I think potatoes might just be my favourite carbohydrate. In one of those odd conversations that you’re only likely to ever have with fellow runners, I was recently asked which source of carbohydrates I would choose if I could only eat one for the rest of my life. It’s an undeniably difficult question, but my reasoning was that potatoes are the most versatile of the lot. That little story is entirely unrelated to Wednesday’s workout, except that it involved potatoes, and this week truly proved the versatility of potatoes.
I bet you didn’t expect to wake up on Wednesday morning and poop a potato. I don’t think anyone ever expects that. And yet, that is exactly what each and every one of you did. As I am sure you could tell, I had a lot of fun planning that workout, and even more fun with the burner. What came first, the workout or the potato?
So, as we celebrate potatoes and all that they stand for (in this case, free fitness and people willing to get weird in the snow before the sun has even risen on a Wednesday morning), here are some ‘fun’ potato facts from the Idaho Potato Museum:
*Today potatoes are grown in all 50 states of the USA and in about 125 countries throughout the world.
*The sweet potato belongs in the same family as morning glories while the white potato belongs to the same group as tomatoes, tobacco, chile pepper, eggplant and the petunia.
*An 8 ounce baked or boiled potato has only about 100 calories.
*The average American eats about 124 pounds of potatoes per year while Germans eat about twice as much.
*In 1974, an Englishman named Eric Jenkins grew 370 pounds of potatoes from one plant.
*According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest potato grown was 7 pounds 1 ounce by J. East (1953) and J. Busby (1982) of Great Britain.
I wanted to narrow that list down to a top five, but honestly I found each of those facts fascinating and couldn’t bring myself to delete any of them.
In all seriousness though, let’s stop and think about that workout. It was seriously cold for the first time this winter, and you all showed up. At 6:30am. I asked you all to get into groups and then collect a potato. I described a workout that involved keeping said potato moving around a castle for 30 minutes straight, with the threat of burpees if it stopped moving. And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, there was the burner. Three months ago, a year ago, two years ago, however long it has been since you showed up: would you have ever thought that one day you would be jumping around with a potato between you legs and trying to drop it in a bucket? And even if you had, would you have been down with that? November Project has done that. It makes the weird an awful lot less weird, the intimidating less intimidating and exercise more fun. Exercise should be fun: it makes it much easier to build healthy habits when you enjoy them, and it makes it easier to stand by those commitments when you enjoy them. Long live fun workouts, free fitness, and getting weird on a Wednesday.
And, if you’re still unsure of what to do with the potato that you took home with you on Wednesday, then here are a few excellent recipes that I just found by searching ‘top potato recipes’ on Google:
- Cheesy garlic butter potatoes (i.e. ALL THE GOOD STUFF)
- Garlic roasted potatoes
- Dauphinoise potatoes
Announcements:
- Saturday evening – Holiday Potluck! Check the Facebook page for the event details.
- Buffs can still be ordered here, there are still about a dozen available.
- Do you remember who Michelle is? She will be back next week!
- Christmas Day. If you want a workout, let us know. Something will be happening, we just need to decide what. Maybe a festive PR workout.
