Rainy Thirteen

Same old same old, I meant to wake up early and run but I didn't, blahblahblah. I swear I'm a broken record sometimes!

I ended up getting out of the house a little after 9 and getting on the trail about 40 minutes later. I had a banana, some prunes in a bit of Fage yogurt (my favorite snack nowadays), and finally bought some Gatorade Prime Energy Chews to eat during my run.

I think having actual chews makes all the difference in my training runs. For the last two long runs, I had been putting peanut butter between two prunes (a la Fannetastic Food) but it just hasn't been working. So I caved and bought these chews. (I guess I was trying to go the ~natural route? But fake sugary stuff always triumphs in the end...)

Of course, it hadn't been raining at 7am when I had intended to be outside and running instead of asleep in my warm bed.... but alas, it rained the entire run.

I admit, not as fast as I had hoped. I think I started out too fast. Looking back at my blog (or, "blog investigating), when I run 12+ miles, I have greater success in a  faster overall pace when my first mile is around 10'30" and above.

I felt really strong in the beginning - almost negative splits in the first half - and I had turned off the voice feedback so I had no idea how fast I was going. But then, around the 8th mile or so, my left hip started hurting. What is going on?? Usually it's my right hip, but I haven't been feeling any pain for the past few runs. I did some more blog investigating, and curiously, almost a year ago to the day of this run, I did a 12 mile run where my left hip acted up. I wonder if it's something to do with this specific trail or distance?

soaked.

"Blog investigating" is a tricky thing. Comparing myself to myself is hard. I was definitely faster last year (especially at the end of my runs), and I'm not really sure why. I was so busy last year - I was in a musical, teaching a summer camp, and planning a wedding. This year all I'm dealing with is moving into a new house and trying to figure out renovations. I guess I'm also doing yoga, but shouldn't that count as cross-training and be enhancing my runs, not hurting them?

Maybe it's my nutrition that's slowing me down? I haven't been carrying chews or eating any protein bars before my runs, save for this run. I admit JW and I haven't done the best job with eating lately- I guess we're both in a lazy funk. He usually works best while he's on a strength program from bodybuilding.com, but he hasn't decided what his next goal is. Plus all of our free time has been mostly devoted to thinking about the house and money matters... But really I'm just making excuses.

soaked ground and soaked shoes

Of course, I successfully avoided all the puddles on the trail - until I finished my run, wasn't paying attention while I was looking at my mile times, and stepped into a big ol' puddle right before I got into my car. Brilliant.

Le sigh! I try not to be so hard on myself and try to pat myself on the back for running 13 miles after not running double digits for 3 weeks, but it's hard to look back and see how successful you used to be, especially when your life was seemingly more complicated than it is at the present moment. Blah!