Back to business...

A week has passed and I have now regained the use of my legs, the Sunday after race day was an interesting proposition I considered removing the tray from our youngest's high chair and using it as a Zimmer frame but didn’t in the end, oh the shame! I have also picked up a delightful “pack of cigarettes a day cough”, that gave everyone much entertainment as I reeled about in hacking fits which were muted by non functioning muscle groups. My assumption here was that my immune system had just thrown it’s hands up in despair, although it could, I suppose, be that my body was actually channeling an old age pensioner!?!

Going out for dinner Sunday night as a family proved more entertaining for the restaurant patrons, then I, as they pretended not to watch as I groaned and grimaced while sitting down to and getting up from the table. It was beyond fortunate that we live in a ranch style hours with minimum stairs as they proved, shall we say, challenging up until Wednesday as did getting in and out of the car, still I have no one to blame but myself. With hindsight I should have endured a little more pain on the finish line instead and gone through an extended stretching routine rather than the “ow it hurts, it hurts, that’s enough!” one, so let’s call that lesson #1, I’ll list the others below.

2. Think about the mileage your bag will be at when packing it; I packed it pretty well with “may need” items but on the day what I really needed was a fresh tasting drink, the Amino Vital around mile 42 would have helped earlier in the race along with more of it at that station
3. On the drink front I need to find and way of freshening up Perpetuem; maybe mixing it with a gel will help, I just read that you can mix the gels to get extra flavors; raspberry/chocolate or vanilla/coffee, sounds like a fun night in?
4. I need to try the Perpetuem paste theorem; here you fill a small, think 6 oz bottle, full of Perpetuem in a batter consistency and then chase it with water, so maybe a handheld of water and one of drink would work, the problem is that to trial this you need 16+ mile runs
5. Ensure is a great source of calories but only take one bottle at a time; I think taking two at once caused my stomach sensitivity
6. My race vest is always heavy, it’s packed with all sorts of bits and pieces but most of the weight comes from the water, I could drop a lot of weight if I ditched the water.
7. I could actually ditch the whole vest on the last leg or switch to my lighter race vest, the same goes for out and backs where I pass through the same station twice
8. The Hammer products worked well but I need to be more consistent with them, I stopped taking them when my stomach was icky, around mile 30 and I should have least kept taking the Endurolytes, my face was caked with salt by the time I finished
9. Turn off the moving time function on my Forerunner and use the stopwatch one only; this threw off my timing calculations for the first 30 miles as I forgot to allow for the time lost at the stopping at aid stations

This week I have bee re-reading Mark Vestegen’s book Core Performance Endurance and I can see where there are a lot of chinks in my amour that this can fill. I have been looking at the races that are open for me later in the year and there are a couple of ones that appeal Mt Disappointment in August is one and the Sierra Nevada Endurance Run in September is another, the latter gives me an extra 6 weeks so it has more attraction and it also gets me onto the trails of WSER which is not a bad thing either. But first I need to address the ITB and core. So for the next 6-8 weeks I’ll be laying the foundations for those and working on my running base with the remaining time working up to race day. I am going to tear apart my last training program and redesign it, as mentioned previously it’s too long for me and it needs to be paired down, I’ll post it once I have put it together. I’ve enjoyed the week off, kind of, but now it’s back to business!