Increased Fitness and a Sunday Bonk

Every week that I am training for this marathon, I am setting new personal bests for mileage and pace. This week was no different, with a 45 mile week and my pace beginning to become respectable...dropping into the 7:30's at my longest distances.

This week I completed two solid interval/tempo runs, one stellar track workout (running my eight 200m intervals at 38 seconds each), and one ugly and painful Sunday distance run.

Sunday started out like any other long-run-Sunday. I met up with the Ironheads at Leif Erickson at 9 AM, but something was missing...namely my watch and heart rate monitor. Being that I was the only one going long on a lonely forested out and back, to not have my HRM was a bit much. I decided to take it out to six miles, turn around, and then log four more after the finish. This was a great plan, except for my knee and achilles being brutalized by the rocks on the trail. Some days, you seem to find all of the smooth patches at Forest Park, and others...well...you end up risking your health with every stride. Sunday turned out to be the latter.

After finish my 12 miler at a leisurely 7 minute 29 second pace, I cruised home for a quick four miler with Dash the Dog. As we took off, I felt a bit weak, but just attributed it to my earlier run. At mile 1.5, I began to sweat like none other, and looked down at my shoes and said to myself, "Huh, I don't remember red sparkles on my shoes". Well, I then realized I was potentially headed for my first bonk of my marathon training. After arriving home, I was in a full-fledged shutdown, and ended up on the living room floor, sweating, light headed, peeling my clothes off to cool down. Melissa kindly brought me a recovery bottle and some egos with syrup. After about 30 minutes of sweating out every ounce of moisture I had in my body, I was able to stand up and resume my day. A shitty way to end a great week...yes. Good experience and a much needed reminder to each properly prior to half marathon distance running and longer...yes.