A Fantastic Exercising Foodie Year

2018 has been one of my best running and foodie years so far. I’ve had fun, met new people and I’ve learned a ton. I was even a running model in Central Park! Me? A model? Pretty amazing isn’t it? Jill Angie invited me. She’s a writer and a running coach who coaches women of all shapes and sizes.  Jill encourages you to run in the body you have, not a thinner body that society pressures you to have. https://notyouraveragerunner.com/ The day of the photo shoot was perfect. Sunny and cool and not humid which meant that my hair didn’t turn into a stringy spider web in the photos 😊 There were four of us models, including Jill, running side by side among tourists and other park visitors while Jill’s photographer shot pictures of us. A badass experience to say the least. Not only that, everyone was wonderful and it was all in all a very empowering experience. I learned two major lessons this year as well. One was to slow down when I run longer. It seems obvious, but I never thought about it until I heard Denny Krahe talk about it on one of his podcasts. http://www.dizruns.com/ As I became a more experienced and conditioned runner, I’ve been running much faster than I did when I first started out. It’s good that I can, but I was wondering why I got tired so quickly and why I couldn’t run as far as I could when I when I was a beginner. I know, I really should have figured out that I was running too fast for my body and I just couldn’t keep it up for as long. So I headed Denny’s advice and as soon as I noticed that I was increasing my speed I slowed down. A lot. It felt counter intuitive at first. “Why run slow when you can run faster?” I thought. If you do, you save your energy and last longer, it's as simple as that. I run faster on my shorter runs and that in turn helps me run longer when I want. A win win as they say. The second lesson I learned was that it’s easy to run out of fuel on longer challenging runs and if you bring yellow raisins you've found little power houses. It’s easy to keep a bunch in your pocket and you can pop them in your mouth without stopping. They’re delicious, much tastier than regular brown raisins in my opinion. The sugar in them give you an almost instant boost and help you run all the way home if you've run too far. As for food experiences, Woodstock Pizza Theater was hands down the best restaurant I’ve been to this year. Likely ever. If you’re vegetarian like me, or if you’re vegan, you’ll love this place. Although they’re not a vegetarian restaurant, they have tons of real vegetarian and vegan food, all part of the regular menu (not like a side note at the end of the menu). Soups, pizzas, vegan sausage, vegan burgers and much more. Read my original blog post here, http://exercisingfoodies.com/2018/08/11/woodstock-pizza-theater-foodie-paradise/ Thank you for reading my blog and enjoy the holiday season. Merry Everything!