Running for Beginners: Performance Nutrition is Cheaper and Easier Than You Think

I woke up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, the muscles in my legs searing and taut. After pacing up and down my hallway for a few minutes I gathered myself. "I was sleeping!" I thought. "How could my legs burn so badly in the middle of the night like that?"

I was about 15, and I had recently joined the cross country team. I was running about 10 miles a day, which was more than I'd ever done previously. I approached my coach the following day and told him about my blowtorch-legs experience. Without saying a word he whirled around and went rooting through his duffel bag. He handed me a banana. "What's this?" I asked. "It's Mother Nature's fire extinguisher," he coolly replied.

Nowadays, as I train to run across the country to raise money for homeless youth, I realize that it's not the banana's bright yellow sheath that won over my coach so long ago. It's the potassium.

Bananas are one of nature's most potassium-rich offerings. To put it simply, potassium acts as a lubricant for your joints and muscles. It's like oil in your car. Beginning runners should never pass up bananas when rolling through the grocery store, as each one of these little miracle fruits contains an average of 450mg of of this runner-essential element.

Think about it. Here is this wonderful yellow fruit. It's inexpensive, easy to find and compact. You can buy a bunch and keep them on top of your refrigerator for up to a week. And if they spoil, just throw 'em in the freezer and you've got the main ingredient for a tasty banana bread recipe.

It's the potassium that will keep your muscles in good shape for daily running routines, but bananas are chock full of several other essential vitamins and minerals. Vitamin C, which helps your body fend off infection, is abundant in bananas. So is Vitamin B, which aids metabolism. Need more fiber to ease digestion? Bananas are fiber-rich.

But perhaps the biggest added bonus from our yellow friend is its natural energy boost. Bananas contain the natural sugars sucrose, glucose and fructose, which supply instant energy. No other fruit contains more digestible carbohydrates, which are quickly and steadily absorbed by the body during a workout.

So next time you're at the grocery store, remember this saying: "A banana a day keeps the midnight screams away."

About Tellman Knudson:
Knudson is the founder and creator of startrunning.com, an online community for runners. He is training to run 3,200 miles, barefoot, from New York to Los Angeles to raise money for homeless youth.