12 Miles

Made it through my 12 mile run. Kept it slow and ended up averaging 12:30 min/miles. I was quite happy that my foot held up through the whole run, only a little tingling in my toe but no actual pain. From now on I’ll be breaking my record for longest run (my longest run ever was 12.4 miles for a 20k race back in high school).

Training for the week was pretty much as I scheduled it, with the exception of Thursday and Friday. Thursday I worked out with some competitive Powerlifter’s I know – an hour and a half on Bench Press. I made it through the workout but knew I wouldn’t be running that day. Friday I ran for 30 minutes in the morning after a shorter Deadlift workout. By Friday afternoon I was really feeling the after effects of the Bench Press workout – extreme soreness in my left pec muscle. By Friday night I noticed that my left pec wasn’t only sore but it was swollen – so I began icing it about once an hour along with applying DMSO to the area. I was a bit worried that my pec soreness might interfere with my run on Sunday since any movement seemed to increase the pain. By Sunday afternoon the swelling was down a bit and the pain was less and it didn’t interfere with my run and the run seemed to actually help it.

A short note on hydration (I’ll post a more complete guide on Tuesday or Wednesday this week) – prior to my run I weighed myself, 167.5lbs. To prepare for this run I placed frozen bottles of Gatorade at strategic spots along the course. After my run I weighed myself again and I was down to 166.5lbs, despite having consumed close to a half gallon of Gatorade during my run (1/2 gallon = 4 lbs). You can see even with a relatively cool night fluid loses were pretty high. For every pound of weight lost from sweat you should consume about 23 ounces of water. I advise anyone performing long runs to always weight them self before and after to determine if you are in water deficit.