Today I accidentally ran a top 3 half marathon time. Which isn’t all that surprising considering it was only the third time that I’ve actually completed a half. I completed a few more 18+ km runs last summer in the build up to race day. But after this summer’s subpar training and that was before I lost 5 weeks of training in worries around wisdom teeth.
In reality, I was incredibly insane today. Last Sunday night I did my first run back after over a month and struggled my way around eleven or so km. The sensible thing would have been to do 15 today. 17 or 18 next weekend and then save myself for the full 21.1 on race day.
Jumping to 21 was nothing short of stupid. But I feel like sometimes I feel the need to do hard, nearly impossible things to prove to myself that I can. Obviously they are not impossible, but they far beyond what the rational self talk tells you is possible.
Today, I just set out and didn’t really think about. But I think the recent treadmill sessions of low heart combined with insane, lung-busting sprint intervals has adjusted tolerances. The run this morning felt easy. I started out slow for sure. And I’ve been dabbling with increasing my stride length a little (which has the benefit of reducing the number of strides I need to take). But it was just easy, so I wasn’t paying any attention to the watch.
And extremely unusually I didn’t have the mental hurdle that I normally have. The first 10-15 minutes of any run are usually horrific as my body feels it’s dying and that it’s completely impossible for anyone to run for more than 15 minutes. Then somewhere around the 15 minute mark my body has a “oh so this is happening” moment, and the mental self-doubt talk just goes away. Sort of like finding the right gear for the highway.
Unfortunately in my rush to get out the door, I didn’t take my usual potassium and magnesium supplements. I thought I would be okay as I had some hydration powder in my water bladder. Only remembering that for a two litre bladder I should have probably used 4 scoops instead of 1. With one scoop I really had little more than flavoured water, so open stopping I felt like my calves were about ready to tear themselves apart with cramp.
Rapid rehydration with the correct dosage or hydration mix and supplements bought me enough time to get some stretching in and a hot shower.
So knowing me, it’ll probably be the same thing next week.