Running snacks

Hola,

Another blustery day here. Is summer ever coming? We did get a bit of a teaser with two beautiful sunny days on Friday and Saturday. Yesterday, The Husband and I hiked the Fish Lake trail. My ankles are feeling it today (I still ran my 6 miles this morning though).

Thank you Patty, a.k.a. The Best Mother-in-law Ever, for leaving us with lots of your delicious oatmeal cookies. It was so nice to enjoy them at the top of the mountain!

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Being in the early stages of marathon training, it's a good time for me to experiment with snacks until I find the "fuelling strategy" that will work best for me on race day. The snacks have to:
- taste good (I'm not forcing anything down my gullet that I don't enjoy)
- be portable
- be easily portioned into small bites
- replenish carbs, but also some salt

Last year, when I was training for the Vancouver marathon, I mostly used sports "gummies" during my runs, such as Honey Stingers and Clif Shot Bloks (see picture below). However, I also struggled with a lot of nausea and gastro-intestinal upset during long runs (usually above 12-13 miles).

This time around, I am trying new things, hoping to find snacks that will not upset my stomach.
So far, it seems like Larabars are working well. I LOVE Larabars, for their great taste, of course, but mostly for the simplicity of their ingredients. The cashew Larabar, for example, contains dates and cashews. That's it. Which, of course, brings me to the conclusion that I should really try making my own, but that's an experiment for another day.

I recently picked up Gin-Gins all natural ginger candy. They are individually packaged chewy candies made with ginger, sugar and tapioca starch. I am hoping that the ginger will help with the nausea - I haven't yet tested them on a day when I actually felt sick though.

The Clif Builder's bars are not a "during the run" kind of snack, but they work well as a recovery snack when I don't have time to sit down for a proper meal. They contain 20g of protein and no freaky ingredients, even though the ingredient list is longer than I like to see it.

Soon, I'd like to experiment with snacks that do not taste sweet, like pretzels, or maybe nuts.

If anyone has suggestions, fire away!

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I haven't had much time for cooking and baking this week, but I have finally found a pizza dough recipe worth copying in my recipe book. You can find it here.

I followed it to the letter, and the crust turned out very well: not too thick, not too thin.

I splurged on some good quality whole wheat flour, and I am looking forward in using it in other recipes.

There are few things as satisfying as kneading a nice ball of dough!



I hope everyone had a great weekend!