Marathon Training Week 7 - Picking Up Where I Left Off
This past Friday was the first day in months that I went out for a run and the weather felt legitimately cool. Cool, in this context, is certainly relative. Stacked up against running in 80+ degree weather with humidity about 95%, my definition of cool weather is biased. Regardless, those 4 miles felt wonderful.
There's an incredible difference between feeling close to death by the end of a run and feeling refreshed and even if I'm only marginally less sweaty in the latter, I had hoped this was as sign of turning the corner into more autumnal weather, but alas, no such luck.
I realized, in that lone refreshing morning run, that the last time I had gotten to this 14-15 mile point in marathon training runs was just as the weather was beginning to really warm up at the end of spring. That was when I fell off and now I feel as though I'm hitting a stride in training again.
A couple of my recent runs had me feeling like maybe I wasn't ready to get into marathon training kinds of mileage, but even aside from the weather, I'm trying a couple different things that I think are making a difference for me. In my mind, if nothing else.
1. I have no idea what pace I'm running.
I don't know if it was the heat and humidity or simply that I've lost some speed, but my pace has slowed and when I had a mechanical voice telling me every half mile how slow I was going, it sounded more and more smug every mile. So, unable to let go of my ego enough to not care about pace, I just turned that audio cue off. I only hear my distances now so I'm able to let my body find a more comfortable pace without my brain getting in the way and trying to speed things up too much.
At least for my first marathon, I don't really care about the time, so why should I train caring about my time?
2. A little pre-run Gatorade
I was skeptical about the addition of the hook on the new Blender Bottle tops, but now I'm in love.
Running in the heat brought into sharp relief just how important it was to make sure I was properly hydrated and had my minerals and electrolytes at a good level. I can work up a pretty good sweat just driving a car across town so hydration for running may becomes more of a concern for me than it might for others. Waking up before sunrise to run gave me a small window in which to get out before the heat got bad, so balancing the hydration effort in the morning against sloshing around while running was tough.
I think I read somewhere that carbs help your body hydrate better or more efficiently(?) so I'm experimenting with more Gatorade in my pre-run hydration routine. So far so good.