Week 37 Wrapup

This week the tempo run on Wednesday went fine, which was a marked improvement from the last tempo run two weeks ago. The long run was 16 miles this week. I thought it would go just fine since I had done 20 last week. However, I did it a day early because I was going to be out of town, and that made me suffer a little bit. Also, I just couldn't stomach eating another clif bar, and I hadn't gone down to the running store to find any gels yet, so I had no nourishment on the course aside from the two liters of gatorade I had on my back.

So, the 16 ended up the same way that last week's 20 did, with me kind of petering out the last 2 miles. My dad was out bike riding at the same time, and we met up about halfway through my run. He rode slowly alongside me for a few miles while we chatted, so that helped me out a little bit.

One highlight of this week's long run was my first really gnarly blister. I have had maybe only three blisters from running prior to this, and those were very infrequent. After yesterday's run, though, I notice a huge blood blister on the tip of my left middle toe. Those middle toes were the sites of my blisters before, so I don't know if that means I've got the wrong shoe size or what. Either way, I stuck a needle in it, and it was under such pressure that blood actually spattered across the bathroom on to the wall. I highly doubt this one will be the last I see, either.

On Friday night I went up to my cousin Alex's house for the semi-annual McRae Bachelor Party/Video Game Fest where all the men-folk get together for two days to play video games and eat, and leave their women-folk to do women things together (like see Mamma Mia in this case). We also saw The Dark Knight on Saturday. I ate quite a lot there, as well as eating a lot on Friday as well. I was kind of alarmed to find out that my weight on Sunday was around 5 and a half pounds higher than my weight on Friday. I know it's not possible for me to have actually gained this much weight unless I had eaten well over 20,000 calories in those 48 hours, but it was still disconcerting. The real reason for the weight gain is that all of the crap I ate over those two days is sitting in my gut waiting to be pooped out. It will take a couple of days, but I'll be back down to normal in short order.