Palm Beach Marathon Recovery Food

December 8th, 2008 · No Comments

Were you one of the 800 who entered Sunday’s Marathon of the Palm Beaches? You’re probably feeling the muscles today — they need time to catch up after that work-out.

Your body needs to catch up, too.

Here’s a crash course on extreme exercise recovery:

Drink — but not too much. You need to rehydrate, but slowly. Too much, and your body will lose all the minerals you need to replace. Drinking mineral water — not just plain stuff — helps to replace sodium, niacin, and several other minerals your body and especially, your muscles need.
Eat figs, bananas, or dried apricots. Potassium is the muscle mineral. Your heart — a muscle — was probably on overtime yesterday, too. Give it a boost, along with all your other muscles and eat some figs (highest in potassium), dried apricots or prunes, or more bananas (you might be sick of them now). Your muscles will thank you.
If you’ve worn yourself down training for this, you might want to bump up the vitamins. It’s flu season — and you’re in masses of crowds with masses of germs. Take some extra vitamins, eat fresh fruit and whole grains and maybe have a grapefruit smoothie for breakfast for a week.
To stay in shape for the next marathon, balance your diet. (We ALL can benefit from this.) Lean meats, carbs that come from whole grains — that’s barley, oats, rice bran — and more than anything else, fresh vegetables and fruits make up that diet. A little oil here and there and some high omega3-fat containing fish and you’re set.

Congratulations to Ronnie Holassie of Miramar, winner of the 26-mile marathon, at 2 hours, 28 minutes and 7 seconds; and to Lee DiPietro, 50, of Ruxton, Md., and Delray Beach, finishing first in the women’s division at 2:55:41.