Sunday morning I got up early, went for a run, then headed out to the Sacramento Earth Day festival to do a volunteer shift displaying my electric car and answering many questions on owning and driving EVs. Miko was perfectly happy to sleep in.
I invited another EV driving friend from the local vegan groups to display his EV too for the Sacramento EV Association and we got premium parking by the entrance and a lot of foot traffic from the EV curious.
This is a huge Earth Day event spanning through a huge park with tons of vendors, activist groups and, thanks to the Sacramento Vegetarian Society, all the food vendors only serve vegan food for the environmental impact. For lunch, I had a tough time deciding what I wanted! This booth was very popular offering vegan tamales, but I decided to skip that line.
And decided on Abysinnia Ethiopian food even though they were popular too!
And got a satisfying plate of spicy red lentils, split yellow pea stew, steamed turmeric veggies, cooked collard greens with injera – a spongy wrap made from teff flour and perfect for absorbing the flavors of the lentils and pea dishes.
I got to take regular breaks to explore the festival and check out some of the beautiful clothing for sale.
And admire more vegan vendors.
There was a lot of pretty handmade jewelry on sale.
And interesting booths to check out.
More fun clothes and accessories.
What?!
And lots of crowds! It’s refreshing to see so many people come out for this event and engage with so many passionate causes.
What disappointed me is most everyone in the EV association is not vegan and had non-vegan food delivered to the display area. I need to work on them more and get more vegan EV drivers to represent! I also got to talk to a fascinating member of the EV group, a highly educated Tesla-driving retired psychology professor and professional running coach who blew away a 50-mile ultra marathon in under 6 hours in his prime and ran hundreds of marathons and ultra marathons. And he was happy to tell me about about his amazing running accomplishments which were impressive! Now I’m not exactly going for that, but he had some solid advice to offer for my marathon training this year that included:
- Tempo runs! It’s important get in longish weekly tempo runs at an intense pace making it difficult to speak. He recommended 10-mile tempo runs in addition to weekly long runs – yikes! That will be a challenge with my work schedule!
- Because of my height (6′) and weight, I’m at a natural disadvantage compared to petite runners if I’m going for a competitive pace and recommended I over train the mileage by reaching the entire marathon distance before the marathon. Again, yikes.
- He stressed that focusing on the miles was my best chance for increasing my pace and endurance and not to worry about pace for long runs so much as focusing on hitting the distance.
Interesting stuff and I’m not sure I will ever be that level of runner. But he looked darn good and mobile for an older guy that used to run up to 120 miles a week and his knees weren’t wrecked! I would love to get to the point of being able to run back to back long runs in a week and will need to for marathon training later this year, so that will be interesting with my work schedule!
It looks like it was a fun day! I’ve never tried Ethiopian food. You’ve got some interesting advice indeed. For some reason, I always though that it’s easier to run faster for taller runners. Long legs and everything! Haha!
Running Wisdom And Giveaway Winner: https://candiesandcrunches.com/2016/04/27/running-wisdom-giveaway-winner/
It was and the food was great, nicely spicy! Me too on tall runners, but he made great points about tall people needing more energy to balance out longer strides and weight.
Looks like perfect event!!!!!
It was fun and the weather was perfect!
It looks like a fun event! I found the advice from the running coach particularly interesting. I’m also a tall, vegan runner (I only run halfs, though), so his advice about running the full distance was fascinating to me. I tend to get injured when I do higher mileage, and I’m always a little nervous about running the full distance too often before race day. But I like the idea of worrying less about pace!
Me too on the distances, I worry that increasing my mileage too much while juggling work and cross fitness is setting me up for an injury. I will be posting a lot more on my training progress as I get closer to the full, but if I do hit the full mileage, there will be at least a 3 week taper after.
Earth Day festival looks a lot like the festivals we have many times during the summer here is Ithaca. There is definitely not enough vegan food at those!!! I’ll have to work on that this year. Eek a 10 mile tempo?! Sounds rough!!!
That’s a shame, all Earth Day fests should be vegan! I know on the tempo runs, I don’t realistically see that for me during a regular workday, 7 miles maybe.
mmm that wrap and lentils looks amazing! i love festivals such as these, they’re so fun to wander around and learn about random stuff. and obviously buy cute skirts ;)
Yum, it was and spicy! And so true, it’s nice to see so many people passionate about making positive changes.
I LOVE INJERA. Love it. Haven’t had it in forever, but it is so good! What a fun event–the east coast knows how to do EV, right? This would so not happen in Chicago.
Me too, it has such a unique texture! I hope EVs catch on more, battery technology keeps getting better and so does the charging network.
Sounds like a fun festival, but it is a shame that it wasn’t more wholly vegan. Seems like a strange hypocrisy for an environmentally conscious Earth Day event… But sadly, it’s not uncommon.
Agreed! I really appreciated all the food being vegan, but shocked at the EV group and something I will be working on! I already found another EV-driving vegan friend to represent at the next event!
So disappointing to learn that none of the EV reps were veggie. Other than that, it looks like a great event. I would have stuck it out for the vegan tamales. LOVE!
How fun to have had the chance to talk with the ultra runner. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around running a full marathon, I can’t even imagine a 50 mile run. I’m working on tempo runs now and it’s work.
Agreed, but I will be working on them and already found another EV driving vegan to represent at the next event. Next time on the tamales, there is a place in Sacramento that serves them on my wishlist,
It was fun and he has a lot of interesting stories! He is very competitive and assumed I wanted break a pace record from his advice when that’s not my goal for my first full. I have also been enjoying the No Meat Athlete marathon training podcast with more realistic advice for all levels of runners. So true on tempo runs, they take a lot out of you!