Blogging is definitely the first thing to go when things get busy around here! I have no idea how we’re already almost halfway through July. Yikes! One of the (many) things I’ve been keeping busy with is my job at a clinic run by medical students at the hospital for patients in Harlem without health insurance. I counsel patients one Saturday per month on nutrition – lots of diabetes diet education – and have recently taken on a bigger role that will focus on teaching the med students what exactly nutritionists do in general, what I discuss with the clinic patients and what warrants a nutrition referral/consult – both in acute care and in the clinic.
I do talk about vegetables a lot
The timing of this new role is pretty perfect, because a recent analysis highlighted what many of us nutrition professionals already know – most physicians do not receive adequate enough training or education on nutrition to talk with their patients about it. Part of me thinks, duh, that’s why registered dietitians exist. But a lot of times, they don’t know when or why to refer a patient to an RD. And sometimes, they are the only healthcare professional a patient will see. Aside from nutrition education, the other main goal of my new role at the clinic are to see how we (and other important disciplines like social work) can work together more as one cohesive unit, rather than many separate ones, for the ultimate benefit of the patient. I wrote a post about why dietitians are so important for another one of my side jobs here, if you want to check it out!
the running
After this Sunday’s long run (ok, during Sunday’s long run), I was absolutely wishing for fall. It was everything I hate about summer running – warm, humid and oh so sweaty. I tried to do a workout in the middle of the run, but a malfunctioning Garmin was all I needed to throw in the towel and just try to power through the run at a somewhat steady pace. Trying not to get too down on myself about it – shitty long runs happen – and focus on the good ones I’ve had the past few weeks.
July 6 long run workout: 3.25 miles easy warm-up, 4 x 6 minutes at between 10K and half marathon pace, with 1 minute rest, 40 minutes easy, 16 minutes at marathon pace, ~2 miles cooldown. Goals for the 6 minute sets were about 7:30 pace, and even though the splits were all over the place, the pace felt steady and pretty good. The main goal for this workout was to get more used to pushing the pace towards the end of the run on tired legs, and it definitely did that! By the time the MP minutes came around, I was fairly pooped but able to push through.
June 27 long run workout: ~40 minutes warm-up, 3 x 10 minutes at a little quicker than marathon pace with 2 minutes rest, long 50 minute cooldown. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for this run, but this kind of workout is a pretty good one in general and helped me get back into feeling what marathon pace is like.
Mid-week workouts have been lots of hill repeats and short intervals, and I’ve hit 58-60 miles the past few weeks. Feeling kind of tired, so am trying to be really good about taking one rest day per week (so far, so good!). I’ll probably do more short intervals for tomorrow’s workout, but want to really focus on having a good long run workout before going away for a long weekend.