Marathons and Munchies

I thought I'd share a little phenomenon I've noticed in my marathon training. It's funny because so many people comment about how I'll lose so much weight training for a marathon. This is not my experience. The opposite in fact. I always tell people who say they want to run a marathon to lose weight to train for a 1/2 marathon instead.

It seems like in my training when my long runs get over somewhere in the 15-16 mile mark (that puts my weekly running miles around 23-26+) I start to get the munchies. I want to constantly be eating. And the cravings are usually for sweets. I could drown in chocolate today and die happy. Sometimes I crave spinach too.

Oh crap. They just put cookies out in the break room. Yes, I'm eating them. That's right, more than one.

I don't know exactly what causes this. I know I am burning more calories than usual, but I toy dangerously with taking in many more calories than I am burning. Especially if there is any inconsistency in my training.

I suspect the trigger could be a nutritional deficiency. Do I need more protein, iron, fiber??? I'm going to experiment a little. I'm going to try and up my vegetable intake. Also, for some snacks, I'm going to try popcorn and cut vegis. I don't usually buy the vegi trays but maybe I should as a readily available food source to jam down my pie hole when I'm feeling like I want to chew my arm off. When I get like that I've very susceptible to all the crap that gets past around in the office.

Anyone have better solutions to curb insatiable munchies?