Traveling to a Food Desert

Well, that weekend flew by! Kyle and I woke up at 5AM on Saturday to drive to Waverly, Iowa for his rugby playoffs. For those of you who have not been to Waverly, well... you're not missing too much. It's a very small town with one or two hotels, no Starbucks, but lots of Midwest charm.

The only hotel in town resembled an old nursing home..gag

Unfortunately, the boys didn't win, but it was a fun weekend. One of my first concerns was how I was going to get a quality workout in? Thankfully, I was able to find a decent hilly area, so I took some time to indulge in that. While running I also stumbled across a high school track, so I did a track workout too. I haven't done a legit track workout since college because it's hard to find an outdoor track in the city that isn't locked to keep gangs out.

Thankfully, in this small town they keep theirs open! For those of you looking for a good speed workout, try my track workout:

 - 1 Mile Warm Up
 - 2.5 Mile Race Pace
 - 10 - 100 M sprints with 15 seconds in between each sprint 
 - 400 M Recovery Lap
 - 4 - 200 M sprints with 30 second rests between each spring
 - 1 Mile cool down jog

I've grown to love this place.

Thanks Waverly-Shell Rock High School for letting me use your track, and for bringing back some great volleyball track workout memories!

Whenever I go to a small town, I always find it hard to find healthy food. It's almost like a lot of small towns are food deserts. By this I mean, they have limited access to healthy food. Prime example, while at breakfast on Sunday, the waitress brought me some strawberries for my oatmeal. Well, I assumed they would be fresh strawberries. Bad assumption. She brought me this gooey mess.

Unfortunately, receiving these led me on one of my nutrition rants to Kyle. I'll save you the pain of hearing every little word of my rant, but in a nut shell... It saddens me that people think products like this strawberry syrup are healthy because it has fruit in it. It does have fruit, but it also has a lot of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other scary ingredients.

Needless to say, those strawberries stayed in that bowl where they belonged. Anyone else experience a lack of healthy food choices in really small towns?

Well, good news is that I am back in Chicago and ready for another productive week of work, eating healthy, and working out. Have a great week everyone!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Month of Gratitude:
Today I am thankful for all of the healthy restaurants in Chicago. I love knowing that I can walk down the street and get an organic meal, and not have to worry about what the cook tried to sneak into my dish.