Saturday saw me changing from my 0.66 mile decline hill speed session (on a 5% gradient) to a 0.22 mile hill with a 14% gradient. My intention was to do 5 sets of the hill but after only three I was completely wiped out and couldn't breathe. Part of me thought I was wimping out doing only 3 and another part thought I was probably being sensible as I didn't know the effect such a fast steep hill would have on my ITB. The fastest I have done a downhill rep on this hill previously was an embarrassing 10mm pace as I was petrified I was going to fall over. This time I was still as petrified but ran it at 6.13mm pace... wow... for me that is WAYYYY fast!
Sunday I tackled my steepish road run of 20 miles (that I like to do as part of any training schedule before an impending race). I never look forward to it, but chose again to do 3 minutes run and 1.30 walk unless a steep hill was involved and I would walk whatever I needed to. I expected to take around 4 hours 30 on such a conservative pace. The first 11 miles were pretty good and I ran more than I thought I would. I tried the Vega electrolyte drink and found it to be very good and I ate a piece of low carb bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and loved it. It turned out, later into the run, I wished I had had more of both the bread and electrolyte drink. At 11 miles however, my right ITB started to ache. I realised it was from the previous days running and was suddenly very pleased I had wimped out at 3 reps as opposed to 5. I changed my run/walk to 1:1 and was amazed at how easy it was. Even with a hill to run up, I found myself thinking, "Well.... it's only one minute and then I can walk". I continued this all of the way home, and by that time my right hamstring, right calf and right buttock also really ached like mad. I think it had been the camber of the hill I had ran the day before! However, on analysing my splits when I got home, I saw that not one mile had been as slow as 14mm (even towards the end when I was in agony) so I feel like I have found a really good thing to do once I'm beaten up and sore as it is mentally very easy to shrug off only 1 minute of running through the pain.
My right side is fine now, so that's another issue a quality bit of training is sorting out. Just goes to prove it's definitely not quantity you need in training. I remember a time I'd have been horrified at the prospect of doing only one 18 miler and one 20 miler in preparation for a marathon. I think very differently now!
And after a lot of thinking and spending hours looking for races, I have bitten the bullet and decided to go to America next May for the 72 hour race. I entered the race on Wednesday night and have had confirmation of my entry. I'm trying to find blogs to read so I can get a good feel of how people cope with the lack of sleep but they are few and far between. I know there will be more, but at the moment I can only find 3 women from the UK who have done this sort of thing before. I have read one of the blogs about it, I just need to read about the others. There are quite a few blogs that men have written and it is interesting to read how different people cope with the tiredness. I genuinely have no idea how I'll cope... I'm going to find out though!!!
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