Well, thank goodness, Friday is here, and leading into a 3-day weekend at that. It's been one of those weeks... marked by extremes... one minute things are going swimmingly, and the next I'm under water, flailing to get to the surface. Take yesterday, for example. I had a good workout, longer than normal, but reasonably successful. I ran 2 miles in 17 minutes, then did some core work, pullups, and pushups, then came back and ran a third mile on wobbly legs in about 10 minutes. Not too shabby, all things considered.
Then I got home. First, Hanna was hungry and fighting a headache. I should have showered right away and gotten her food. Instead, I jumped right into the last blog entry. An hour later, she interrupted and was not happy, to say the least. There goes the running high, here comes an unjustified flash a mad for the interruption. I showered, got her food frumpily, and then returned to writing. Not before my legs began to cramp, though.
My friend P always tells me to eat bananas to stop the cramping. So, I went to Wegmans across the street and got some. However, I've wondered, how much potassium do bananas really have? According to here and here each banana has about 451mg of potassium, on average. The US RDA is about 3.5g of the stuff, which means you'd have to eat about 8 bananas to get your daily amount. No wonder I'm having leg cramps!
Now, there are other sources of potassium (see here), so I'm probably getting more from other places. I also noted that my MuscleMilk dry mix lists 880mg potassium in a single serving. Lemon-Lime VitaminWater lists 100mg. Last night, then, in an effort to overcome cramping, I consumed in about 30 minutes: 1 VitaminWater (100mg), 1 banana (451mg), and 1 serving of MuscleMilk (880mg), for a total of 1g 431mg (if I understand how to convert mg to g). In other words, a shade under 50% US RDA. Sheesh! That's a lot of consumption to get so little.
As I get older, this is going to be an increasing challenge, I think. This morning the legs still feel a bit twitchy in the hams, particularly where the charlie horses hit (same place both times - left hamstring).
Yin and yang strikes back, I guess. Can't push that hard through a good workout and not expect the body to rebel these days. Next step, the nursing home? Naw.... but it does feel good to whine about it! haha. :)
BTW, it strikes me that this is partly a side-effect of the anti-carbs diet craze that the media has bombarded us with for years. Potatoes are an excellent source of potassium, and yet I now feel guilty when I think about eating them. True, one of my preferred types of cooked potato is the french fry, which is definitely not good with all that oil, but still. Maybe it's time to justify fries for the potassium? :)
