Marathon Road Map Meal Plan, Day 9

My marathon is less than a week away! On Saturday, December 2, I'll be running 26.2 miles for the third time at the St. Jude Memphis Marathon, which weaves through downtown and Midtown Memphis (right past my office at Crosstown Concourse and through many of my friends' neighborhoods). To prepare, I've been doing a two-week meal plan using the sample plan in No Meat Athlete's Marathon Road Map (which also contains the 18-week training plan I'm using).

Today started just as the last 8 days have — with a smoothie. I went on an easy 3-miler right after I woke up. It's taper week, which means I'm ramping down my mileage considerably. And then I had a smoothie. Today, that was a Strawberry-Coconut PB&J Smoothie with strawberries, banana, PB2, coconut-almond Vega Protein & Greens powder, almond-cashew milk, rolled oats, and flax seed. Super thick and filling and quite lovely in my Memphis AF glass.

I had to speak on a panel about PR careers for a class of communication students at the University of Memphis around lunch time, so I postponed my morning snack and had an early lunch of leftover Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes & Chickpeas at my desk. This was last night's dinner, and it was much prettier then. But still tasty today.

Since I ate lunch at 11 am, I was pretty hungry again before I got off work at 5 pm, so I had my morning snack on the plan in the afternoon (around 3:30 pm). This was a fun one — Avocado with Lemon & Pink Salt. I'll take any excuse to eat an entire avocado with a spoon.

My usual afternoon snack on the plan is a salad, and I didn't skip that! I love snacking on salad while I'm fixing dinner. Tonight's salad had baby spinach, grated carrot, radish, crunchy sprouts, cucumber, and mushroom. Since I had that super-fatty avocado earlier (good fat, I know!), I was craving a lighter dressing so I went with Spicy Hummus Dip and Salsa rather than an oil- or nut-based dressing.

Dinner was Lemony Lentil with Caramelized Onions & Rice. This was an easy, humble dish of lentils cooked with brown rice (in the same pot) and dressed up with a little lemon and some onions. Not the prettiest dish, but tasty and very satisfying. Of course I added sriracha!

I'm allowing some alcohol on the plan because the idea isn't for me to exclude things from my diet but rather to focus most of my days on eating the healthiest foods I can for fueling my running. Also, Matt from No Meat Athlete talks a lot about how his nightly "dessert" is usually a beer or glass of red wine. Tonight, I opened some red wine to make tomorrow night's veggie burgers (more on those tomorrow!), so I had a glass as a little nightcap. I mean, who can actually open a new bottle of wine and not indulge, right?