I headed out yesterday morning for another long run. My goal? To run 20 miles of the new Louisiana Marathon course. I had mapped it out on the map my run website and downloaded it to my Garmin. All I had to do was hit “follow course” and listen for when I took a wrong turn.
In order to beat the heat, I started running at 5:00 AM. That ended up being an epic fail since it was 81 degrees at 5:00. Because I only knew of one water spot about 6.5 miles into the run, I opted to wear my Camel Bak with 47 pounds of water and ice. Of course, the ice was melted by the time I was 2 miles in. After that, it was warm water all the way.
As I headed out in the dark, I said goodbye to my truck which I wouldn’t see for over 3 hours. The way I planned this route, there were not too many options to “bail out” once I got past about 8 miles. I am not much for bailing out anyway.
The first 6.5 miles were uneventful with a trip to river road, by Mike the Tiger’s cage, through the LSU campus, down sorority row and up to City Park. It was dark, so any scenery was wasted on me. I stopped at City park to top off my Camel Bak and send Christine a text that I was still alive. So far, the only issue was the heat. And it was barely daylight.
For most of the run, I was doing a 9 minute run/1 minute walk routine. I didn’t need to walk, but I was using that 1 minute to get my heart rate down a bit while I drank and ate something. And for the first 10 miles or so, I still averaged about a 9:20 pace overall. Somewhere between 10 to 12 miles in, things started going awry with my stomach. As usual. My nutrition attempt this time was to go back to basics: water, gels, S-caps. No solid food. No gatorade or other drinks. Nothing fancy. Just typical marathon running food.
Epic Fail #2. Things were just not processing as they should. When I mention things are not processing, I am talking about normal stomach functions. A normal system takes food in, does something to it in the stomach, takes what ever it needs from it and sends the remainder on its way hopefully in a southerly direction. But some times, there is a break down in one of those steps.
I am not sure which step actually broke down. Was it too much salt? Too many carbs from the gels? Too much water? Or more than likely too high of a temperature/heart rate combo. Whatever the cause, the effect was a change in flow from southerly to northerly. And of course, this was on the Seven Oaks part of the course so I looked great yacking in someones yard. Happy Happy Joy Joy!
In my usual “experiment of one” fashion, I was out on the road 8 miles from my truck with no solution to my problem. So I began my trudge back to the truck.
The definition of trudge is “Walk slowly and with heavy steps, typically because of exhaustion or harsh conditions”. Yep, that sums it up. Actually, I need to revise the definition a bit. Instead of heavy steps it should read “water logged steps”, and I would have to change the “walk slowly” to “walk or run slowly”. I did continue to run when I could. But it was not pretty.
By the time I reached the LSU lakes and the last couple of miles of my run, I was having more trouble keeping my HR down. Several times after a “running” interval, I would look down and my HR was over 170. I knew that the heat had taken its toll and I was toasted (literally). As I mentioned earlier, my average pace was around 9:20 or so for the first 10 miles. I ended up with a 10:23 pace overall for the 20 miles, so that means my last 10 were in the 11:25 range.
I am trying find the positives in the run and draw some lessons learned from it.
Positives:
- I went 20 miles and didn’t die.
- Trudging is an effective means of forward progress.
- I didn’t cramp until I was stretching after the run.
- I found another good reason not to stretch.
Negatives:
- My stomach is a pain in the ass.
- Trudging while fighting stomach issues may get me to 40 or 50 miles, but not 100.
- Nutrition attempt # 745 was a failure.
For as long as it takes, I will continue my nutrition experiment until I find something that works. My next long run will not be for two weeks, so maybe some reader input is required. What do you think? Any ideas?
What nutrion source should I try next?
- Another electrolyte drink like HEED or Perpetuem. (100%)
- Stick with water and try more solid foods. (0%)
- Fill my Camel Bak with chocolate milk and have some real fireworks! (0%)
- It doesn't really matter because I will hack it up anyway. (0%)
Total Votes: 2
If you don’t see the a good option, add a comment with your suggestion.
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Tim, FWIW I have trained with coconut water for my last few long events. I freeze it in my camelbak bladder and go from there.
Nancy, I have heard about it on several podcasts. I am curious how it would work on very long events. I may have to give it a shot.
Icy cold coke. Hotter the temps the less solid the food IMO.
Susan, I would have killed for an icy cold anything! The sugar in the coke would have done me in though. I agree on the solid food. I am just running out of semi-liquid things to try!
I agree the hotter the day the more you should exclude solids. Without getting into this too deep, I find coffee in the morning helps with a pre run scheduled bio break, personally if I can do that then things seems to fall into place better, if I can’t or don’t it can lead to issues. Also SCaps I find are really strong, I only take one every 90-120 minutes.
The other thing if you are running on roads is to map out where there are possible stops gas stations etc, that way you can carry less
Thanks Stuart. I need to experiment more with how many S-caps I take. And I agree that the solid foods will have to wait until it gets cooler.