Week 30 Wrapup

Because of the cruise this next week, I ran the long run on Friday evening instead of Saturday morning. It was 14 miles, and it was as hard as the last week's 12 mile was easy. I don't know if it was because I had one less night to rest than I normally have, or if it was because I was just not as fresh energy wise at the end of the day, or if it was because of the oppressive heat (To keep from running too much in the dark, I started at 6 PM when it was still 93º out). Either way, I was struggling before I had even gone ten miles. I still ran the whole way, and finished at the target pace, but my legs were really hurting and I felt like throwing up for the last couple of miles. Now, the muscles around my left knee still really hurt, and it's difficult to bend my knee, because the muscles protest.

I drank a liter and a half of gatorade on the way and still came back 7 pounds lighter. That's a net loss of almost a gallon of fluid. If I hadn't had the gatorade with me, I would have lost 5 liters by the time I got back (if I got back at all). Scary stuff.

One interesting phenomenon I've noticed is this: When I do the Wednesday speedwork I've got a warmup and a cooldown. I try to run both slowly, like as slow as I can without feeling like I'm just doing a bouncy walk. On the warmup, that usually works out to about a 12 minute pace. On the cooldown, it ends up being more like 11. It's interesting to me that my perception of speed and effort and such is changed so much by the speedwork, and that I feel like running faster afterwards, even though I'm more exhausted from the effort.

This next week is all cruise, then after that is Disney World. I fully expect to come back from the trip over 200 again.