The Streak Ends

So – everything must come to an end sometime, and my “Execute The Plan” streak came to a screeching halt on Sunday.

But, I do have to report that Saturday was as good a run as I’ve had in a while. Seventeen miles on the plan. Seventeen miles executed on the trails in Aliso-Wood Canyon Regional Park here in Orange County.

A couple of new things really helped spell success on this run:

• Changed my fueling regimen: Up to now, I’ve been relying on gels as my primary source of fuel, and I’ve pretty much ignored fuel on my long runs. Saturday I mixed up an handheld of Ultrafuel (maltodextrin) and tested it on my run. It worked quite well.

• Changed my electrolytes: For a while now I kind of suspected that the cramping and fatigue that I usually suffer is a sodium issue. I sweat. Like buckets. And that means that I’m probably (definitely) losing a lot of sodium in the process. I have been using Endurolytes as my electrolyte replacement, but each tablet only provides 85mg of sodium. After reading a great blog post by Aron, I thought it might be high time to try a different electrolyte replacement tablet. I took two of these guys per hour (at 285 mg of sodium each) and they seemed to do the trick:

 

The bottom line was I finished 17 miles on the trails and felt pretty strong afterwards. It was a real confidence builder for Saturday…

Which brings us to Sunday. On the schedule was an 8 mile easy run. I woke up with a mean case of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). My back was tired. My quads and hips ached. Heck – even my arms were sore. Everything felt so good! But, with a race coming up this Saturday, sore and fatigued muscles, and a BBQ and fireworks to celebrate the 234th birthday of the USA, I sacked the run. Sigh. I remember celebrating the bicentennial in 1976 – a year after graduating High School. Man. I’m an old fart.

So I finished out last week at 34 miles. And finished out June at 4 miles shy of 120. I feel like the cruiser has finally turned the right direction.

This week I’m going to mini taper for Saturday’s race. I was originally going to just treat the race as another training run, but I think I’m going to treat it more like a race (more on that later). So that means this week’s schedule will pan out like this:

• Monday: Rest
• Tuesday: Rest
• Wednesday: 8 mile easy
• Thursday: 4 mile easy
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: Harding Hustle 30K (18 - 19 miles)
• Sunday: Rest
• Total for week: 30 miles or thereabouts

Then, once this week is over, it’s back to 40 miles. Per week. Without fail….

Now These Long Runs are Getting Long

What was I thinking? That's what I kept on asking myself yesterday. Heaven knows I had enough time to answer. This is the part of marathoning that I don't really like. Long runs by myself. Hours spent on a trail alone. I'm spending a lot of time at long and medium long distances. I'm told that it will all pay off in the end, but for now it sure makes for a lot of reflective time.

With the weatherman calling for heat, I wanted to be done while it was still cool. 7:30 AM with the my Cal Coast club was *not* going to cut it. I ended up putting my 17 miles in by 9:30. Pace was slow at 11:15, but that included a couple of stops to fill up my water bottles and some time stopped to chat one of my Cal Coast/Runner's World buddies that I ran into on the trail. It's kind of neat to run into people I know out on a run!

On another note - I've been tagged by B.o.B of discom-bob-ulated Running. The challenge was simple - go to my first photo folder, select the 10th photo and tell a story.



I wish I had a pithy or funny story about this photo, but no such luck. This was taken at the Pediatric Cancer Research Fund's Cinco de Mayo Half Marathon. There wasn't a lot of fan support on the course, and about this point (10 miles in) I was in some pain and distress. These two folks were doing their best to cheer us on while sipping on their coffee and snapping a few pics.

And sorry - no family photos or embarrassing photos of me. Most of those are up on my Flickr site, or my older Fotki site. Feel free to bounce over and have a look. Warning - there are *a lot* of boring baseball photos.... So now it's time to pass the challenge on. Eenie, meenie, meinie, moe.... Patrick you're it!