8.03.2008

Long Run


My legs were stiff and sore this morning from yesterday's ride, so I didn't have high expectations for my long run this morning. Surprisingly, everything went well. I held a steady pace and felt pretty good the whole time. My legs got tired around mile 12, but not so bad I had to slow down or cut my run short.

The only thing that didn't go according to plan was when I had to backtrack to find my gel flask that fell out of my pocket and I forgot to track how much extra distance I added. I guessed and guessed wrong so my run went a little long. I was almost at 18 miles when I passed my apartment so I kept running a few minutes to end with an even 18 miles. It was a good run.

The numbers:
Time: 2:35:32
Distance: 18 miles
Pace: 8:38
Ave HR: 140

I've been thinking about why I had such a bad ride yesterday, and I think part of the reason is sodium. When I met Cheri at Fireman's Park, I was covered in salty sweat. My shoulders were white and when I wiped the sweat off my forehead my hand was covered salt. I don't know if I sweat out more sodium than the average person, but I think I might lose enough to need sodium supplements during long rides. I'm going to give that a try next Saturday and see if that helps.

Lately, my long runs have been going much better than my long rides. Originally, my focus for the IM was the bike, but the past few weeks it's been changing to the run and what I need to do to have a good run. I'm caring less and less about my bike split time and more about my run split.

1 comment:

bigmike600 said...

I think that you are right with the salt. I sweat salty, white sweat too and if I don't take in enough salt, man I feel like garbage.
Also if you break down the bike time vs. run time in IM you will find overall that a great bike time that leads to an average run and tired legs will be slower overall than an average bike and a great run where you save some legs.

IM really is all about the run for people who are shooting for a time goal like yourself. You can make up so much more time on the run than you can on the bike. Either way, you will do great.

For those of us that only care about finishing, it gets more about saving some legs after the bike.

Good job on running after the big ride yesterday. I actually felt pretty good today but no way would I have tried to run 18 miles.
NICE.