I was able to make some progress with Thrive while the girls played in the water and the sand yesterday afternoon. I was excited to put a lot of his principals into practice today with a long run planned for this morning.

My friend Shawn has decided to run the half marathon (13.1 miles) with me next weekend and we made plans to run long together this morning. I set the alarm for 5:15 so I would be ready to go when he arrived at 6.

About 20 minutes before heading out I had a very Thrive inspired pre-run snack. Brendan talks about the protein, fat and carb content of pre-run fuel based on what kind of training you’ll be doing. From a walk, a bike ride, hiking, running, swimming to tennis, basketball, golf, whatever – based on how long you’ll be out and at what intensity, he describes the ratio of carb, fat and protein you want to eat before your chosen form of exercise. Based on his descriptions I felt like a long run at a decent pace fell into the “moderate intensity” category since we were going long for endurance and not so much focusing on speed. The other categories would be low intensity and high intensity.

Based on his approach, I was aiming my pre-run snack to be 60% carbohydrate, 35% fat and 5% protein. Of course I didn’t want anything too heavy so I chose a handful of dried apples, raisins and raw almonds. It took the edge off my ever so slight hunger and hopefully was close to the right proportion of macro nutrients that I was aiming for.

We set out just as the dawn was breaking and watched the sun rise. The air was cool and crisp, it was a fabulous run. The time flew by and I felt great for the entire run. We’d planned to go 9 miles but we were both feeling so great at the end we agreed to go 10. Shawn has the Garmin 305 so it was easy to keep running and know how much farther we needed to go to hit 10 miles.

We finished 10 miles in 1:24:49 making our average pace 8:27. If we can maintain that pace for the entire half marathon we’ll come in under 2 hours, which is my only time goal at this point. This is the longest run I’ll do between now and the half marathon. I’m unofficially tapering my mileage now and will keep all runs from here and through next week around 4 to 6 miles.

Back home and with Thrive still on the brain, I cracked open a young coconut I’ve had in the fridge for a few days and drank the young coconut water for a “snack consisting primarily of simple carbohydrate”.

I thought coconut water would be a good choice but looking at the nutritional stats now coconut water really doesn’t have that many carbs! Oh well, now I know.

When I felt hungry about an hour later I was ready to make a recovery breakfast consisting of “high-quality, easily digestible raw protein” from “natural whole food sources”. Brendan really likes using hemp as a plant based protein source but I don’t have any yet. Flax seeds are another option he recommends. Can do – Flax Seeds R’Us!

I’d stuck a couple of bananas in the freezer yesterday for banana whip whenever the mood struck – and the mood struck this morning. I put the scooped out young coconut meat in the freezer an hour earlier when I had my young coconut water, so it was slightly frozen but not rock solid either. Coconut meat and banana into the food processor to make coconut banana whip!

I after the coconut and banana were whipped up and smooth, I added a healthy helping of ground flax and a scoop of almond butter to make the recovery breakfast to beat all recovery breakfasts.

Totally creamy and yummy, a perfect post run breakfast for me!

I’m totally psyched about all the concepts in this book, I can’t wait to finish it up and write my full review. I’m convinced and I definitely feel that this is worth a read by anyone, whether you’re an athlete or just want to be fit and healthy and naturally reach your ideal weight.

In other news, a couple of you asked about my hummus recipe, I plan to make hummus today and will post  about it tonight! I know you’ll all be biting your nails and sitting on the edge of your seats until then!