Chef Spike's pre-race fuel

60 Days — 


Good Stuff Eatery on Capitol Hill hits the spot nearly every time.

Let's just say the Canadians giving up Chef Spike is the price they had to pay for that premo embassy real estate.

But just because it's good stuff, doesn't mean it's good stuff to fuel a run.

As a general rule of thumb, downing a cheeseburger and fries a few hours before a run has a negative effect on speed and overall well-being.

Not to mention it produces some serious fartleks (and we're not talking about the Swedish kind).

In the spirit of trying different foods, running techniques, workouts, neighborhoods and truly anything new before the marathon in March, I actively ate a delicious Good Stuff meal only a few short hours before my evening run.

Sometimes runners complain that their legs feel like they are moving through cement—usually this feeling comes after a hard workout from sore legs. Tonight, I literally had the cement stuck in my gut. Beyond the new gastro-intestinal feelings, breathing was slightly more difficult and I'm sure my heart was ready to go into attack mode in protest.

For the future, I'm going to shelve this technique and place it in the category of "I must be getting older because my digestive tract certainly didn't move as fast as I thought."

While I often write about what I see on my runs (there was a beautiful sunset over the Mall tonight), I chose to write about an experience to warn my fellow runners to stick to the traditional methods — or the one's recommended in Runner's World — before heading out for a some Sights in My Nikes. 

You're putting far too much down in that downward dog

64 Days —


New York City may have Central Park, but Washington D.C. has The Mall; a two mile stretch of grass between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial and a playground for the nation.

The Mall has seen it all: from Civil Rights marches and Occupy encampments to Segway-riding-fanny-pack-wearing-tourists and every diverse slice of humanity this nation could hurl our way.

Tonight's spotting, however, threw my "namaste" out of balance. To the man who dropped down into downward dog while waiting for a 30 second light to change should probably find a Yoga studio, or at least a good set of Yoga blocks before performing those moves on the street again.

As a note to the Yoga master, throwing your rear end in the air at the traffic light on 15th and Madison does not count as a "mixed" workout.

Nevertheless, perhaps I am missing the picture. Perhaps I am being to harsh on my fellow athlete, who can at the very least be called "inventive."

There could be a secret here waiting to be uncovered. I should have stopped to ask, because it could be a new fartlek-esq training regime: each traffic light, stop and hold a Yoga pose, then take off and run again.

Or even better — each Yoga pose can match the neighborhood it is most closely associated with. For example: Downward Dog for Georgetown (the dog-like mascot), Grasshopper for Chinatown, the Full Boat for Navy Yard, Lord of the Fishes for SW Waterfront, Royal Pigeon for Embassy Row (not to be confused with One-Legged King Pigeon for the Mall), Lord of the Dance for U St and Downward Facing Tree for the National Arboretum.

Can't wait for Lululemon take a crack at this new craze — neighborhood based, street corner Yoga.

Until the next run, I am going to practice my Intense Spread Leg Stretch, but just in case I don't nail it let's hope the DC City Council installs some spongey sidewalks or the next Sights in My Nikes may be from the GW Hospital.