Monday, May 11, 2009

hydration is key

During my last mile of running this weekend, I seriously considered knocking on every door I passed to ask for a glass of water. Clearly, I was not in the right state of mind. I was dehydrated.

This weekend I was house/dog sitting and was not in my normal environment that I typically am to prep for my early run with Jamie on the weekends. I had a bowl of oatmeal and nothing to drink. I left the house to drive to Jamie's and brought nothing that resembled liquid with me. I then get to Jamie's and only down a gulp-full of water with the Ibuprofen Jamie graciously offered me before we put our bodies through hell. I realized that I had consumed absolutely no liquid this morning as I hit mile 3, which was well into the forest preserve. How could I be so silly to not drink any water? Water is everything when running. I should know this more than anyone. I get overheated so quickly that I NEED to hydrate (and hydrate well) every time I run. Needless to say, I completed the run -- 8 miles! I have 8 mile legs! I was dying at the end, but Jamie had water for me when I arrived at her house which I loved.

In the future I need to remember that H2O is my friend and it will help me complete the run without the feeling of death on my trail.

music dependent

Jamie and I did our weekend run -- my first run in May! I drove to her place and then we drove to the forest preserve to do our run. We decided to do only 6 miles instead of the expected 7 since 3.5 miles would have been hard to measure with the poor marking system in the forest preserve. Really, we just wanted to get out of there and not run, but lets blame the system instead of ourselves.

I panicked right before we began because I realized my mp3 player was not charged. I thought to myself how did I drive ALL the way out here to the SUBURBS (no less) without checking that my little music friend was dead. Jamie offered to not run (always trying to get out of it), but I decided that we were out here -- we were going to run or at least try.

About 15 paces into the run, I was panicking. There is no way I was going to make it 6 miles without music. I started sweating (not that I wasn't already), but in a different way. In a way that I was having an out of body experience. I was realizing how ridiculously dependent I am on my music to run. As I saw Jamie get farther and farther away from me (as she tends to do with her 10:30 mile) I decided I was going to squeeze the last seconds out of my mp3 player. If I could only hear a little glimmer of "gotta gotta cut loose" I could maybe have a semi-decent start. I turned it on and the music had never sounded so good. All of a sudden, I realized I was at a mile and then 2 miles and by some higher power my music lasted the whole damn time. It was AMAZING and I ran the whole thing!

Note to myself: Always check the mp3 player before going out on a run because you are music dependent!

Monday, May 4, 2009

a run on the lakefront

I decided to try out my running legs again this weekend after what seemed to be forever, but in reality was only two and half weeks. I rode my bike to the lake and then took off south on the lakefront path. It was the best run I had done in months! Although I was moving a bit slower than normal, I felt strong and comfortable up until the last 10 minutes of my 5 miles. The weather was so glorious and I sometimes forget that I need to change my running wardrobe according to the weather. I was definitely overheating by the end, but I finished in an hour so I was still pleased.