (I stopped paying attention.) I honestly felt like I was going to die the entire time. At one point I actually lost balance and almost fell off the treadmill. That was about the time that I realized it was going to be a shorter run that I planned.

How did the apple make me feel? I have this theory that I am more hungry after eating an apple than I was beforehand. They fill me up in the beginning, but about a half hour to an hour later I’m ravenous. This time, all the apple did was make me feel really full. During the run I felt like I was running on empty, and after the run I was bloated.

I’m finding that running on Saturday mornings are bad for me. I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m exhausted from the week by the time Saturday rolls around, but this run was terrible. And I don’t think the apple helped.

After my run I bought this: