Tag: run/walk

Post 20 Miles post

Jess Guth7 Comments

So it’s the day after the 20 mile day. Time to reflect on yesterday’s run. Well, good news I guess – nothing hurts. The toes on my right foot are a little tender and my hips are tight. I’ll do more stretches later.

I forget from long run to long run how hungry I get after. As I said we had a perfect recovery meal very quickly after the run and then we went out for tea –  early, before 5pm and I had another big meal (and chocolate cake – come on I just ran 20 miles!). I woke up hungry and I’ve been hungry ever since really. I had a bacon sarnie in the supermarket cafe before doing our food shop, our usual Saturday morning breakfast and I’ve nibbled my way through the morning and am now ready for lunch… I need to strategically place bananas, grapes and other healthy snacks so I don’t end up eating biscuits all afternoon.

I’m also tired. I didn’t sleep well again – probably because of the wind – it sounded wild out there. I was awake from just before 2am until who knows when and then from 7am ish. I was struggling to get comfy because my hips felt tight so I was tossing and turning a lot resulting in teh catten being attached to my feet a lot. And once awake of course my stupid brain kicks in.

So I have been over that 20 mile run/walk in detail, lots of detail. I shall spare you it all because it’s all depression induced crap. It’s all the usual ‘OMG how pathetic was I at that point’ and ‘I really should have done better there’ and ‘well if I can’t even cope there then let’s just forget the marathon…’. I think I might be getting a little stronger though, just a little, but still. My inner voice is still screaming at me to pull out and not embarrass myself; it’s still telling me I can’t do this but I’m a little more confident in the fact that it is probably a liar.

Kingfisher taking us home

Jess Guth7 Comments

So, 20 miles is a long way! Our long runs haven’t exactly gone to plan so it was good to get out and get it done today. We were sort of hoping we might get 23 in but that would have meant going quite a long way past home and coming back and I just wasn’t up for that mentally today.

So, here’s how it went:

  1. Wake up repeatedly in the night worrying about not being hydrated enough and to go to the loo because I clearly was hydrated enough
  2. Get up at 6am, pull on running gear, eat bagle with peanut butter, drink mug of hot water.
  3. Drive to Mum’s place at the bottom of the hill, get bus to station, get train into Leeds.
  4. Toilet stop, bottle of water and a short walk to the Leeds-Liverpool canal and we were off.
  5. First bit of Cliff bar (oh my goodness, the sugar rush) at about 6 miles
  6. Going quite well along the canal for a bit longer
  7. Canal towpath shut with diversion instructions next to useless – couple of miles or so of randomly following road/footpath vaguley in the right direction. Mentally really struggling with things not going to plan – walking a fair bit
  8. Met lovely bloke with lovely dog who gave us directions. Ran a bit
  9. Found canal
  10. 10 miles- first niggles and some additional walking
  11. Oh my goodness we made it to Shipley! More Cliff bar and a mobile catering van for water
  12. Saltaire – but shop boat shut so no more water
  13. Reversal of intervals – running one minute, walking 2. Hips now very tight and back beginning to ache
  14. Mentally nothing left. Resisting urge to call up in a ball and cry
  15. Called Mum to give her an ETA with 3.5 miles left
  16. Don’t remember – it hurt a bit but I just put one foot in front of the
    Common_Kingfisher_Alcedo_atthis
    This photo was taken by Andreas Trepte at http://www.photo-natur.de. I got it from Wikipedia

    other and then I saw the now almost familiar flash of blue. For about a mile or so we ran with a kingfisher. It kept flying out and then stopping a little further down the canal. We stopped to watch it just sitting on a branch and when it flew off we followed again. It kept me going.

  17. Half a mile left – I ran for 3 minutes.
  18. Less than a quarter of a mile left – we ran out of intervals on the garmin and had to restart it.
  19. 4 hours, 59 minutes and 20 seconds after we started we completed 20 miles. Slow but within RunDisney required minimum pace.

What did I learn?

  1. We need more water along the way. The small bottle to start and one at Shipley wasn’t enough, we both felt the lack of water later on
  2. I need to fuel more in the second half of the run – I had a bit of my Cliff bar at 6 miles and at 11ish but then nothing. Partly that’s a water issue, I don’t like eating anything without water. I only had about half the bar – I’ll need a full one for 26 miles – possibly even 1 and a half.
  3. I am mentally struggling at the minute – I’m tired and I don’t have anything left to push through when the running gets tough. I didn’t deal well with the diversion – it zapped all my energy
  4. I also didn’t deal well with the fact that I couldn’t keep to the intervals – I really wanted to be able to do that and not doing so zapped more energy because I started second guessing my ability to do this thing.

We got to Mum’s, had some water and a banana and then drove home. We did some stretches, had a bath and then great recovery food – a chicken breast on quinoa and mixed grains with avocado and cherry toms. Yummy.

Chicken on quinoa
Chicken breast on quinoa with avocado

I feel a little sore but I can move, my feet are in one piece and I suspect my hips are going to be tight tomorrow but let’s see!

6 miles on a week night

Jess GuthLeave a comment

So, final page of the training plan. Here we go

image

Well I was in panic mode, possibly due to not having done the long run last weekend. I feel like we need to get some miles in. I don’t feel prepared at all. So we decided that we could get some additional miles in and some confidence back by upping at least one of the maintenance runs to 6 miles rather than the 45 minutes.

So off we went for 6 miles today. We did ‘cheat’ a little because we had to feed the sheep. We ran there (9.5 minutes), stopped the watch, fed the sheep and then set off again. I hated going down the golf course, walked most of it. It was wet, muddy and slippery and I am rather embarrassed to say that I let out a proper girlie shriek at one point. We went our usual route but then kept going along the canal.

I was fine running to the sheep, then fine once I got onto the flat and then we took a walk break because Kath was struggling with a stitch. After the walk break I couldn’t get going again. I took the next walk break too and then managed a bit longer. At 3.5 miles I wanted to cry. At 4.5 miles I felt ok. At 5 miles I took a couple of walk breaks and then we ran to the end. I did find it tough but a sort of manageable tough. A sort of ‘not a big deal’ tough. The pace ended up 12.40 minutes per mile which I think is pretty good given my complete downhill incompetence early on.

I like looking at the last page but I do need to confess- we still need to do the 20-23 miles we didn’t do last weekend. Hm

Possibly entering panic mode

Jess Guth6 Comments

I didn’t sleep well – so be warned.

During the night I managed to convince myself that things went all wrong yesterday. We didn’t run the 23 miles, we only got out for a short loop. I huffed and puffed my way round that and it wasn’t even that fast. 26.2 miles – what was I thinking.

I had chocolate cake mid morning and a take-away curry in the evening with a bottle of beer. I am behind on the training, not losing weight and struggling even with the little bit of running I’m doing… I am very much in ‘I can’t do this’ mode. In fact every little bit of me is screaming at me to just go hide under the duvet until the 11th January when it will all be over.

Add to that the running anxiety dreams that started a little while ago. I have 3 that repeat and I had all three last night in my fits and starts of sleep. The first is me running our home loop and as I get to the slope that goes from the little wood to the golf course I slip, fall and break my leg. I’m going to have to refuse to go that way.

The second is that I get my days muddled and turn up at the startline a day late. The third is the worst. I start and within the first mile everyone – even those starting way back, have overtaken me. I keep going and all the way along spectators are telling me I should have stayed at home and not bothered etc. Then I can see the finish line and with just about 5 steps to go I get pulled and told they’d waited far too long already and had to close the course and when I ask if I can just finish and get the medal I’m told that for such a pathetic attempt there are no medals.

Feeling rubbish – hope you have a better Monday

Wimping out (sensibly?)

Jess Guth3 Comments

I have spent much of the night listening to the wind and rain. At just before 6am we gave up on sleep and instead studied the weather forecast and radar pictures. There is a weather warning in force for this area for wind and rain and the forecast radar looked wet indeed. So we decided that being out in this weather for several hours wasn’t a good plan. It did say that the rain would clear by midday and give way to showers but that would still mean running for 2.5 ish hours in heavy rain and then still have another 2.5 ish hours to go – possibly in showers and definitly in a biting, strong wind. Going later doesn’t work either because we’d run out of daylight. No 23 miles for us today.

At this point I really need to get to the start line without injury and without any major setbacks. Getting a cold because of being soaked and cold for 5 hours would be a major setback and sustaining an injury because of slipping on the mud would be a disaster. So the plan is to do a 23 mile run on whatever day looks more favourable next weekend. Thinking about it we should probably have prioritised the run over the walk this weekend – we would have been wet but it was probably doable yesterday…

The thing is, I am oddly calm about the distance. I walked 10 miles yesterday and I feel no different today than if I hadn’t walked at all. No tightness or soreness, not even in my right calf muscle. 26.2 miles will be fine – it will be slow and it will be tough and I’m sure there will be times along the way where I just want to stop but it will be fine. How slow exactly it will be might well depend on the weather over the next few weeks and how much confidence I can get from a couple more long runs – or not

I was perfectly happy with the decision we made but now it has cleared a little and I am second guessing. Maybe we should have got organised to go… although just as a type that it’s started persisting it down again..

I feel like I’m wimping out but I also feel like that might be a sensible sort of wimping out.

Happy Sunday