Jul 8

Rough week but still kickin.

FIT:
With only 3.1 miles through Wed, needed to get in some more today. Figured I could do a 5 and a 6 over 4 days. Prepping for today's run, I decided to break open a tube of Nathan Catalyst, a sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I put 1/2 of one of the tablets into a standard bottled water bottle and watched the fizz, which supposedly keeps you from having to worry about shaking up a drink mix. Lots of fizzing.

The run went well. I couldn't start fast, just a 7.0mph, and I ended up staying right there through 10K. It was an easy pace, and besides super deep breaths every so often (which I've had to take pretty often lately, even when not exercising, for some strange reason... maybe I'm not breathing deeply enough normally and am forced to compensate with big breaths every now and then). I listened to a transcript of one of Arthur Lydiard's speeches on the Phedippidations podcast. Legs were okay. Wore Oxysox, which felt goood... they always feel good. Some very minor kinks, but nothing debilitating.

The only thing that was holding me back a little bit this time... GI issues, haha. Could be the fizzies themselves, or it could be the saccharin. I think I had about 3mg of it at most, which is well below the Acceptable Daily Intake of 5mg/kg body weight. It tastes pretty good, and I didn't taste any fizzies, but I guess they were there. If you're running alone in the woods, it's fine to take if you don't mind. If you're in a gym, though, I guess your abs get a little extra work, haha. I'll try again. It could've been caused by something else... had peas and corn, a carrot, milk, fish, and a healthy choice ice cream bar for dinner. A decent amount of food about an hour before my run, but that's normal for me. Eh, I'm totally fine with trying it again. We'll see what happens next time.

Splits> 8:31, 8:35, 8:33, (26:31 5K), 8:33, 8:33, 8:34, (53:05 10K), 7:51. I took off the mp3 player armband for the last mile as I sped up, since I didn't want upper body imbalances exacerbating my length strength imbalances.

7.0 in 59:15, 8:28 ave. It was an easy run... at least felt surprisingly easy, and I felt fully recovered cardiovascualarly almost immediately after jumping off the treadmill. It's kind of amazing. Maybe I should do more slower runs of long distances, to build up my endurance. After all, my endurance is my weak spot, as indicate by race time predictors vs. what I actually manage. My TA's are feeling a bit tender now, but they didn't get numb during the run! I iced a bit afterwards, to speed up recovery.