Running With Jack

Yesterday I had a friend of mine ask me if I could help him move some furniture on Saturday. Of course I agreed, what are friends for, but I had to make some quick adjustments to my training schedule. I had a 24K/15M medium-long run on the calendar for early Saturday morning and knew that I wouldn’t have time Saturday afternoon or Sunday, so I decided to do the run last night.

This ended up being a rather 'interesting' run. As most of you know I am dieting and training for a marathon, so you can probably imagine that I need to carefully coordinate my diet with my long runs in order to have enough fuel. Well yesterday I hadn’t planned on running so far when I went to work so I only had an apple and banana for lunch. Normally I can’t eat right before I run, it just doesn’t work for me. So when I got home from work I stuffed a sports bar in my jacket pocket and took a big swig of water right before I left, hoping this would get me through at least 2 hours of running.

It was a brisk 0C/32F as I left at 4:30 p.m., with a steady breeze and overcast sky. For the first 8K/5M I took my normal running route, but then turned off and ran a 7K/4M loop around some fields. By this time it was dark and the wind had picked up, cutting through my running pants chilling my legs to the bone. I automatically picked up the pace to try to get back into the woods as quickly as possible.

After about 16K/10M I could feel my energy level starting to drop drastically, so I ate my sports bar. Of course by this time it was too late, as it takes 20-30 minutes for it to take effect. And of course I left my CamelBak at home so I wasn’t drinking the whole time either. And of course I know better than to do this, especially when I wasn’t properly fuelled to begin with. Of course!

Anyway, the longer I ran the slower my pace became and the colder I got. Finally I decided to quit early and took a shortcut back to the house. I ended up running almost 21K/13 miles in 2:01:59, about 3K (~20 minutes) less than I had wanted to. My legs were really tight after the run, I had to spend some extra time stretching. But after some water, warm food, and a soak in the tub I felt good again. I am really looking forward to a training day off today. In the last seven days I have run 79K/49M, the highest 7-day mileage since August.

This morning my legs are a little sore, but no abnormal aches or pains. My weight is slowly going back down to the pre-Christmas level, this morning I was 73 kg/161 lbs. Five more kilograms (11 lbs.) until I reach my goal.

So tomorrow night (Friday) I have a 14K/8.7M run and on Sunday maybe a shorter run and some swimming. Have a nice week!