I’m still running

I’ve missed posting for the last two weeks, not because I haven’t been running but because I just haven’t sat down long enough to pull it all together. I won’t bore you with all the weekday runs as they’re just normal stuff, but I want to share the last two ‘long runs’ from the weekends.

September 13 – Hit the Brixx 10K

As a part of the Half Marathon training we signed up for a few races, last week was a 10K. After running 9 miles the week before the thought of 6.2 miles was refreshing – that is until mother nature decided to turn up the humidity again, UGH!

Before I get into the running details I have say that I was quite disappointed at the organizers of the race – typically Run For Your Life does a better job. Believe it or not we had a difficult time finding the starting line (huh?) and once we were there we couldn’t spot anyone that was controlling the start. The start time was supposed to be 7:45 but the sea of people started to move around 7:30 however we quickly realized they were just moving everyone to the actual starting line. About 7:50 the sea of people started to move again and this time it was the actual start…there was no gun firing or anyone with a megaphone…it was just really different from many other races I’ve run. The other issue I had was that the last 2 miles of the race was not marked very clearly, many times I wasn’t sure which way to go but because I could see other runners ahead of me I just followed them. The last complaint was getting out of the parking garage – we sat for almost 40 minutes even though everyone had validated parking. After all that, I don’t think I’ll be signing up for that race again.

Now on to the actual running. As I stated the humidity was just unbearable, it felt like I was running in soup. I ran out of ‘steam’ after 4 miles and took several walk breaks before finishing strong the last .25 mile. At mile 4 I had to stop and stretch because my glutes felt like the were cramping up on me; I had water with me and there were two water stations during the race so not sure what was going on with my glutes :-s

September 20 – 10 mile training run

After the issues I had at the end of the 9 mile run I was a little apprehensive about doing 10 miles. The one major difference today was the weather – thankfully the temps have dropped and so has the humidity – YAY! The temps this morning were in the mid 60’s with little humidity – what a blessing!

We met up at the same location and ran the same route as before since we knew it actually covered 10 miles. I did pretty good until 5 miles, then I started taking a few extra walk breaks. At the beginning of mile 9, mother nature called and thankfully there was a Bojangles right there for a pit stop (I figure that added about 5 minutes to my overall time; I didn’t stop the Garmin because I wasn’t sure how to resume it… so mile 9 stats look pretty bad). After the pit stop I got a second wind and finished the last two miles pretty strong; in fact my legs felt pretty good and I knew that I could’ve done a few more miles – that’s a great sign!!

During the 9 mile run I stashed a bottle of water at the turn around point but this time I tried something new. I had read several articles that having chills during a run on a hot day signals early signs of heat exhaustion (whoa!) so I wanted to make sure I was refueling my electrolytes. I found tablets called “Camelback Elixir” which when mixed with 16 oz water provides all the electrolytes needed. I mixed that up the night before and stashed that bottle at the turn around…I wonder if that had something to do with my second wind?

The first stats below are from the C25K app – I was able to pause it during my ‘pit stop’ so the overall time should be pretty accurate. It’s encouraging to see my overall pace under 14 min/mi…woohoo!