After struggling 2 weeks in a row with my long run, I managed to crank out 17.5 miles today without feeling totally fatigued to a point that I had to walk … its quite an accomplishment as far as i’m concerned, or at least on the right path to success.
I was fortunate to get out early enough this morning to beat most of the early morning runners and bikers along the D&L Trail. I did notice that I think they were celebrating National Trail Days on my way back down to Allentown, because there were a lot of people and tables set up and all as I passed Bethlehem. I remember seeing something in the Philadelphia Inquirer a week or two back, which prompted me to find the website about the trail. Didn’t seem there was too much going on, but still something.
I started using a different gel instead of the GU Gels that I used to use. I needed to find something that wasn’t as thick, since they were starting to get hard to get down last year … I actually tried another brand last week, the Clif Shot Gels, which turned out to be even thicker than the GU Gels … not so good. So I had received a free sample of Powerbar gels, the plain energy flavor when I ran the half marathon back in early May .. I remember using it and liking it, so I picked up a couple more last week, and sure enough, its not thick and it goes down good. The flavor isn’t overwhelming, I had to choose vanilla since they didn’t have the plain energy again, but if I can find the plain energy kind again, I’ll get a bunch of them.
Overall it wasn’t a bad run today despite the fact I did struggle towards the end, but didn’t stop. I dug down deep when I started feeling the mental fatigue, and did a few things that helped me through:
1. started focusing on using my core strength to overcome the mental fatigue. I started playing a game of ‘my mind’ vs. ‘the core’ to see who would win.
2. broke the running monotony by shaking my head a bit, wiping my face and hair, stretching back and forth while I ran, just anything to feel refreshed.
3. Focus, focus, focus on the marathon .. I’m remembering that its all mental, and training my mind for the endurance is 1/2 the goal (other half being physical). At that point I just put my head down and ran. This was critical because I’m finding that one of the things I tend to do towards the end of the run is focus too much on my time, the distance remaining or other distractions that come up. Fighting this was tough, but it worked.
Its amazing though how fast you lose the ability to do the long run, because when I look back to last year, I was cranking out 18-20 milers pretty easily .. i’m not sure what happened. A lot of it I think is the added pounds I’ve put on, that doesn’t help. If I knew how hard it would be to lose the weight, I would’ve been smarter in the fall when I moved to not let myself go so much … oh well, nothing I can do about it now.
So this week has been pretty good so far, just going to wrap it up with a 10 miler tomorrow .. I have a busy week, both in the evenings with appointments and all and at work, should make for an interesting week. Next weekend I go on call again, so my long run needs to be close to home, which is where I failed terribly just 2 weeks ago .. I plan to overcome it by changing up the course and getting out REAL early.
Lastly, I’m still beating around doing the Baltimore marathon as a split between the other two marathons in the fall .. haven’t come to a decision yet, but I know I need to soon before it fills up .. oh well, thats for another day, off to rest..