End of another week... and we had some great runs this week. This week the weather became very un-Edmonton like - felt a lot more like southern Ontario. It was hot and humid, and it didn't cool down at night.
Luckily today, I woke up to a beautiful 18 C, overcast and a mist in the air! This morning's long slow run (LSD) distance was 19 km. Something I've done before... a few times, but not recently! So, I filled my camel back and several small water bottles full of gatorade and headed out to the 109 Street store (a little sleepy from Jen and Dennis' wedding the evening before... but really happy it wasn't sunny and above 25).
The route this morning was east on Saskatchewan drive to the Old Timers Cabin, into the trails, east to the Low Level Bridge, across the bridge, then we didn't st on the trail back to Walterdale... across the street, straight down River Valley ....Road, up Victoria Hill, along the promenade to 102 Ave - back through by the Starbucks to Stony Plain Road to St. George's Crescent... through the multi-million dollar homes of Old Glenora to 142 Street, then down through McKinnon Ravine back to Groat Road south over the bridge and then up Emily and back to the store... yep sounds long!
This morning I ran with the usual crew, Helen, Petra, and then Wye (not sure of the spelling of his name). I'm really happy to say, we did a lot better than last week... we stuck to the pace, more or less (6:30 - 6:40 per km... mostly 6:30). We had a great run... managed to keep ourselves fairly steady on pace (I think this was mostly Wye... an older guy - apparently 76 years old who told us all about his running philosophy and then about triathalons! He was great... apparently he's also running Victoria. Anyway, I spent a bit of time chatting with him. He said in the 1980s they used to eat potato chips and brownies for full on the long runs! Wow... my nutrition today consisted of shot blocks, fig newtons, and gatorade. My nutrition during these longer runs I"ll need to work on. I think I"m going to have to suck it up and buy some gels... I just don't get the same boost... and the shot blocks are hard to eat. In total today for 2 hrs and 22 minutes worth of running, I drank 1 L of water, 0.5 L of gatorade, three shot blocks, and two fig newtons... Not bad and then as soon as I finished the run I ate a stinger waffle... that was delicious! I'd definitely eat one of those again!
Anyway, other than nutrition, the run this morning was a success... yes, it rained the entire time - but it was quite refreshing. Yes, I was soaked by the time I finished... but it felt pretty good.
The other two runs this week were okay. 8 km steady on Wednesday evening in the unbelieveable heat - didn't think I'd make that one. We also tackled strides on Wednesday... because apparently running in the freakish heat in direct sunlight wasn't quite enough. Thursday run, went a lot better... 10 km doing 10 and 1's... and they felt amazing... I think that night I could have kept running and running.
I'm into week two of the meal plan and I feel awesome and I think its really helping with the running! So here we are at the end of the week... total distance 39 kms... not too bad and I feel stronger!
Also, here's my power breakkie after that long run (so delicious!) (I wanted to take pictures during the run, but it was too wet! Maybe next time!)
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