Yet more intervals

Well, that didn't go so well.

Yesterday, the task was kind of like a tuesday "lite".  13 miles instead of 20.  Six intervals instead of eight.  An hour of easy running, not 80 minutes.  I figured I could do it- I felt strong, and I've been training hard.

Oh, how pride goeth before a fall.  :P

My first mistake was to try to do it without water.  A 10 mile training run was sort of my break off for carrying sometime to hydrate myself, and I just wasn't thinking that 13 miles was more than 10, or something.  Add to that it was a fairly warm day this thursday- I was kind of counting on rain, I guess, to cool me off.

So, I started off with an hour easy, and it went well.  Physiologically, I was doing fine- running at an easy pace and my heart rate was really quite good- boarderline too slow.  dipping down into the 130s on occasion, though I was running sub-9.  Psychologically, though, I was pushing maybe a little bit harder than I should have.  The pace "felt" harder than easy, whatever my heart rate said.  Not quite moderate, but closer than I wanted to be.

And so the first interval came and went, and I felt a bit wrung out.  It was "hard" and not the "comfortably hard" that the first interval really should be.  I kept my pace where I wanted it, and occasionally was able to blank out and still on target, which was good.  But it set the stage for some truly miserable moments.

After the second interval, when I was doing my rest for a minute, I knew I was in trouble.  the 60 second few by, and when it was time to start again I really hadn't dumped all of the accumulated lactate- or even a good portion of it.  About a minute into the third interval the gagging started, and I stopped, walked, and spent maybe two minutes just dealing.

That was sort of the pattern. Instead of a minute rest, I took a chunk of time more, but still tried to do the intervals at a successively slower rate, based more upon heart rate than anything else.  However, when the last interval came along the house of cards completely fell apart.  I had nothing left to draw upon, and my best efforts barely got me into the low eight minutes.  Less than a minute in, I stopped, said "screw it" and hit the lap button.  one minute rest interval.

I tried to jog, and went no where.  So I walked perhaps a mile till I was able to being a sort of shambling, lurching motion that a friend of mine would report as "It's like running, only slower."  much slower.  After about a quarter mile my muscles started to fire again, and things went better, but it was still a pretty humbling experience.

So, things I learned-
Take some water/Gu on run longer than eight miles, or so.
Take more of a rest between hard intervals.
If you hit the "lap" button on a garmin during a scheduled workout, it will go on to the next step of the workout.

I weighed myself prior to going out on the run.  When I got back in my car, I had about a half gallon of liquid waiting for me, and I downed it all.  When I got home from the run, I was still a couple of pounds under my starting weight, meaning I may have lost about six pounds of fluids, and I wasn't even racing.  This is after two hours of running, and maybe three between actual weighings.  So, ya'know.  I think I was dehydrated.  I really should know better.

Anyway, rest day for me today, easy but long day tomorrow, and lots of studying/paper writing for Sunday.  Exams Monday and Thursday.  Yay!  :)