Week 6 (60.5) - Running on empty

It was a weird week. I flew into Ft Lauderdale for a conference Sunday night. Although I spend lots of time in Miami, I didn't think I'd been to Lauderdale. I'd brought running gear, and planned on getting in some beach miles either Monday or Tuesday (2? 10? 20?), but when the taxi got close to the Hotel, I realized that I'd been to this exact spot in January, and the beach sand is way too thick to run in. So that sucked. But it didn't matter Sunday night because I had to dash off to dinner at a fancy place called "the Capitol Grill". The problem with client dinners is that everyone seems to get offended when you order fish and salad ...and get really twisted up when you don't eat dessert. I usually hear about how thin I am and that I shouldn't have to worry. So, when the waiter brought out a huge dessert assortment, and everybody gave me the eye, I took one for the team and had palmagranite cheese cake, flourless dark chocolate cake and some Italian cream cake. And felt miserable. It got worse from here. My stomach must have gotten stretched out, so I ate too much at the breakfast buffet and dinner was another big event with appetizers and drinks and steak and huge deserts. And then my company hosted a breakfast with lots of Applewood bacon, which I hear is pretty healthy as far as bacon is concerned.

I didn't have time to run on Monday, which was okay since I'm a big rest advocate, but on the other hand, there wouldn't be any time to run on Tuesday. I got home late and slept late, and work was a bitch and I was completely swamped and my back started to hurt from the stress. I ran 7 on Wednesday afternoon in 100+ temps and everything kinda hurt, which doesn't seem quite fair since I hadn't run since Sunday. Thursday morning, I was super-tired but made it to Zilker at 6:15, and ran too fast, mainly because when I got to the trail, four runners flew across the footbridge which caused me to reverse direction and chase them down. Very stupid. But that's that happens when the mood strikes. No sense in fighting it. So it was 8 miles with a shot of much needed adrenaline. Friday I did 9, but was really stiff and felt the hard miles from the day before.

On Saturday, I decided to run with whoever was around at 5:30 at Rogue EQ. It turned out to be Geezer Colins, Mike Wilen and Ken Fries. We ran 4 on the trail and joined a bigger group, which included Bruce Coleman and Larry Bright for another 16.5? 17? I forgot to bring gu or gel and since I don't eat breakfast before runs, I was pretty much shot by mile 20. The appeal to the Rogue morning, besides seeing old friends and having a supported run, was that a sports nutritionist spoke afterwards. I know I don't eat well, but need to be reminded every once in a while. The most important thing I took away was that I've got to find a way to better fuel during the longer runs. I also need to eat more complex carbs/less hamburgers and buy some Endurox R4 for post runs.

After a record 4-bag ice bath and a long nap, I found orange-flavored Endurox at GNC, a dozen tangerine gels at HEB and a bunch of whole wheat noodles, which I plan on making into a big pasta salad to snack on next week. I had no plan for Sunday, hit snooze again and again until it was 7:00 a.m., drank some coffee, grabbed three gels, drove to Zilker, ran 7 miles, ate a gel (with lots of water) and ran another couple of miles before having another gel ...and then ran 7 more for 16+ total and 60+ for the week. Very encouraging - 7:25 pace. After reading Wilen and Geezer's blogs, I realized I'm on the low end of the mileage scale, but the miles I am doing are huge for me. I'll probably end up with something like 250 for June. That'll be a record month. And I feel really good. In fact, I'm thinking about running 5 tonight ...just to see if I can.