I ran 20 miles yesterday as my final long run before the 100 in two weeks. I mixed things up a little, partially to test out a couple of things (like whether or not I’d hurl drinking Ensure (turns out: no)) and because I wanted to go easy and slow (and so ran just with water and s-caps instead of Accelerade). I left in the late afternoon and finished 4 hrs +.
It was, without a doubt, one of the worst runs of my life. I can’t explain it. I mean, I know what variables were different, but some of what went wrong just couldn’t be so easily explained away. It is true that my legs could still be wiped out from the 50M a few weeks ago; that going from a protein based drink to water confused my body’s chemistry; that introducing something like Ensure further confused me; that dinner and wine from the previous day still hadn’t processed; that I didn’t take an Advil; and that I forgot (how, I’ve no idea) my glide.
But 12 miles in I was done. Feet hurt, ankles hurt, attitude pinwheeled from ecstatic to depressed. In other words, a truly crapalicious slog.
My mental game around the 100 hasn’t been a problem. I’ve been all systems go. This worries me a bit, so I’m going to ratchet back and give my body (and my mind) a little time to pull themselves together.
Then. Well, then, I’m back in the game.
For many years now I've left a trail of flecks across the Internet. Just begun novels; explorations of culture, music, writing, food, the future, mountains, long distances, shallow oceans, deep canyons; oddly-composed music; even more oddly-constructed poetry; impassioned editorial; strident analysis, and a slew of images, sounds, and scribbles. Most of this has passed into the aether, waiting only for some semi-sentient algorithm to pull it from obscurity twenty years hence. In the meantime, there is this lodestone, gathering what it can.