Another great day in Northern Virginia. I went for a run to start my day. My friends have been telling me not to run the Wo&D trail alone. It has never really occurred to me to be cautious of running this alone. I always see people on it and I basically stay in the area near my house – but they now have me apprehensive – so I decided to run along a main road which to me isn’t as fun but it gets the job done. I ran about 3 miles according to my calculation. It’s funny because even though I run every weekend on the treadmill – My legs are sore from yesterday’s race. There was a ton of inclines and running on a treadmill does not equal running outside in uneven terrain even if you use the incline on the machine. I was slow on the uptake this morning because of the soreness – it took me a while to get warmed up but once I did – I loved it. Getting outside again, reminded me how ready I was for spring!
Which also reminds me – Happy Spring! We have officially said bye bye to Winter – although in all honesty, I remember it snowing a bit one year on March 29th so I am not going to have any expectations yet.
Because so many of us spent so much time outside this weekend – I was thinking about Vitamin D. Are you one of those people who have a Vitamin D deficiency? Spring and summer months, we all tend to rid ourselves of the winter blahs because we are getting Vitamin D directly from sun exposure.
Many adults have low blood levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D is not abundant in our usual food choices, so we get most of the vitamin from sun exposure and multivitamins. The problem is that the sun is not a reliable source for everyone.
The season, time of day, geography, latitude, level of air pollution, color of your skin, and your age all affect your skin’s ability to produce vitamin D. Further, the form of Vitamin D found in most multivitamins is vitamin D2, which does not deliver the same amount of the vitamin to the body as the more desirable D3 form.
Many people find out about their Vitamin D deficiency during one of their routine physicals and start taking supplements as well as taking advantage of the great outdoors. Something to think about next time you visit your doctor…