Running...ouch

This past weekend was another long one...18 miles. I wasn't as pumped up about this one for some reason as I was when I had to run 17 miles the previous week..probably because it was only one more mile :)

Thanks to a hint from my wife on the weather forecast, I decided to run the 18 on Saturday in lieu of Sunday. I'm all about avoiding bad weather at all costs when I'm running. It's work enough, why throw lousy weather into it?

This week I decided to focus more on my nutrition during my run so I can figure out how much and what I should be eating during the event. This week I carried along a Gu and some Jelly Belly Sport beans that I picked up from somewhere as well as some Gatorade. My cousin lent me his belt a few weeks ago that has 4 small bottles on it as well as a pouch for carrying some food. Man, I look more geeked out than I normally do but unless I want to run circuits around my house there's just no other way around it. The solution...turn up the tunes on my iPod so I don't hear the bystanders and countless wildlife creatures that pass my way laughing at me. I seemed to do better this week but I'm still having problems getting it to work out right for me. This time my stomach was a bit upset. I think I'm getting a bit too much sugar and in lieu of bringing only Gatorade, I'm going to try to pack half water and half Gatorade to give my stomach a break. I had planned on hitting the drinking fountains down on the Towpath but they're still turned off for the season. Darn freeze/thaw cycle.

I would link to my data now but once again, the Garmin site is down. That site seems to be down every week. If you're a Facebook friend you can see the link there. If not, get on Facebook and become my friend so you can see the data!

What I learned this week is that 18 miles is a heck of a long way. I finished up with the thought of how am I ever going to run another 8.2 miles? It was that difficult for me. I think my long runs are on a much more difficult course than the marathon will be (lots of elevation....you'd see it if I could link to it) so I'm hoping the more difficult training course pays off for me on race day. Also, I had just ridden 40 miles the day before with Tim House which I know affected my legs. My current cycling schedule is that I seem to ride my bike only once every other week. Not nearly enough to keep up with the elderly in their motorized wheel chairs but I'm hoping to make cycling workouts a bit more regular now but with all the irons in the fire I'm not too optimistic. My cycling season starts May 20th...look out!

b