Yesterday I returned to my Sunday long runs at the church of the bosque trail. On the dockett: 16 miles. I hadn't run that far since, like, JANUARY.
I didn't think it would be easy. I didn't think it would be hard. I didn't know what to think, especially since my debacle at Show Low, where 13 miles, um, over 4 hours...and was more of a labored, painful TRUDGE than a run...
I'm still working on my nutrition, et cetera. So I loaded up my hydration pack with about 55 ounces of prepared Nuun, 45 which I consumed.
Then I got the brilliant idea of putting 8 ounces of Apple-cinnamon hammer gel, about 6 which I consumed (more on that in a moment) into a water bottle. Prior to my run, I drank half a 450-calorie bottle of HEED. About three hours before the run, I ate two servings of oatmeal and a fruit cup.
To make short work of this post, I'll fast foward to the lessons learned.
1. Ohhhhhhh, THAT'S why I never ran that particular section of trail. It's full of soft sandy spots. motherf.........
2. If you try to use a 8-ounce water bottle as a gel flask, you have to do something to the spout, because it's not meant to let something as viscous as gel go through it. After squeezing in vain, I finally unscrewed the lid and gulped it down every couple of miles.
Which brings me to number 3...
3. No matter how much you like a particular flavor of gel, if you gulp it down for three hours, you'll learn to hate it.
Hate. It.
4. There's even more large piles of horse manure on dirt trails than there is on the paved trail. How come dog owners have to scoop, but horse owners can leave large presents for the rest of us to trip over willy-nilly? It's just as gross; it's just a smelly, and it's just as unlikely to wash awake in the rain we don't often get in the desert.
Anyway, I did 15.2 miles, in about 3:22. I started out at 5:55 am, having learned a lesson from Pirate and her "running on the sun" experience recently ☀ It was gorgeous on the bosque pre-dawn. Quiet, peaceful, in the low sixties. Bunnies ran amok. It was in the upper eighties when I finished.
Today I rest from all things running and triathlon-like. My calf and a lot of my left leg is stiff from Saturday's race.
FYI: Sweet Baboo has fallen ill from some mysterious malady, and is home while I wait on him, feed him, and soothe his fevered brow. SHHHHHHHHHH. He's sleeping. He's such an angel when he sleeps...By the way, any of you who are happy with fiddling with HTML, I found a place to get the codes to put symbols ☝ in your text. Go here: http://www.bigbaer.com/reference/character_entity_reference.htm
℘
