Cleveland Steelman: Run

The run was interesting.

I hadn’t banked on it being such a cross-country affair, nor on the weather being so wet. I also thought that the route was a simple out-and-back, so within 200m of what I thought was the end of the first lap, when the route headed off for a circuit of the lake (another mile or so), I felt a little . . . upset.

On the bike I’d been drinking Zym (electrolytes and water but no carbs or sugars) and eating for fuel. On the run I’d swapped to a slightly different strategy. For my anticipated 100-110 minutes I had a couple of gels (200 cals total) and one litre of liquids in my Nathan Speedbelt - four 250ml bottles of watered down fruit juice + salts (sodium AND potassium). I’d also made up four different ratios of orange and grapefruit juice in these just to give me some interest.

My strategy was run and walk - 7 mins & 1 min, taking on fuel and fluids when I walked.
Unfortunately, although I’d found watered down grapefruit juice fine in training, I hadn’t tried it after a previous 4-5 hours of exercise. Slowly, the acidity of it crept up on me, and by the time I was just under half way round the second lap, I was starting to feel pretty sick every time I took a drink. The only option was to stop drinking - I wasn’t far from the end, but this still made a difference, as I opted to extend a couple of the walks to 90 seconds, and really couldn’t face the second of my two gels . . . . . . . . .

. . . but I got to the end, and just as I made the final turn - out of the fields and onto the road again - the sun came out. As I said to the marshall waiting at that corner, “Truly, the sun does shine on the righteous”.

I finished. Six hours, two minutes and some seconds for a 2000m swim, 58 miles on a bike, and 12 miles of cross-country squelch.

And the run pace? Well, if it had been a full half marathon (13.1 miles in stead of 12), I’d have still scored a personal best, beating my previous best time (from the 1999 Great North Run) by about a minute. Woo Woo Woooo!
And Wife and Daughter and VonSmallhaussen were there too. Thank you - you’ll never know how much that means to me.

Workout:

• Type: Run
• Date: 07/05/2008
• Time: 14:21:00
• Total Time: 1:40:00.00
• Distance: 12 miles
• Average Pace: 8:20/mile

Filed under: Cleveland Steelman, Family, Friends, No More Excuses, Run, Triathlon