Three lessons in sports therapy, learnt the hard way. Part 1

Before we start, I'd like to apologise to anyone who really knows about sports science and/or physiotherapy, for undoubtedly getting the detail horribly wrong.

I've had an eventful few weeks, and right now I'm seriously worried about whether I'll be able to run this damned thing.

It all started on the saturday after my last post - my first go at a 20 mile run.
Miles 1-18: fantastic.
Miles 19-20: Oh dear God.

In the last few weeks I've learnt a bunch of really hard lessons about distance running, so I thought I'd go through them in 3 parts

Lesson 1: hitting the wall is really bad
Your body can store a limited amount of fuel known as glycogen, in the liver, muscles and red blood cells. This can readily be broken down into glucose for you to use when doing things like running. The problem is, the body only stores around 1500-2000 calories worth. Which, on this particular run, got me through the first 18 miles.
After which...

•  I couldn't think straight – I was nearly in tears, and got lost despite being in my own back yard, and having a GPS watch telling me where to go
• my legs Just Wouldn't Work Any More
• the outside of my left knee started hurting. A lot. (Unfortunately, we'll be coming back to this in lesson 3)

I've since learnt that the key to not hitting the wall is to load up on carbs in the days before big runs, and to eat sports tablets, gels or jelly babies every 20 minutes or so during the run itself, to keep the glucose levels up.

I'm very glad I've found this out now, and seriously hope I get another shot at at 20-miler before the marathon to try it out in practice.

Meanwhile, I eventually got home and jumped straight into an ice bath. more about that in lesson 2...


p.s. In better news, I Just met my sponsorship target! :-D Thank you all so much - it's going to a wonderful cause, and is a big motivation to keep going right now.

W.x

New Toys

Woo - new toy! :)

We had significant birthdays for both me & my mum at the easter weekend (I'm no longer in my twenties - sob!), so we had the whole family back in Preston. Lots of tasty food and wine later, I was on the way home with a bag full of champagne, tasty goodies, and one of these :-D

Which means the garmin pages I've been linking to now have even more stuff on them, including maps of where I've been. Which I reckon is way cool, in an geeky kinda way :)


Examples are here (from monday) and here (from this evening).

The first was a heart rate interval session.  After a mile or so of warming up, run a mile whilst trying to keep a high heartrate (around 180bpm in my case), then half a mile at a much lower recovery rate (150-160).  Repeat.

Doing this kind of training repeatedly helps make your heart more efficient, meaning you can work harder at the same heartrate.  In other words, it makes you faster.  I'm pretty happy with where I am so far with the distance, so I've been able to concentrate on some more varied training over the last few weeks, including some fast runs, some intervals, and even fell running (shudder!)

The other big change is that we now have showers at work, so I can do runs from work at lunchtime or running in in this morning (as I'm planning tomorrow).  Less than 7 weeks to go, so having opportunities to squeeze in more miles always helps.