Stuff I Ate Before and After a Half-Marathon

A couple weeks ago, I PR'd my half-marathon by three minutes at the St. Jude Memphis Marathon. 

It's my favorite local race, and it's always a blast. Last year, I PR'd my full marathon there! After the race, I headed to the Memphis Hash House Harriers cheer station to hand out beer to the marathoners still on the course. 

And then some of us hashers went to Crosstown Brewing, where vegan food truck Da Guilty Vegan was on-site! I rarely get to eat at Da Guilty Vegan because they're usually parked in Cordova, but the owner, Chef Derek, let me know they'd be in my area after the race. I was starving by then, so I got the Nikki's Cheesesteak with Beyond beef and mushrooms. Hit the spot!

And then, because Chef Derek is awesome, he came over to our table and handed me a free Double Smashburger! I was already full, so I took this home and reheated it in a skillet for lunch the next day. It was amazing even reheated!

Before the race, I spent three days diligently carb-loading. I've never focused so much on carb-loading as I did this time, but I listened to a podcast about it and used this carb-loading calculator to determine how many carbs I needed in the days ahead of the race: 393! Each day! It was a lot, and I struggled each day to reach that. I only hit the number one day, the others came to about 350. In that time, I ate a lot of pasta and rice, including this white rice-heavy Veggie Tofu Stirfry. I had this two days before the race, and in the final pre-race day, I cut out most fiber to prevent race day GI issues.

I also had several bowls of this tasty Veggie Goulash adapted from Nava Atlas' Vegetarian Soup for All Seasons. The recipe called for seitan, but I used Impossible burger because Paul wanted to eat this too, and he prefers Impossible. I also added the pasta, which wasn't in the recipe. Really good and made a ton!

In the end, the carb-loading plan worked! So, I'll be doing that again before my next goal race!