Saturday, May 11, 2013

Dehydration Station

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to go out and do 14 miles. At that point my longest training run had been 10 miles, and the longest run I have ever done is the half marathon distance. Since some of the training plans I have seen go past 13.1 miles, I thought I would give it a shot.

The first two miles started out great. I was feeling good, the clouds were out, I was just in a groove. Things started to change around mile 4-5. This was when the heat started, the sun came out in full force, and I could feel that I was already starting to get dehydrated. Around mile 6 my stomach was feeling less than stellar and I could tell that it wasn't going to end well. [My routes are out and back though - which mean I run for X miles and then turn around and come back - so by that time I was already 6 miles away from my car, so figured I would try to push on.] Around mile 7 I decided I would need to start taking a couple walk breaks (trying to help my stomach to feel better) - which was fine - but was frustrating me. Around mile 9 I was running through a campground, so I decided I would start taking water breaks at the drinking fountains to try to help with the dehydration (I realize at that point it was too late). This helped slightly, until I started drinking too much water and then had that "sloshing" feeling in my stomach. I finally made it to about mile 11 and decided the next time my body felt like it needed a break I would be done. I was able to get 12 miles in, but then decided I needed to listen to my body and just walk back to the car. I think I probably ended with a 12 mile run and about a 4 mile walk. I was super frustrated, especially since I have run further than that and faster than that in the past. I know it was probably a myriad of issues (dehydration, lack of sleep, heat, running after a full work week, etc), but it was still a bummer.



Hopefully I was able to get my 'bad' run out of me before my next half in 3 weeks - San Diego Rock N Roll Half Marathon.

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