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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â First, I did a good tempo run on Friday afternoon and drained myself pretty good. Â I usually do long workouts in the morning and have 24 hours to recover but this time it was a quicker turn-around. Â On Saturday morning I ate breakfast at 8am thinking I was going to run at 9am. Â 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. Â I was already feeling low energy levels around 30km and knew it was going to get a little ugly. Â It got a lot ugly around the 34km mark. Â I had to slow down to a shuffle slower than 5min/km (8min/mi). Â Twice in the last 1.5km I had to walk for a bit. Â I was dizzy, not thinking straight and utterly depleted. Â 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. Â 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. Â Eamon Coughlan travels to Iten to learn what the Kenyans are doing right, there is a large focus on David Rudisha. Â It’s cool to see so many familiar places.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/33808532]