Inside My Brain

My wife and I ran in the Utah Valley Half Marathon this last weekend and had a blast. Sophie had run in one before but it was my first. To be honest I have never really enjoyed running until just recently. I've always considered myself an active, and fairly fit, person. I love to mountain bike, rock climb, hike, or play pretty much any sport but the idea of running, just for fun, never really appealed to me. Recently, however, I have enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment and the overall healthy feeling that comes from a long run. Training for our half marathon gave me the chance to put in 5, 6, even 7 mile runs fairly frequently.

Towards the end of our half marathon my wife and I noticed that we started to get cramps in our legs. Sophie had a moment where she had to stop and stretch her legs to prevent larger cramps from coming on and my calves were getting tighter and tighter each minute. At the finish line there were dozens of companies offering their products for free. Energy drinks, powders, mixes...even free pizza and fries (which we thought was pretty funny). It was at that point that we realized that we hadn't really prepared well for the race. We had gone to Olive Garden the night before but we didn't eat anything the morning of. No energy bars, water, nothing. It was there at the finish line that I looked at the ingredients of one of the energy mixes. There were a bunch of healthy ingredients and they were all things that I could find at the local grocery store.

Finally I'm getting to the point of this blog! I realized that it would be fun to create my own energy bars! An energy bar at the gas station costs anywhere between $1.50 and $3 and, along with some healthy ingredients, includes artificial flavors, preservatives and a lot of added sugar. My goal now is to create a healthy energy bar, one with no preservatives, artificial flavors or added sugar, and have it cost less than a dollar per bar.

Wish me luck!