Alrighty – time for another check in for my Dopey Challenge 2019 training – this write up is for part of week 12 and week 13.
Over the past few weeks I haven’t been feeling well and really haven’t been feeling running – especially long distance running. So I have mostly been doing shorter distance, speedier runs…just to get the running over with…on those days I actually got myself to run!
I figured this week then, I would need to concentrate on getting some longer runs in to try to get back into this whole long distance running thing.
Doing that though I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to damage my left ankle that has been causing me grief. I needed to avoid putting too much strain on the ankle as well as let it recover after each run properly. So my plan then was to run long or longish one day and then skip a day of running before doing another longish day, and so on.
So with that in mind I did 10 miles last Sunday, I could have gone longer but ran into some mental blocks that I wasn’t able to push through unfortunately. I skipped Monday and on Tuesday I did 7 miles relatively quickly. Wednesday was skipped and then I went to get another long run in on Thursday while the kids were at swimming lessons, unfortunately for this one, I started running too soon after eating supper and 3 miles was all I was able to squeeze out while feeling nauseous. I then skipped Friday and pushed out a solid 16 miles on Saturday. I might still run today (Sunday), but so far skipping a day between runs seems to be going ok and I’m not sure I want to break something that is working quite yet.
So let’s talk about the 16 miler, since I used that run as a bit of a test of how much fuel my system is carrying.
Before we get into that – maybe some back story and a bit about my running and how my body works. First off, I am a big guy and even when I set my half marathon PR 0f 1:46:00 I was 221 pounds – it takes fuel to move that mass through a race and even when I have been in the best shape I have needed to supplement my in body stores with external fuel.
I also need a lot of liquid – maybe more than most runners. For a marathon I will run with 2 litres of liquid in my hydration pack, a 0.5-1 litre bottle and will supplement with water on the course as well – and all of that will be empty by the time I finish the race and I will still be down a 2-5 pounds of water loss depending on the weather.
The question comes up – do you really need that much liquid? Yes and there was a race I proved it to myself. It was the 2016 Sprucewoods ultramarathon – I was doing the 50k race and that year (due to the heat and fire hazards on course) the course was changed to be 2×20 km loop and then a 5k out and back to get your full 50k in. I had been talking with someone before the race about hydration and somehow out of that conversation I screwed up my brain and my hydration pattern. I will have a sip or gulp of liquid every 10 minutes of a race, starting right at the beginning. I didn’t end up doing that in this race…in fact I drank almost nothing – complete brain fart. The last half of the second 20k loop was awful – on any hills (and there were many, many hills) my heart would start racing and my head would ache and I just couldn’t run anymore. I was seriously concerned about my health and pulled out of the race at 40k – to this day that is my only DNF (did not finish). From the race it was a 2.5 hour drive home, I drank the whole way, I drank a bunch of liquid through the night after the race and in the morning I was still 9 pounds down…when I checked my hydration pack, it was still almost full, I hadn’t drank any of it.
Since then I have been extremely conscious of hydrating on a run. But what do I drink? As I said above, I need to ingest calories during a marathon and getting calories from the hydration makes sense. Unfortunately though Gatorade and Powerade do not do good things for me and I end up spending too much time in the portapotties if I drink those drinks. I have found a great zero calorie electrolyte drink that works for me but it doesn’t help with fueling.
So what works for me? Coke…flat Coke.
I will generally fill my 2 litre hydration pack with flat Coke and then carry one to two bottles of the zero calorie drink separately.
During my 12 hour 50+ miler in October 2015, I alternated a bottle of flat Coke with a bottle of the zero calorie electrolyte drink and it worked great – I didn’t have a fueling issue until about 11 hours in and that was solved by eating a couple of cookies.
So I know what I need to do to hydrate and fuel on a race but I wanted to know going into the Dopey Challenge, where am I at and would I need to do the whole flat Coke thing for the challenge this year?
That’s what the 16 miler was about, I hydrated with water and the zero calorie drink and 16 miles was everything I had in the tank. So I definitely need to supplement calories still (which is not a surprise) but I had more in the tank than I was actually expecting (so that was good surprise).
Now the goal for next week will be more long runs and one full long run supplemented with the Coke to see if I can get an 18 or 20 miler in. Time is running out for Dopey Challenge training – 4 weeks to my travel day on Tuesday!
Anyway – thanks for following along with my ramblings and hope to see you for the next one!!
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