Healthy Eating At Popular Restaurants

This is HUGE! I stumbled upon a great resource to identify the healthiest eating options at America’s most popular eating places.

If you’re like me and my family – always on the run, eating out more often than you should, etc. – you’d better bookmark this. The folks at http://www.sparkpeople.com/ have put together the “skinny” on healthy eating options at several popular national chains. There’s even a tool to look up nutrition information on all of the menus of all of the restaurants.

And believe it or not, there are nutritious options at Dunkin’ Donuts and Long John Silvers, so check it out at http://tinyurl.com/ld3co5. This is a really valuable resource if you’re paying close attention to the calorie intake!

Do Athletes Need Sleep?

If you’re like me, you lose some sleep as an athlete. Particularly, if you’re an early morning athlete.

There’s no doubt that rest is important to athletes and studies show in enhances performance.

Personally, I’m into the early morning workout routine. So, some days I will miss out on some sleep. Certainly, on the nights prior to an event, I miss out on some sleep as well. However, missing out on a little sleep isn’t going to affect your performance in an event.

Check out Christine Luff’s post on http://www.about.com/ at http://tinyurl.com/muhkol. It offers some great insight on how rest and and sleep is important to athletes.

Traveling No Problem For Training

As I write this post, one of my good training friends was going vacationing in San Diego (okay, I’m not jealous!). Before she left, she asked me about finding places to train as we’re both working toward the Hy-Vee Triathlon.

I told her this was a perfect opportunity to do some open-water training in the biggest “drink” in the world and I also told her to contact a bike rental outfit for some scenic biking. I informed her, “With a little pre-planning and contacts, you can have some awesome training outings.” Sure enough, when we went on a run prior to her trip, she told me she had made all the arrangements for swimming and biking. She was excited to find her hotel had a lap pool as well.

We’re all busy traveling this summer and sometimes all we have to do is “ask”. On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I called ahead to find that my hotel had a lap pool and a wonderful workout facility. And you can’t resist a run to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art while listening to the theme from “Rocky” in your Ipod.

On various trips to St. Louis and Florida to visit relatives, I always find bike trails to travel that are new and different. You might try looking for running events when you travel as well. When I visit my sisters in Chicago, I find a race event nearly every weekend I’m in town. And when I visit Steamboat Springs this summer for my son’s Triple Crown World Series, I’m checking out bike rentals so I can “ride like Lance” through some mighty hills!

These are just a few ideas to spur your creativity to keep training up while you travel. Don’t make travel an excuse to miss workouts. Take travel as an opportunity to change your training scenery. I always find that a welcome distraction. Chances are you'll be visiting somewhere fun soon as we head into the summer tourism season!

Here’s an article from http://www.runnersworld.com/ that offers more tips on training and travel -- http://tinyurl.com/moeaez.

Technical Difficulties

Having trouble "copying and pasting" in the "blogger".

Will have to check into it after the Hy-Vee Triathlon this weekend. Definitely looking forward to finishing!

I am truly a “morning” workout person. My friends can’t believe how early I get up to train, but that’s my favorite time of the day and above all, that time belongs to ME! So, I choose to use it wisely.

A big positive behind morning workouts is that you get it out of the way in time to meet your other lifestyle obligations. Whether it’s children’s activities following work or major networking that may be required for your job, the early morning workout gets you on your way toward getting on with other important obligations.

Morning workouts keep your metabolism elevated for hours, keeping up your ability to burn calories up throughout the day.

Mental activity is greatly improved with morning exercise many studies have shown. This is a BIG advantage for me.

Finally, it’s just NOT that BIG of a deal. All it takes is waking up 30 to 60 minutes earlier to accomplish a solid day’s workout.

Sara Weis is one of my best “workout buddies” and she recently won The Des Moines Business Record’s "Fittest Exec" in the “Woman Under 50” category. Take it from her as she claims you “feel better” and can easily move on to other daily activities -- http://tinyurl.com/nbrqbo.

Keeping A Training Log

In the past, I’ve written about how keeping a training log can be very helpful toward measuring your progress.

Well, don’t just take it from me, check out this post from Nancy Howard at http://www.sparkpeople.com/ to learn more about the value of keeping your fitness activities on track -- http://tinyurl.com/lag328.

In addition to “logging the miles”, so to speak, I’ve also started logging what I eat each day. This really helps keep you accountable for what you consume. Again, I will never claim to be a nutrition expert, but most of us are educated enough to know what’s good and what’s bad, so make sure you’re keeping a log that measures whether you’re consuming “more good than bad”!

Here Are Some Great Workout Tunes

I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for new “playlist” material for my Ipod.

Whenever I run across a list of songs that I think might be interesting, I always save it for when I’m updating tunes on my account. I just wish I had more time to update my account, but that’s a story for another day.

This list from Krazy Kit Kat at http://krazykitkat.blogspot.com/ has some great songs on it, so I thought I would share -- http://tinyurl.com/mhswzt. She also has some great workouts she regularly posts for you triathletes out there, so take some time to check out her blog.

There are some other playlist selections that I have, so I will occasionally try to share those here. Now go enjoy a workout with these great new songs!

I probably won't be posting for a few days - off to our annual sales meeting this week!