February 13th, 2011. Conquered one of the final three L-O-N-G runs with mixed results. The good news is that I did I crappy job of deciphering how to stretch the sixteen miler from two weeks ago. I really enjoy running across Snow’s Cut Bridge and through Carolina Beach State Park, so I had simply added a zig-zag to extend the fourteen mile route to sixteen and this came out a bit short.
So I replaced the zig with a more serious zag to bolster things by a bit more than two more miles. I have a landmark that is four miles from the finish and checking my Garmin Sports Watch at that point revealed I had already plod 15.3 miles! Of course that feedback didn’t dissuade me from still running to the traditional finish line and logging a total of 19.3 miles. Part of the motivation was my wife’s loving concern – I give her an ETA back at the home front and had I stopped running at eighteen miles and walked the additional 1.3 miles home I would have been pretty late.
My overall pace is the other reason I would have returned so late, and the bad news. The entire run was completed at a miserable 9:55 pace, potentially crushing my hopes of completing the marathon in four hours. Hopefully I can write the torpor off to valuable lessons learned, however.
If you’ve followed my blog, you are probably aware that I haven’t required too many supplemental calories during these longer runs. In fact, I’ve been somewhat amazed by this lack. But things caught up with me today in an unusual way. Up to now I’ve not had to hit the supplements until mile eight with the alarm of becoming light-headed. I continue to ask myself mentally how I’m doing and pose myself questions to validate everything is kosher.
Today my mental acuity seemed fine, but the mechanics were falling apart. There were times when my strides were so awkward that I almost stopped (beginning around mile five) and my knees were bumping up against each other mid-stride. My mind was clear and I could and I could readily solve the self-imposed questions (e.g., what is 13 times 96?). Despite this positive feedback, I was running along a busy road and deliberately slowed my pace because I sensed things weren’t quite right.
The important lesson is that I should have taken corrective sooner, but it wasn’t until I glimpsed Snow’s Cut Bridge that I compelled myself to ingest a Hammer Gel. Maybe it was the lack of railings at the top where you could easily plummet off the bridge or the painful tumble from a few weeks back, but that was the necessary spur. And what a blessing it was.
After the Hammer Gel my stride returned and eventually I regained the standard pace, but the extended lethargic interlude trashed my overall time (logged four miles at plus eleven minutes). Immediately after getting beyond the bridge I followed up with a Clif Bar and the critical lesson is to enforce a routine caloric intake during L-O-N-G runs to avoid any low-blood-sugar interludes.
Up until now I have been content with diagnosing the need for caloric intake on the fly, but you’d think I would know by know how perilous it is to self administer once your blood sugar starts going low (which is when you start to lose cognitive ability). This is probably a valuable lesson on the road to the ultra-marathon.
The better news is that I’ve been getting really tense before these L-O-N-G runs, but having endured 19.3 miles, the twenty miler in two weeks should be no problem! Perhaps the four hour goal for a marathon is ridiculous, but at least I am poised to tackle the twenty miler with a better game plan to avoid any excuses for why it isn’t…
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