colors, flavors, and predictability

Awright! I got out this afternoon for the first run in a long time. Now that most of my shows and the marathon are over, my time is much less filled up with work. I didn't particularly plan this run, just figured I'd go up and do a loop of the park and come home. If things felt bad, I'd just cut things short and walk home or whatnot. No pressure. If the run went like most of my runs do, I'd feel like quitting for the first three miles, feel OK for the middle part, and finish up on a runner's high.

Ended up doing the whole loop up to the park, around, then home. Five miles max, I figured, but then I remembered that the OLD up-around-back loop was a touch over five. What am I running now when I do that loop? According to gmaps pedometer: 6.8. Huh. Did I really just do a nearly seven mile run after not running for... oh jeebus: eleven days?!?

First mile and a half felt rough, really rough. My legs felt like they knew what they were doing, but were out of practice. My pace, stride, foot placement were all over the place; loose and uncontrolled. Bleh. By the time I got to the park, I was running a little better. Strangely, the run UP to the park didn't knock me out like I thought it would. My lungs felt fine and I still had plenty of energy. Maybe all this resting up has its silver lining?

So I stopped at the park entrance and really really stretched. No sense in doing it stupid-style, if I'm going to go do a loop of the park, right? After stretching, started off moderately, feeling like I have a very short stride and I didn't feel at all "tall" like I do when my whole system is functioning well.

That changed, predicatably. Not in the first half of the park, but by the time I'd gotten around to the big hill and chugged my way up it - again with surprisingly less effort than I thought it would take - everything seemed to be falling into place. And speaking of Fall, the colors of the trees here are GREAT! Eight years I've lived in NYC and never have the colors turned out this well. Not every tree is joining the party, but the trees in the park seemed to have cut a deal with Crayola and gone hog wild. I realized after a time part of this effect is my running glasses: they cast a slightly brownish/amber tint over things - but even after taking them off, the colors continued to impress me. The perfect blue sky, the loud yellows and oranges and browns - just fantatic! Good enough to rival the best of the Missouri autumns I remember, though I miss that big blazing red sugar-maple that stood at the top of our driveway...

Anyway, finished with the park feeling good, though I could tell my body was all "are we still running? shouldn't we be done by now?" Come on, it's all downhill from here. Tried not to let the downhill of the Slope carry me away and ended up running very strong with good form all the way home.

Continuing with the theme of "let's do this the right way for a change," I put in some time stretching, then hit the shower, did some foam roller and strap-assisted stretching for my IT bands and now I'm icing my knees. Amy would be so proud.

A few days ago, at the expo, I picked up some samples of Powerbar's Beverage System, which includes an endurance drink and a recovery drink. I decided to try them both today. I'm comparing them to my current drinks: H.E.E.D. and Recoverite, by e-caps nutrition.

The packaging was very clear on these Powerbar products, particularly as they were single-use packets. There was no question of how much water to add.

The color of the endurance drink (lemon-lime flavor) is hideous, a sort of glowing green that belongs only in 50-gallon hazmat drums. The taste isn't hideous, not even awful, but is precisely the kind of taste that drove me away from Gatorade to begin with. While the formulation is fairly good, being mostly maltodextrin, with good amounts of sodium and potassium, the drink mixes up to strong to be palatable for long. It did slake my thirst during the run, so it did it's job. And once I got home and noted the sheen of salt on my legs, I was glad I could actually taste the salt in this drink. However, this drink also uses fructose, a short-chain carb that will burn too fast, and fails to include a full electrolyte profile. I definitely prefer the lighter-tasting, uncolored, and better-formulated HEED, which not only relies more on maltodextrin (smoother energy release), but also has L-carnosine, glycine, calcium, magnesium, B6, and a host of other trace-mineral crap that - in a long race - makes all the difference.

The recovery drink (orange flavor) was an improvement. Palatable with a pleasant orange flavor, though still too strong for my liking. Oddly, though, the color was a bright yellow-orange, looking a little too much like a bottle of opaque urine. It also foams badly. Foaming is a problem with the e-caps products, but not a show-stopper. This Powerbar recovery mix, though, quickly filled my water bottle with foam and it took 20 minutes for 1/3 of the foam to simmer down. Weird. As a recovery drink, I suppose it's OK, though it's little more than the endurance formula with some whey protein added. Recoverite, on the other hand, has a larger amount of whey protein, doesn't neglect the trace minerals, and once again supplies only malto-dextrin, rather than relying on fructose.

All in all, not a bad foray into the drinks world, for a company that previously only made workout-munchies, but I'll stick with my mail-order stuff.