Rob's Running Blog

Long Slooooow Run with a near death experience thrown in – 9 miles in 1hr 34

I should get money to make the sun come out, I really should! It had been chucking it down all day and the skies were pure November – ideal conditions for a a long run! This time I was not to be fooled though, so took baseball cap, shades, and dabbed a bit of sun cream on my arms – and sure enough, no sooner had I started the Garmin, there was this big ball of heat in the sky, burning the clouds away! So the shades went on for a while.

This was a planned 8 miler, on a route with some serious hills, plenty of declines but some nasty inclines too. Last time I attempted this route was a sunny evening and I came a cropper at 4k ish feeling quite ill, and did start to feel a bit puffy early on, which is possibly due to the long spiral incline early on. This time I nearly came a cropper at a junction, I could see a car some way down the road on my left, but felt I had plenty of time to cut in front of it. Don’t know what the driver was playing at, as instead of slowing as he came to the junction, he sped up, which resulted in a near collision and me practically rolling over the bonnet of the vehicle while having the horn blasted at me. This reminds me to be more careful, as the driver was obviously lost in conversation with the passenger and only saw me at the very last moment. For the rest of the run I stopped and tip toed across every junction…

Anyway, it may have been a burst of adrenaline from this that led to a 5:33 km and then a sudden drop in my motivation. Felt like I was blowing up, and stopped the clock at 5k and went in a shop for some gatorade. Drank some and set off, having to walk in phases, and then tackled the big hills on this route, and was glad it started to rain again. I recovered on the long downward stretches and started to wonder if I could maybe do 9 miles. I was feeling better than earlier in the run, so decided to just keep going.

As I went over 13km, I felt I could get to the 14.5km mark, but I hit some kind of wall at that point and started to feel really depleted, presumably my glycogen stores were starting to run out, I felt a little sick, and my legs were feeling heavy. I forced myself to keep going and it hurt so much I almost had tears in my eyes, but I gritted my teeth and finally ran down the last km, and was really, really, really glad when I staggered to a stop and hit the stop button on the Garmin, 9 miles in 1 hr 34 minutes, longest on my feet this season, and longest distance.

I think I will have a few rest days now!! 😀