Calories are your friend

Another long run Wednesday morning – and this time 1 hr 50 min. We planned to leave at 5:45 to pick Kip up at 5:50. Naturally we didn’t leave the house until 5:55, but that is still quite an improvement on last week. For me the big difference was drinking a Strawberry flavored Ensure as soon as we woke up. I need the time for it to settle in my stomach and 25 minutes is about right. We got going and both Chad and I felt pretty good.This time we ran over the 14th St bridge towards Roosevelt Island. We ended up hitting 55 minutes just before Key bridge and decided to cross the bridge and run along the C&O in Georgetown towards the GW Parkway.

We lost Kip for a minute when he ran into an acquaintance, but for the most part we ran the whole route together. I was really surprised Kip stayed with us the whole way, but he is on a cleansing diet of only fresh fruit and veggies – no sugar, no sports drink, no gels – so he may have been feeling fatigued enough to hang with our slower pace. I took a gel at about the half way point and although I wasn’t drinking much I was feeling pretty good.

We actually kept a pace of 8:30 min miles for the first hour. We picked it up once we got to GW Parkway, fluctuating between 7:30 and 8:00 min miles. By the time we got back to the Hill I was feeling the miles building up in my legs. Although the weather stayed pretty mild – warm but not hot, and a little humid, but not bad for August – we were all soaked with sweat. In fact, Chad took off his shorts in Georgetown (yes, he was wearing two pairs), twisted out LOTS of water and decided to just throw them away. My feet were squishing in my shoes and I was soaked. I weighted in at 115.4 after the run.

All in all, so much better than last week!! I’m going to give most of the credit to having some calories before and during the run to keep me going.

2800 yd swim in the evening to round out the day. We need to get at least one long swim in a week. Tonight we head up to Deep Creek Lake for another epic training weekend and then we get an easy week to recover. I'm already looking forward to it.