As an experienced runner (30 years and counting), I figured there wasn’t much that I didn’t know about the sport. From the salad days of putting in 80 mile weeks to my current little daily 2 mile run, I have carefully tracked my stats all these years and can pretty well describe all sorts of details about my running fitness level at any point along that timeline – average heart rate, cadence, distance, and most importantly: Average per mile pace. I lay this out because what has been happening over the last few months has been vexing and I want to see if anyone out there has experienced something similar.
It all began on September 5th, 2020. I had dinner at my girlfriend’s house, and she made a nice meal of steak and vegetables, including asparagus. I probably ate 6-7 spears, enjoyed it, and then carried on with the evening; consuming nothing else out of the ordinary (a LaCroix and maybe a little homemade kombucha I had brought up – things I drink every day). The next day, as I left my house for the morning run, I felt like I had been shot out of a cannon. I could feel the pace was quick, but had no real idea until I finished how quick – 7:43 per mile pace. That’s a full minute faster than average.
Now, I know that’s not THAT fast, but I have been doing the same run for over 200 days in a row and my average over that period has been a pedestrian 8:43 per mile. I didn’t think much more about it until 2 weeks later when, after having a similar meal (chicken this time) with asparagus, cooked again, by my girl, the same thing happened. Only slightly faster even – 7:40 pace.
My interest peaked, I started paying attention and over the month, every time, without fail, when we had asparagus the night before, my per mile pace was a minute or more faster per mile (6 times now, no exceptions – latest pace: 7:29). On nights where there was no asparagus to be had, I’d run the regular pace, with amazing consistency (8:40-8:43 per mile). Cadence and average heart rate both tick up about 5 points each on these faster runs – from about 155 to 160 (for both stats).
I began trying to isolate variables. Asking questions like “do you put anything in with the asparagus when you cook it?” (just salt and pepper); “what’s the cooking method?” (some ninja air fryer/steamer thingy); thinking about anything else I may be eating or drinking on those days that was out of the ordinary; and on and on. Nothing seemed to be able to explain this performance-enhancing trick except the asparagus itself.
So I’m on to the next phase of testing – I’ll be cooking some asparagus myself this week to see if perhaps there is some way it can be traced back to technique. The working theory from the cook is that she makes it with love, something I don’t doubt, but seems like that might be hard to quantify (and besides, are we positing that the other meals served without this P.E.D.-veggie AREN’T made with love?).
I’d love to know if anyone has had similar experience with asparagus or other foods that have created such a quixotic scenario in their exercise routines. For me, I know whenever we get back to being able to do actual 5Ks instead of virtual ones, that carb-loading is out for me. I’ll be eating a mountain of asparagus.
For the skeptical – here is today’s run, and below that my average pace graph.
