Saturday, August 13, 2011

Marathon Quest 2011 - Week 10 Recap

Hurray!  Hurray!!  Hurray!!! 

We went for our long run today and I made the whole distance without my right foot giving out!  OK, to be truthful...right now I'm half asleep as I'm so tired...but if I wasn't, I'd totally be doing a jig.  I was honestly stressing out about this all week...worrying, constantly rubbing my foot and fretting that Marathon Quest 2011 was over.  Every slight twinge was the end of my running career.  Once bitten, twice shy I suppose.  I even booked a physio appointment next week just in case today's run didn't go well...but I think I'll move it to the following week and use it as a check in session to really keep on top of things.  My foot did feel a bit sensitive and tired at points, but given the distance, I expect some soreness and am going to really keep an eye on it so it doesn't get any worse.  Eight more long runs to go, eight more weeks of training left, 56 more days until I run and put it all out there on the race course.  This is getting so close and so real, I can almost taste it!

Workouts this week?  Here goes:

Sunday - rest day 6K run treadmill
Normally Sundays are rest days, but because I had a physio appointment on Monday, I knew wouldn't be able to run on Tuesday so switched things up and ran on Sunday (with IMS, you're not supposed to work out for 48 hours after).  Speaking of IMS...after the session, I noticed that I was having a much easier time keeping my leg straight.  The other week when I was doing my calf stretches, my knee was always pulling in but after IMS, it was effortless to keep it straight.  Thank goodness for IMS - what a lifesaver...the pain is worth it.

Monday - bootcamp
Sarge wasn't teaching, but the instructor we did have was awesome as well.  He's a runner, so we ran.  And ran.  And ran some more.

Tuesday - 6K run treadmill rest day

Wednesday - 6K run outdoors

Thursday - rest
Argh.  Don't know what's up but I've been having a lot of headaches lately (prompting the whole craniosacral therapy gig) and my stomach was going crazy on Thursday.  I looked back at my food diary and there was nothing out of the ordinary - I had my usual brekkie of oatmeal and afterwards my stomach was twisting and hurting all day.  I'm sure the painkiller I took for my headache didn't help my tummy either, so was hoping it would calm down so I could make it to bootcamp the next morning.  My stomach has been great ever since I cut back my dairy and eggs, so I'm completely puzzled by what's up.

Friday - bootcamp
My stomach settled a bit and felt OK in the morning, so I went to class. Luckily for me, there wasn't much running this class so I got a chance to rest my legs a bit which was awesome given the doozer long run scheduled for Saturday.   I was also glad we didn't run much because my tummy was still sore from the prior day, so I was getting a stitch and we were barely even running.  Argh.  We did lots of upper body though so my back is feeling super tight.  Dang, I need a massage.

Saturday - 29K
I've been thinking a lot about nutrition for the run over the last while, so had read online that some people wake up in the middle of the night, eat something and then go back to bed.  Brilliant!  Running in the morning after fasting for 7 hours isn't ideal, and I'd always wondered how people eat in the morning without getting cramps, so this may be my solution.  I tested it out last night - I always wake up in the middle of the night for whatever reason, so I got up, ate a scone and headed back to bed.  Before my run I did my usual food routine of bananas and nutella, and on the run I took a Gu gel, some Gu chomps and hydrated with water with some Nuun mixed in (and hydrated like crazy on Friday - 3 litres plus of water).  I gotta say - even though by the end I was really, REALLY tired, I still felt like I had some energy left.  A few weeks ago when I bonked on my 23K run, I could barely had the energy to walk home afterwards and had to stop repeatedly to get up the hill by my house - this week, no problem.  Think I'll test this out for the next few runs so I can get a food plan going, and next week will introduce salt pills.

The other thing I noticed - lately after my long runs, I've had no appetite.  None.  Like I can barely face food...and that is so unlike me!   It's worrying me a bit as I need to eat to refuel my glycogen and rebuild muscle, so I force fed myself a recovery drink (Gatorade's new G3 recovery drink with protein - like this stuff in concept, but don't like the taste...particularly when it starts to get warm) and made myself eat some lunch.  It's our cheat day too, and I barely want to even eat dinner.  We went out for dinner for Vietnamese, and after eating a bit of my rice vermicelli bowl, I just didn't feel like eating much.  However, after dinner I did manage to eat some frozen yoghourt at a new build-your-own froyo place in town called Qoola.  Heh.

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