Dazed and confused

I thought I could get away with a 36km run but there were a couple of factors that caused me to fall apart around 34km.

On Monday I had a great workout in Guelph.  We had a full group cranking it out together on the dirt roads doing mile repeats with hill sprints thrown in after every other interval.  It was fun to work out with the collegiate guys and have 1500m runners right up to us marathoners all together. I guess the common denominator is the 3000m and there are 6 of us who have run sub-8:00 and a couple others really close. Yes, it’s a deep group.

On Saturday at 1pm I didn’t even think I would workout on Monday.  That’s because I completely bonked on my long-run.

I thought I could get away with a 36km run but there were a couple of factors that caused me to fall apart around 34km.  First, I did a good tempo run on Friday afternoon and drained myself pretty good.  I usually do long workouts in the morning and have 24 hours to recover but this time it was a quicker turn-around.  On Saturday morning I ate breakfast at 8am thinking I was going to run at 9am.  However, it had snowed and it was warming up so I figured I’d wait until 10:45 to get out the door for my only run of the day.

I ran 3km to the Around the Bay 30km course, ran the course in a shade under two hours and then proceeded to run home.  I was already feeling low energy levels around 30km and knew it was going to get a little ugly.  It got a lot ugly around the 34km mark.  I had to slow down to a shuffle slower than 5min/km (8min/mi).  Twice in the last 1.5km I had to walk for a bit.  I was dizzy, not thinking straight and utterly depleted.  I finally got home and quickly made a protein shake and had a big meal.

Sure enough a few hours later I was feeling fairly normal again.  But I cannot even imagine having that happen in a marathon and trying to stay on pace through that kind of wall. I’ve never bonked like that before and I hope I never do again.

***

I just got done watching this amazing documentary on Brother Colm coaching in Iten.  Eamon Coughlan travels to Iten to learn what the Kenyans are doing right, there is a large focus on David Rudisha.  It’s cool to see so many familiar places.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/33808532]

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