I was not correctly prepared for this run. After last night's intense workout at the gym and then the intense 8 mile run. I think a combination of 3 things contributed to making this run horrible. 1 -The gym workout. My muscles were healing from the workout, where I increased my max amount of reps all my biceps and triceps exercises. 2. I didn't drink enough water after the workout and run from last night, and I didn't drink enough water during the day before the run. 3. Not enough food during the day and not enough fuel. The whole run was difficult, I was fighting to keep an 8:30/mile pace, after only 10 miles I hit a wall and had to stop and walk for a few minutes. I was thirsty and feeling dehydrated. I somehow managed to get 2 more miles at a slow pace. Luckily some people on the trail were just finishing a hike and had a lot of water left, they let me drink it, I drank almost all of their full canteen, which they were happy to give. My pace picked back up to 8:30/mile after that but I could feel my muscles shutting down, I needed fuel, bad. I had to walk again when I reached mile 14. Walked for .5 miles till I found a blackberry bush on the side of the trail. Most of them were shriveled up but there were some still ripe and juicy ones. I ate those, and a bunch of the shriveled up ones as well, they weren't bad actually. This gave me a much needed boost and between that and resting for about 8 minutes as I looked for juicy black berries. Ran the last 2 miles at marathon pace and caught up to a few people who had passed me up while I was picking black berries. I have never been closer to collapsing. I got home and immediately devoured half my kitchen.
I hope I am fully recovered from this by next sunday, where I'm running a full marathon. I was originally planning on going 18 or 20 miles but the trail ended at about 8.3 miles where I turned around and ran back. So it was about 16.6 miles or so.I'm glad I did not go any further. I know something was up. I just didn't have anything in the tank for this run. I think the biggest factor was not enough water or food during the day. If I had taken a cliff bar and drank a lot more water during the day before running, I think I would have maintained the 8:30 pace the whole way without a problem. So, total time was over 3 hours for only 16 miles. In comparison, on Tuesday, I ran 14 miles on the same trail in 1:40 minutes. And that was with 1 day of rest after running 12 miles. Oh well, got it in the bank. pretty sure as long as I'm properly hydrated and fueled up, I will be fine for the marathon. I was glad to see that after only a small hadful of blackberries, I got a boost for a marathon pace for 2 miles at the end of the run after running horrible the previous 6 or so. Not too concerned about this, unless it's a slow recovery, but already I'm feeling a lot better after a large dinner. Oh, and knees were fine. *edit* Forgot to mention that I was cold most of this run. I always go without a shirt and thought that there was enough warmth today, but Fall has definitely set in and the winds were a blowin. For most of the run I was feeling pretty cold, I'm guessing this was a factor as well. No more shirtless runs.
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