Note to Self: Skp the Fritos from Now On

I ate a snack bag of Fritos.  I'd always liked corn chips, especially Fritos brand, but I haven't had any in a long time.  Today, there was some leftover food from a company lunch.  I was hungry so I took a water bottle and that bag of Fritos.

My rationale was that I was way ahead on my deficit and could afford an indulgence.  I even glanced at the 340 calories of salty, empty calories and evaluated that I could absorb that comfortably into my diet plan.  What I hadn't figured on was how poorly that "food" would sit in my stomach afterwards.

Maybe Fritos have gone the way of plain chocolate M&Ms.  I avoid those now because they consistent give me heartburn.  In fact,  I think it's milk chocolate in general that doesn't agree with me.  And that's not such a bad thing since milk chocolate really has no redeeming value.  At least dark chocolate can boast of some anti-oxidant benefit, not to mention I think it tastes so much better than milk chocolate.  Tastes change.

And even though my taste buds might still crave Fritos, the memory of the aftermath of that Fritos indulgence could spell the end of my ever eating Fritos again.  I'm over-stating the impact, but I did feel yucky for a couple of hours after putting them in my stomach.  It almost made me turn Friday in a no-workout, rest day.  Fortunately, I got myself over to the gym during my last hour at work and kept with the plan.

I had a successful return to the treadmill, cautiously feeling for any twinge or spasm of the calf.  I spent 45 minutes, starting with a walk and then a jog (including some backwards jogging), and finally building to a run - 7.0...7.5...even 8.0...before winding back down to a jog and a walk.  I covered 4.5 miles all-in-all, including all the warm up and cool down walking.  (I wore my heart monitor strap, and for fun I told the machine I was 28, just so that it would give me a HR scale that wouldn't stick me in the red for much of my run.  I hate that.  When it calculates my training zone for a 49-50 year old, I wind up spending most of my time with the thing blinking at me in the "red zone."   I know it's just a rule-of-thumb gauge and it's my number, not their inaccurate zone, that's important.  But I just wanted to see the meter thing moving in some meaningful way rather than being pegged all the way to the limit, as if I'm working out too strenuously.

I doubt that would make any sense to a visiting reader -- which is probably just you, John, aka FreedomStar.

Anyway, at least for a 28 year old, I stayed out of the red zone but still found myself working hard and not loafing.  I really only did 3.1 miles with any kind of pace.  I did some 100m strides over the final mile.  I was surprised how much my running muscles, particular the front hips -- flexors and quads -- had de-trained.  The elliptical doesn't apparently approximate the running motion well enough to maintain the conditioning in those muscles you need.  It makes me worried more about what I'm facing in trying to cover 13.1 in 9 days.  I am going to doggedly stick to taking one rest day this weekend.  I need it, even though psychologically, I feel like I need to cram for the half marathon.  I know, rationally, that that would be stupid.  I need to remain disciplined and not try to squeak extra mileage in.

Other than the stiffness from the run, I feel good.  There was only the slightest hint of tightness in the calf that came about after.  There was no feeling of discomfort during the run.  I'll do 6 miles easy either tomorrow or Sunday (probably Sunday morning) and hope for the best.  I think if I get through that then I should be home free.