“You only have to exercise on the days you eat.” That seems to sum things up pretty well! Mr. Burfoot also shared this wisdom from Dr. Walter Bortz, longevity expert. “It is never too late to start and always too soon to stop exercising.”
- “We all used the same sports drink in those days – Kool-Aid!”
- “In high school I ate bowls of dry Total cereal for lunch.”
- “In college I found a new sports drink, Tang. I drank 12 glasses a day.”
- He describes a phase of eating what he craved, which included a lot of chocolate marshmallow swirl ice cream.
- “I had a ‘craving’ for apple butter the night before the 1967 Boston Marathon. I had to make a lot of pit stops and finished 17th.”
Mr. Burfoot’s current eating preferences seem a little more familiar. He said that he has moved toward a mostly lacto-ovo vegetarian diet with some fish. Because of a bout of intestinal illness, he includes fermented foods for gut health. He consumes a lot of water, salmon, cottage cheese w/pineapple, and eggs. He has a morning shake made with milk, kefir, whey protein powder, and strawberries. He likes to make salads with fruit, vegetables, beans, seeds, and kimchi.
In his interesting running career Mr. Burfoot has completed the Comrades ultra-marathon in South Africa, participated in early trials of Gatorade, and run beside Oprah in a marathon.
He closed his talk with the words, “every mile is a gift.” What a fiitting tribute to running, health, and the active life to consider on this Marathon Monday.
copyright 2016 Kathleen Searles, MS, RDN, CSSD, LDN