I ran this weekend. A lot.
It’s a technique I heard about once from a non-medical person. A way to train for ultras is to run for X amount of time on Friday evening, then again on Saturday morning and again on Sunday morning. The first time you do this, X is equal to 10km or one hour. (I forget which, they’re almost synonymous with me.) Then you increase X to a 20km run the next weekend, and then a 30km run. Supposedly X should equal a 40km next, but I’ve never gone that far. This time around, scheduling was a problem, so I skipped the 20km X and went directly to 30km.
Friday wasn’t bad. It was nice and cool, and I was fresh. Also a little ticked off at work gave me anger to work with. I also had good stories to listen to on my iPod.
Saturday morning wasn’t quite as easy; It was a lot hotter that day, and my legs still felt a bit stiff. It didn’t help that I realized I didn’t have any clean running socks and just reused the last ones. Apparently that is a recipe for blisters. Also, I hadn’t eaten enough after the last run and my iPod ran out of stories. The rest of the day on Saturday was spent doing almost nothing.
Trying to sleep that night was weird. I felt a bit restless, but not terribly so. I may not have eaten enough again (which surprised me) as my stomach felt like it was eating itself.
On Sunday morning, I popped my blisters and went to the Running Room where I planned to run the final 30km. The group I was usually with was in a weird state with the group leader away camping. So we made our own route. But the group had planned to do 40km. It was nice and cool, and I actually felt better today than yesterday. So I went with them all the way.
I also tried a salt pill for the first time. I waited until my right leg was feeling tight, which seems to be my sign that I’m low on salt. The weird part was that a minute after I swallowed I started sweating a lot. More than I can ever remember doing. I still had plenty of water, and I used it. The human body is a strange machine.
Unfortunately, the guy with the GPS unit ran out of batteries, so we guessed at the distance. By my calculations we did 38km.
98km in one weekend. I’m probably going to have restless legs tonight.