Long Run, Dehydration, Minor Bonk...

Joy here...my last entry was on Tuesday after the speedwork, and then I seem to have gotten busy and have fallen down a bit on keeping my entries up to date.  In summary, here's what I've been up to since Tuesday:
Wednesday - easy 5km run
Thursday - tempo run (30 minutes easy warm up, 10 minutes of tempo at 4:45ish min/km with one minute break and another 10 minutes of tempo at 4:45ish min/km, 30 minutes easy cool down)
Friday - rest day
Saturday - long run....and here's how it went:

Since our last "long run" was over 18kms and included "M pace" ("marathon pace"), this week's "long run" was scheduled as an easy one, with the aim being to run for 19kms.  I was actually pretty excited about this easy run coming up.  The last few workouts have started to feel really HARD, and so I was looking forward to just running and chatting and generally having a good time with running.  Since Nomi and I have been all about running for fun, I was looking forward to having that fun feeling on this run.  Ha!    No such luck!

Given all the speedwork (repeats and tempo) that we've been doing, we figured that our easy pace could be around 5:40min/km for 19kms.  That was the plan.

Part B of the plan was to ditch those gross tasting Powerbar Gels and use snickers bars as running fuel instead.

Part C of the plan was for me to use my more comfortable waist carrying water bottle, refilling it at the water fountains along the run.

Okay, so Plan A (pace at 5:40ish), Plan B (snickers), and Plan C (refilling water) all lined up in our heads, we braved the hot morning sunlight and humidity for two loops of our 9-ish km canal loop.

Plan A kicked my @$$.  Right from the start, I began to realize that there was nothing "easy" about keeping the pace in the 5:40min/km range.  I was breathing heavy basically from the first step out the front door.  Plan B worked out surprisingly well.  I had snickers bar #1 at the 40 minute mark and it tasted a whole heck of a lot better than any of the sport-specific fuels I've tried.  I had snickers bar #2 at the 80 minute mark, and it wasn't even melted by then.  The only downside with carrying these chocolate bars as fuel that I could tell is that they're hard to eat on the run.  It's tougher to chew and swallow while running versus just squirting some chocolate-flavoured GU in my mouth.  I had to swill a lot of water to make sure I could swallow all the sticky stuff.  Other than that, it was great!  There are about 271 calories per snickers bar, and on a 19km run, my Garmin tells me that I burned 1,200 calories. So even two snickers bars still keep me in a calorie deficit.  Plan C didn't work out so well.  It was REALLY HOT, and so I needed a lot of water, and part way through (after drinking one bottle and refilling once), I ended up with an empty bottle and had to run about 4kms dry before reaching the water fountain for a refuel.  During those 4 kms, the dehydration plus the not-so-easy easy pace, took their toll on me.  I experienced what other people have described as "the bonk."  Wikipedia (that oh-so-trustworthy e-bible of useless facts) tells me that "the bonk" can be defined as:
"hitting the wall or the bonk describes a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, which manifests itself by precipitous fatigue and loss of energy. Milder instances can be remedied by brief rest and the ingestion of food or drinks containing carbohydrates. The condition can usually be avoided by ensuring that glycogen levels are high when the exercise begins, maintaining glycogen levels during exercise by eating or drinking carbohydrate-rich substances, or by reducing exercise intensity."
That pretty much describes how I felt.  I struggled just to make it home.  While one of my triumphs of the run was lasting the full 19kms - my longest run of my entire life to date - it felt to me that the larger triumph was just being able to last through it all.  I mean, I was huffing and puffing for a heck of a long time even after the run!

So here are my run stats:
Ran for a total of 1:48:42 at an average pace of 5:43min/km for 19km.

All in all, I came home from that run feeling utterly shattered, like a vase that someone had held over the railing of a second balcony and dropped to shatter into a gillion pieces on a cold, marble floor; I have started to pick up the little pieces of myself and begin to glue myself back together.  I think I'll take today off, and try to take an easy run tomorrow.  And when I say easy, I mean e-a-s-y!!!

Over and out,
Joy