Didn’t quite hit the 20 miles I wanted to this morning – I was moving pretty slow but was at least going solid. It was relatively nice outside with only a little fresh sprinkling of snow. This did make traction a little hit or miss so I definitely ran tighter than I normally do and actually had some back spasm after I was done and started to warm up.
On my really long runs I bring a water bottle belt with a medium sized bottle and 2 smaller fuel bottles. I generally use the smaller bottles first and then move onto the larger bottle at the end but for some reason I reversed the order today. This turned out to be a mistake – I was making sure I took a sip of fuel every 10 minutes and I had hit about mile 15 before the larger bottle was empty and I started on the smaller bottles…but when I went to drink I couldn’t get much out of them…they had frozen up. Crud. I was moving slowly as it was and things started to tank shortly after that. I made it to 17.55 miles and realized my under layers were fully soaked and my outer layers had frosted over (or flat out frozen) so no more sweat was being wicked away and the cold was starting to settle in. Considering I was just coming off an illness that made me miss a run, I did not want to make myself sick. So I called it and headed inside.
Once I was inside and started to warm up I started getting a few back spasms as my muscles relaxed a bit so I decided not to get on the freshly repaired treadmill to finish out the run.
Now I have been reading from several places about splitting up the longer runs into 2 runs over the course of the day if you need to – I think I can see how this would still help the body learn how to recover quickly and store more fuel but it seems like it wouldn’t train the mental game as well as doing the long run straight. And frankly I think it is the mental game I have to get working on again…but I will be getting on the treadmill to finish off another 2.45 miles to get my full mileage for the day in. I will have to see how that goes but I suspect it will not be my preferred method of getting my longer runs in but it will be something good to keep in my back pocket if a longer run goes south again.
I am seeing too that with the treadmill down I have not been training for the speed as much as I would like. I had hoped that I wouldn’t lose much ground as long as I got the miles in but running in the snow has actually trained me to run slower than I was! With the loose ground covering and ice, I have had to be extra cautious and slower than normal to make sure I hurt myself but after doing 2-3 weeks slower than normal I can see that I am defaulting to a slower speed. Hopefully it is not too late to fix this before the Goofy Challenge in January!
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