A "hollow day."

For awhile now, I have been obsessed with the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, along with a decent chunk of the late-elementary through high school readers in the world and quite a few adults. If you have not heard of these books, you really owe it to yourself to check them out. You can put yourself on a sure-to-be-very-long waiting list at your local library, or pick them up on Amazon at http://amzn.com/0439023521.

I won't spend too long summarizing the books here; I'll save that for a later post. For my purposes today, you only need to know that the heroine is a 16 year-old girl named Katniss who has spent her life struggling to get by in a poor coal-mining community called District 12. For much of the first book, she has to struggle to find food. At one point, she thinks "I know I'm going to have what we call a hollow day back in District 12. That's a day where no matter what you put in your belly, its never enough."

Very fortunately, I have never struggled with actual hunger in my life. However, I think pretty much anyone who has ever trained for a marathon or other serious athletic event can relate to the idea of the "hollow day." Just this Saturday, I discussed it with Katie C. and her lovely training partner Erin. During our training, we have all experienced days when, no matter what or how much we eat, we never stop feeling hungry. Often, this happens when we add mileage and/or speed to our longer runs. After some of my runs, I have eaten a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel (which is a decent-sized breakfast) and felt like it literally fell through a hole in my stomach. When that happens, I know that it will continue for at least the rest of the day. I will eat like crazy and still feel hungry. 

Today is one of those days. I increased my usual weight in Group Power yesterday, and then I took a spin class last night. This was a pretty decent activity increase compared to my usual Monday, and I am feeling it today. I ate lunch at noon, and was starving by 2:30. This is inconvenient because I am meeting a friend for dinner at 6:45, and the only snack I have available is an apple. I ate the apple around 3:30, and immediately realized that it wouldn't hold me for 3+ hours. So, a few minutes ago, I broke down and ate the Lean Cuisine I had packed for tomorrow's  lunch. Guess what? Still hungry. When I ate Lean Cuisine #2, I deluded myself that I would just get a salad when I meet my friend, but right now it feels more like a steak kind of evening. Hollow day indeed.

*Quick fundraising update. As of today, our combined donation total is $1940 and we have a little over 18 days to go. Keep the donations coming- you could be the person who pushes us over the $2000 mark!