After Friday’s food disaster (really, there’s no other way to explain it) I got back on track with food on Saturday. I promise I’m not beating myself up for it (well, not too much anyway!) Thank you Henry Runs and Mind Margins for the words of encouragement! Henry Runs and Mind Margins are two great running blogs that I recommend to everyone who’s interested in running.
One thing that I realized while reviewing recent progress with a fellow running buddy of mine is that I’ve had crazy cravings for sweet stuff recently. I’m not normally a sweets person–ex: my mom bakes the best cookies in the world but I never have trouble saying no to them. In fact, I typically hate the sweet things I’ve been craving! You know how some people can’t handle sour foods? That’s caused by an overpopulation of taste buds that interpret sour flavors–I swear I have the opposite problem because I love sour stuff and sweet things make me feel sick!
Anyway, the odd sweet cravings have been so intense that I’ve been noting them in my running journal…so I brought it up to my running buddy who had an interesting suggestion: eat more salt.
Since I’ve been watching what I eat (for the most part) and stepping up my runs, I’ve been sweating more, therefore losing more salt. While I’ve been good about hydrating, I have not been thinking about whether I need to replace the salt I’m losing. According to my sage running bro, sometimes when your body needs salt, it will crave items that typically have lots of salt: processed foods like the sweets I’ve been craving. I’m going to try adding a little extra healthy sodium to my diet and we’ll see if the sweet cravings go away! If not, well, we’ll just chalk it up to normal, run-of-the-mill cravings!
Saturday’s mileage: 2 miles (I took it easy with Saturday’s run because I only need 4 miles this weekend to hit my 20 mile goal for the week!)
Total miles completed in 2012: 43.75
Miles to go for the year: 956.25
theaccidentalathlete 
You come by your sour craving honestly.
Very interesting! I have never tied those two things together (lack of salt and sweet cravings) but it makes sense.
Thank you so much for the shout out!
The sweet cravings are something a lot of runners (especially women) run into when they start upping their mileage. I always crave sugar when I’m training for a marathon and start doing the really long runs (16+ miles). I’m sure it also has something to do with glucose depletion. In fact, most of my friends actually put on a few pounds because of it–despite the fact that we’re running 35-40 mile weeks. Frustrating, but I usually lose the weight fairly quickly after the marathon, though, so I don’t worry about it too much.
Thanks for the shout out, though my actual running blog is http://leavetracks.com. Mind Margins is kind of a hodge podge of whatever! There is some crossover.