Running for Your Life: Food for Thought

Way back in November 2011 I wrote the blogpost below. As summer approaches and unhealthy food choices multiply with the mosquitoes (sorry, that's my dad peeping out there -- one of his favorite lines during, say, a century-intense whiteout blizzard: "I like it, son. No mosquitoes, no flies") I thought it was worth a replate, as they say in the newspaper business:

Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.