"Challenges Ahead"

The ramp-up in weekly miles toward my half marathon goal continues. After this morning's 8-miler, I'm sitting at over 19 miles for the week, which is easily my highest weekly total for the year. Tomorrow's recovery run should put me over the 20 mile mark, which is pretty cool.

Really, there was nothing blog-worthy on my runs this week. This morning I was able to give the time to a guy during my run, so thanks to Nathan who gave me the running watch instructional comment on a previous post!

Running Nutrition - Not!

WARNING: This nutrition sequence should only be considered by a professional (professional what?).

One thing is for sure, when you run 8 miles in one shot, you get HUNGRY. I have been eating all day. Since I'm pretty anal with most everything else I do, I've throttled back in the nutrition area. The way I figure it, a half-marathon is not that big of a deal. It's not like I'm scaling Everest or doing an Ironman like my bud Ashley. I'm going to survive regardless of how I eat - and besides, I'm in Romania and you pretty much have to go with the flow sometimes.

Check out today's cornucopia of "fueling":

Pre-Run: Cup of coffee and 2 banana-nut muffins (baked by the coolest Helpmeet ever)
Post Run (Breakfast): .5 liter Gatorade , medium bowl of cornflakes with soy milk.
Snack #1: 100 g Fornetti (apple pastries) and orange juice while shopping with helpmeet.
Snack #1a: .5 liter of Cappy (orange drink) while riding subway to gymnastics competition
Snack #2: 1 serving of McDonald's chicken nuggets and some fries (I'm serious, it was on the way to international gymnastics competition we went to watch) washed down with coke.
Lunch: 2 mici sausages with bread and mustard (couldn't resist this local delicacy after leaving gymanstics competition) washed down with more coke
Snack #3: 1 scoop of chocolate ice cream with cone after lunch. (still in process of leaving the gymnastics competition area)
Snack #4: 1 large order french fries (Helpmeet and daughter wanted a McFlurry after seeing me eat ice cream)
Supper: Meatloaf and Mac-n-cheese leftovers (both made by said Helpmeet) washed down with pomegranate juice
Snack #5: TBD (its 7:00 pm right now and I'm still thinking)

Note: I did drink some water too, so Ashley and Nathan- please don't totally flame me.

Now for the rough stuff?

So what "challenges" do I have? On August 30th we fly to Barcelona. After a couple of days in Barcelona we depart on a 7-day cruise of the Western Mediterranean and get back to Bucharest on Saturday night, Sept 9. Then, about 3 weeks later on Oct 4-8, we will be in Venice, Italy. My half-marathon is on Oct 15, the following week.

Yes, I know - life is tough. Somehow I must be able to train through these distractions - at least at a minimal level anyway. At any rate, it will help inject some new life into the blog, if nothing else!