slacking, or not

I guess maintaining the food log and this one is too much!

Anyway, Tuesday, no run, just dragonboating. And then I ended up getting really hungry around 9 pm and there was KFC in the house.
It might not have chicken, but it has other things such as spices, flour, and goodness knows what else. I stayed up most of the night feeling hot and crampy. I had an exam the next morning and barely made it on time...I wasn't nervous about the exam at all, until I started to worry about being late.

I wasn't sure how speedwork would go on Wednesday, after a morning like that, without much of a breakfast or lunch. My husband decided to run with the dog around 4:30 so I tagged along. I needed a pitstop, but surprisingly I felt ok after jogging really slowly for a bit. We ran about 7.3 miles total, and then I ran to run club to attempt the intervals. They were 1500s. The first one I had to cut short--I had to go to the bathroom again and there was one across the street around 1200ish metres. I didn't feel so great, but it was a simple matter to jog to the other end of the 1500M stretch and try again. And again, and again. I was on my own within the group, but that was fine. I was very happy with my pace, especially considering that I'd already run ten miles by the time I got to the intervals: .81 @ 7:26/mile), then @ 7:34, 7:17, 7:29. The out and back is slightly faster going out, due to a downhill, so I was a bit more consistent than my paces indicate.

The weird thing was, once I'd gotten all that KFC or whatever out of my system, I started to feel euphoric. I found more energy. The intervals were tough, but jogging around felt great.

I think I will run around for a while until tackling intervals next week too. My 1/2 marathon is 3 weeks away and while I could use some VO2 max workouts and it doesn't seem to take much to sharpen up (I think it has made me peak early in the past, lol), the intervals next week, 1 mile, are too long for VO2 max workouts anyway, and I think I need to get used to the feeling of moving faster while tired. I did faster stuff earlier this summer, but maybe Friday evenings I can do some more 1K repeats or whereabouts to get tightened up.

At any rate, my combo run on Wednesday was over 15 miles and I paid for it: another ear infection on Thursday, though this time I could swallow liquids. I jogged 2 very stiff miles with the dog, and 4 on Friday--I'd hoped to do some speedwork that evening, but I was too stiff.

I also started eating wheat again on Friday for diagnostic purposes. So far, more bloat and poop again, and I got and lost my period within a day which is weird, but I'm still feeling alright. Still, I'd rather not eat wheat for much longer--it would be great to have this added energy for the last two weeks prior to the Army Run. I don't have any other planned races this fall so anything will be cool after that. At any rate, I'll go see my nurse practitioner soon, food log in hand, and then we can discuss the next step.

Saturday was absolutely miserable...it was a dragonboat festival, which should have been fun, but it was 11C, pouring rain and windy the whole 6.5-7 hours we were out. I got soaked. I was so cold. I don't do well waiting around in wet clothes--I tend to lose heat pretty efficiently, which is great when it's 30C but not so much in colder conditions. It was sweat for a few minutes, wait for an hour, X4. I had extra clothes, and I changed a couple of times, but I should have bought more clothes for the races because, as nice as it felt to change into dry clothes between races, it really sucked to change back into cold wet clothes for the races, so after the first time, I didn't bother. I was racing in a tank top to minimize soaking and maximize flexibility, but by the time the last race rolled by, I kept my two layers and raincoat on.

Fortunately, someone brought wool blankets so I didn't shiver much. My arrythmia started to play up near the end, which was a bit uncomfortable, but once I got home and warmed up, the main symptom was appetite. I was starving. We had some goose fat pate and that stuff was perfect. I ate most of the jar, among other things. Then I slept for a few hours, then we went out for supper, then I slept again. I got a lot of sleep.

Sunday, I wasn't sure what was going to happen except that I wanted to catch up with Gaz #1. We arranged to meet up at 8:00 am and, thank goodness, our paces matched. I wasn't sure if I'd be crawling along at 11+/mile, but fortunately I had enough energy to keep up. After nine-ish miles of going by the canal and around the farm, we parted ways and I decided to go home and see if my husband was up for a run. Going home brought it to ten miles. He felt pretty rough (he had been dragonboating/soaking in miserable Hurricane Bill remnants too), maybe good for a few miles. I was hoping to make this my longest run, 16ish miles, so I figured that I might have to run a few on my own afterwards.

Well, the man loosened up and we ran back along the Canal, back to the farm, back along the farm---this is really trippy because I've never run in the farm apart from winter, and today I spent umpteen miles in there, running by cows, corn, running on grass, etc. THe only time I've run through there was during the Hypothermic 1/2s in the dead of winter--it was so bizarre to see all that green and growth in there.

Finally, I pulled the plug at 19.34 miles, or a nice round mile for my husband and dog. I thought about stretching to twenty, but 19ish seemed long enough. I'm very happy with it, and quite tired. I'm not really sure what my long run will be next week--I might try a shorter one with some faster miles at the end. Will see.