Treats and Heats

One of my oldest friends, Danielle, is also one of my perfect running matches in the world. I have yet to find another, so at this point, it's a monogamous relationship, at least on my end. Running soul mates? What a silly idea... anyway, moving on. We have identical strides and also, seemingly, levels of motivation. There are the exceptions when we have to drag each other up the last (or first) hill, but it's generally an ideal little match. We have established a pattern of running, showering, and heading out to eat for what Danielle calls a "big, fat salad" and now that we're older, usually a margarita/glass of wine or several.

When we were younger, however, Danielle would laugh at me, still out of breath and drenched in sweat from our jaunt around town, inhaling a cookie or brownie, lovingly supplied by our parents. Turns out, I was probably just fueling mitochondrial growth, or, in real world terms, preventing muscle fatigue. In this exciting article found by Amanda, mice who were fed flavanols from chocolate ran longer on the treadmills and had more mitochondria in their little biopsied mouse muscles than other mice fed only water. Obviously, there are lots of question marks - is the effect the same in people, does it work with the delicious chocolate we all love or only the flavanols extracted from the chocolate, etc. If these results do translate over to people and entire chocolates, the researchers say it means eating roughly one Hershey Kiss (or half square) of dark chocolate per day to maximize efficiency, rather than the "more is better" mentality we were hoping for. Boo. I had imagined a chocolate only diet and let me tell you, it was divine.

Either way, chocolate and running are both awesome, and this had to be shared.