Rejuvenated by my 10 days 'off', I go to work early on Wednesday (5am) with plans for a long lunch and many hours of running on the trails at Fair Hill. With my legs fresh from their longest respite in months, I begin my run and feel fantastic, despite the 81F temperature at my start time of 9am. My goal was to run for longer than 4 hours and I succeeded. 4:18:00 and 27.3 miles with both totals being more than anything I've ever done before. The last ~80 minutes were a real struggle though. The temperature had sored to 89F by the finish and the last ~80 minutes were a real struggle. My legs didn't feel too tired, but dehydration was a major factor. I have actually started to stash fluid bottles on the course...something I've never done before this summer. However, I only had 40 ounces and know that I lost well in excess of 100 ounces during the run. I wasn't heating up too badly in the shade, but during the 3 mile stretch back to the FH parking lot, there isn't a spot of shade and that is when my core temperature really took off. It was bad enough that my sweat rate actually dropped off significantly and my pulse rose about 10-15 bpm even though my pace had slowed. Another 5 or 10 minutes and I would have had to stop, find some shade, and cool off immediately to avoid heatstroke. Fortunately, I, as usual, pushed myself as hard as I could without going too far and am stronger for it now.
Speaking of going too far...
I then get an email from NorthFace advertising their Endurance Challenge Series. I usually delete commercial emails but thought that maybe there'd be something in there that is close by and suitable as a training run for the Rockies race. I visit the site. Hmmm...one of the locations is DC. Its a trail race. Its supposed to be really hilly, rocky, and super challenging. Sounds like a good training run. Wow, its this Saturday. How far is it? What?! 50k! Let me think about it. Ok, I'm all in.
No comments:
Post a Comment