Having been involved in competitive sports for most of my life, I started the marathon training program with a pretty good understanding of the importance of maintaining proper nutrition while taking part in high-volume or high-intensity training.

Growing up I was a competitive swimmer and by the time I was in junior high I was training 5-7 times a week. That volume of training, in addition to being a growing teenager meant that feeding me was almost a full time job. Fortunately for me, that was a job both of my parents took really seriously, unfortunately for them, they both had other full time jobs to keep up at the same time. I am still not sure how they did it all.

Regardless, there was seldom a night that myself and my two younger brothers came home from our various sports practices and there wasn’t a healthy home cooked meal waiting for us. My Mom has always been passionate about making sure we had nutritious balanced meals, while teaching us why that was important. Since she’s a teacher, she was pretty good at that.

When we were kids she and my Grandma would plant a huge vegetable garden at my grandparent’s farm and we would have fresh veggies through the fall and frozen or preserved goods during the winter. Every day until I graduated from high school my Mom carefully packed my lunch with a sandwich, wrap, salad or other healthy main, fruit, veggies, nuts or another nutritious snack and once in a while a sweet treat. As a kid I remember sometimes envying the kids who brought all the packaged sweets to school as that was something we never got. But now, I don’t envy them at all. Mom’s really do know what’s best.

Learning how to eat properly, how to cook and how to generally make good decisions in the grocery store was probably one of the most valuable things my parents gave me. It’s a skill set I’ve carried with me and expanded upon throughout my adult life. Now, cooking is something my boyfriend Chad and I do for fun, as his parents instilled the same kind of passion and knowledge into him.

Of course maintaining a balanced diet doesn’t mean you can’t occasionally treat yourself. And although Chad and I have spent the better part of the last two years attempting to eat our way through every gourmet burger place in Calgary, we can do it with the knowledge that eating out is a treat, not a habit.

Entering the last few weeks before the marathon eating right on a day-to-day basis has been one of my biggest focuses. Luckily for me the knowledge of how to do that was already there.

Where I wasn’t so knowledgable coming into the program was in the area of eating right during my runs. Taking in fuel while I train and race wasn’t something we ever really had to deal with when I swam. A few weeks ago I learned the hard way why fuelling correctly during a long run is so important. But that is a story for another day…

P.S. Thanks Mom and Dad! You really are the best!