Saturday, Claire and I walked (Claire did a little running) the Holy Cow Stampede 5k. By the end of the race my hands were balloons they were so swollen. This happens to a lot of people as you are walking and/or running but my hands were HUGE! It finally occurred to me that eating half a jar of pickles the night before probably exacerbated this problem! Pickles are low in calories, but they are high in sodium as most people know, so it probably caused the swelling in my hands to be even worse. I was discussing this at a party on Saturday night and my friend, Carrie Sargent, pointed out there is something like 280 mg of sodium per pickle! Even though I know Carrie is a smart girl I thought I would verify this figure and what I found was typically it is even MORE sodium than Carrie's estimate. A medium sized pickle can have up to 800 mg of sodium. Wow! That is probably not good. Since I am getting old, I thought I probably should be watching my sodium intake more, so I googled low sodium pickles. I mean, they have low sodium soy sauce, they must have a low sodium alternative for pickle obssesors, such as myself. I found a couple of brands that sell them, including Rick's Picks Slices of life and there was even a no salt added pickle, that has been discontinued on the Heart Wise website. Mostly what I found, is that there are recipes for low sodium pickles. I am guessing I need to try to make some. If anyone out there has had a low sodium pickle or knows of another brand, please let me know!
While searching out 5k's for the next time, I thought it would be fun to find one in conjunction with pickles. Since there are a few pickle festivals around the country maybe there are some pickle races. I only found one in Philadelphia and it appears to be a private event. I guess I will have to work on getting an invite for next year. Here is the description I got off the Pickle Club website"
Tim Krueger is the organizer of one of the craziest running traditions that I’ve ever heard of. Tim owns a race timing company and somehow got the idea to hold a 5k Pickle run in the months of January, February and March. (He does other pickle runs for special occasions such as Mardi Gras and July 4th.)
From what I understand, essentially the runners are called picklers and they run while searching for these homemade decorated pickles. They then award the winners of the race with gifts that Tim can pay no more than a $1 for. The runners keep these decorated pickles that they found and the next day participate in ‘play with your pickle day’ which entails hanging out with your pickle and taking photographs. And then, as if that weren’t enough, these picklers (aka runners) take their pickles to work that following Monday and hang out with them - including taking photos! Sound intriguing? Well, pack your bags and head to Philly!
I think I need to start a fund so I can have pickle related travel!
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