Things NOT to do the night before a 20 mile training run:
1. Go to a shuffle board challenge for Happy Hour
2. Drink multiple pints of heavy beer
3. Skip dinner and instead eat nachos from the bar.
Ah, the lessons I like to teach myself; I guess the egg and cheese sandwich in the morning before my run didn’t help too much either.
Overall the run was actually not too bad; started off pretty slow and gradually got up to speed once my body had warmed up. Felt great up until I got up to around mile 8 or 9 when I reached the Georgetown Branch Trail and started heading west. The knees and hips were a bit sore at this point, but nothing I wasn’t used to so I kept on going. The unpaved trail was actually pretty nice as most of the areas the snow had melted off and it provided a nice break from the hard pavement and cement I had been running on up to this point.
When I got out to Bethesda I felt mostly fine and started to pick it up a bit coming down the trail back into DC. The hip was bothering me a bit so I took shorter and quicker strides so I wouldn’t be moving it as far with each step. Around this point my chest also started to burn a bit which was a first for me in my training. At this I slowed up a bit and kept it to a more reasonable pace. When I reached Fletcher’s Boat house I mentally was feeling great since from what I remembered I was just around the corner from Georgetown. That just around the corner turned out to be more of a bike corner then a running corner and within the amount of time it took me to get from the boat house to the start of the Capital Crescent trail I had all but mentally given up on the run.
1. Go to a shuffle board challenge for Happy Hour
2. Drink multiple pints of heavy beer
3. Skip dinner and instead eat nachos from the bar.
Ah, the lessons I like to teach myself; I guess the egg and cheese sandwich in the morning before my run didn’t help too much either.
Overall the run was actually not too bad; started off pretty slow and gradually got up to speed once my body had warmed up. Felt great up until I got up to around mile 8 or 9 when I reached the Georgetown Branch Trail and started heading west. The knees and hips were a bit sore at this point, but nothing I wasn’t used to so I kept on going. The unpaved trail was actually pretty nice as most of the areas the snow had melted off and it provided a nice break from the hard pavement and cement I had been running on up to this point.
When I got out to Bethesda I felt mostly fine and started to pick it up a bit coming down the trail back into DC. The hip was bothering me a bit so I took shorter and quicker strides so I wouldn’t be moving it as far with each step. Around this point my chest also started to burn a bit which was a first for me in my training. At this I slowed up a bit and kept it to a more reasonable pace. When I reached Fletcher’s Boat house I mentally was feeling great since from what I remembered I was just around the corner from Georgetown. That just around the corner turned out to be more of a bike corner then a running corner and within the amount of time it took me to get from the boat house to the start of the Capital Crescent trail I had all but mentally given up on the run.
I ended up completing about 18 of my planned 20 miles and grabbing a cab home since the sun had pretty much set and it was too cold for my wet body to stay warm while walking the final 2 miles home. Probably the most epic bonk in my history though my preparation for the run was more to blame then anything else. While I am a little bit worried about the pain in my knees and hips I think those will be manageable given the couple of day’s rest I’ll have taken before the race and the other ills I felt should be non-issues once I actually prepare myself correctly for this type of run.
2 comments:
Fletcher’s boathouse being “more of a biking corner than a running corner “ from Georgetown.
That’s pretty funny.
I’ll buy you bagels the next time we ride to Bethesda. After your marathon - I’m sure you’re not a huge fan of the Capital Crescent Trail after this weekend :)
I'm still down with the trail, maybe just not on foot for the second half of what is supposed to be a 20 mile run. Biking it is a whole other story though.
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