I should have known that yesterday’s bout with pizza, wings, fries, a deep fried chocolate bar, Swiss Chalet and beer would cost me today. For the second week in a row my Sunday run was far below my expectations.
I woke up late and crammed down a peanut butter flavoured Clif bar. Holy shit, that didn’t feel good at all. The weather was a whole lot more hot and humid than I was anticipating. I mean, I checked the weather report in the morning and thought: “Hmm, 21 degrees. Nice!” I wore a t-shirt instead of a tank, and really that hit me hard. The weather was downright nasty. Very quickly, I got to a point where I was just dripping. I already sweat a lot, but that was a bit much–even for me. I had to slow down significantly because the heat was causing me to breathe hard and my heart rate was higher than where I wanted it.
As I ran, I could feel the energy bar sitting around not heading down. Very frequently, I was belching up peanut butter, and that was horribly horribly disgusting. I tried to wash it down with liquid, but I was having trouble. See, my water bottle had a mix of water and orange flavoured carb powder. The drink was never an issue before, but today I was suddenly very sick of the mix. Gross.
All of these factors combined together to make a ridiculously tough run. I had to take some long walk breaks just to be able to make it through the distance. It wasn’t that long of a run–13K. So, now I’m worried about whether I’m going to be able to manage next week’s run which will likely be around 19K. During today’s ordeal, I was fortunate enough to have one of the run leaders accompany me. All along the way she was giving me encouragement and suggested a lot of things to try for next week. I’m really going to concentrate and focus on making next Sunday a good one, because so many bad runs in a row are bad for the ego, know what I mean?
This all brought something to my attention though: just how serious am I about this whole training business? Right now, my attitude is just that this is a purely recreational thing. I’m not watching my food intake far too closely. I’m not terribly focused on being the best or speediest out there. Just maybe though, I have to actually shift my focus. It would have been fine to leave things as is at the lower levels, but at the half-marathon level? I think I need to “respect” the distance. Does that make sense? That’s not to say I’m not working hard now. I just need to think about the process more and not do too much that will sabotage my efforts.
Craaaaazy.
One more month.
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3 comments
Wegrit says:
Sun. August 24, 2008 at 10:08 pm (UTC -4 )
First off, having been away for so long, I would sell my soul for Swiss Chalet. For real.
Secondly, peanut butter is absolutely disgusting. And Clif bars are shit.. Therefore, peanut butter flavoured Clif bars are quadruple shit.
kyleen says:
Mon. August 25, 2008 at 10:49 am (UTC -4 )
C’mon- don’t beat yourself up too much about it. Seriously. WE knew you’d pay for the hard playing when we were doing it.
Next week will be way better. ::kyleen plays cheerleader!::
Jay says:
Mon. August 25, 2008 at 10:21 pm (UTC -4 )
Quadruple shit? Part of me wants to refute it (actually, not really) but I can’t. I was really gagging on the stuff. So sad.
Swiss Chalet is awesome. Double leg with fries? Whoo.
Yeah, I’m not going to beat myself up too much about it. I acknowledge it as a learning experience. Time to learn and improve, yes?