Three Miles of Blech

I need to go back and read some of my old blogs to figure out what has changed. Yesterday's 20 miler was another painful slog. A lot more painful than it should have been. Ever since my second 20 miler on my Long Beach Marathon training cycle, these long runs have taken a toll on me.


With the flood channels still flowing, and copious amounts of mud still around, I decided to attack my 20 miler down on the beach. I started in Newport Beach, and ran down to the mouth of Newport Harbor. No rain today! What a difference a couple days make:

I backtracked to the car for seven miles, and then continued into Huntington Beach. The damage from the storm was evident. Here's the path from three weeks ago:

Here's the path today:

They are obviously going to need to do some cleanup before this:

I need to correct my blog post from last Tuesday too. I mentioned that the photo showing the waterspout was of the Balboa Pier. My son corrected me a couple days ago, and explained to me that it was the Huntington Beach Pier, based on the unique design of the lifeguard towers out on the pier. He is correct. I checked, and there were no waterspouts today:

I had been fueling every five miles, so at mile 15 I pulled up for my last two Endurolytes and a Hammer Gel (tropical - yum!). I had been keeping things intentionally slow and easy, and was managing somewhere around a 10:55 pace up to that point. But the fun was about to begin. As I hit mile 15 or so, I started feeling really really fatigued. Especially my calves. By mile 16 fatigue had turned to pain, which shortly thereafter turned to cramping. I ended up shuffling the last three or four miles back to my car.

The bottom line is I had a formula that worked once. I need to get back to that formula.