Friday, August 27, 2010

New Territory

On Saturday, I crossed over 1720 miles for the year. For most ultrarunners, this kind of mileage is peanuts. For me, that number represented my total mileage for 2009, and the most I had ever run in a year.

I began 2010 with a simple & loose goal of running 2010 miles (38.6 mi/week) by years end. I knew my training for 2 ultras would set me on a path of much higher volume, but now it looks like I'll hit that mark by mid October.

My long run this weekend was 25.5 miles on the HR trails. This was the first time I strung together all three trail systems that are connected by the Douglas County East-West trail. There are no big climbs, but plenty of short ups and downs and all but 1.6 miles were on trail.


At mile 19, I downed my first ever can of Red Bull as an experiment. I felt fine after drinking it and it may have even calmed my stomach a bit. I'm sure my body enjoyed the sugar and caffeine. Does anybody else drink it during long runs or races? Did it help or hurt you? The stuff is not cheap, but I could see having it in a drop bag for later in a race.

5 comments:

  1. Brandon uses the stuff. I have only had one Red Bull and that was when I drove all night home to Evergreen from Dallas when our flight home from Central America was cancelled two days before Christmas. I use the caffeine-infused Powerbar gels - Strawberry Banana - and have had no problems using them. Ate one every 30 minutes at Lake City this year.

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  2. Woody drank a red bull??? What would Hal think?

    Bro, that is a LOT of miles.

    So far there has been 243 days of the year...that makes your DAILY AVERAGE = 7miles. That is insane!

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  3. I will probably just stick to gels too. I drank Ensure twice on long training runs and didn't have a problem, but boy did it turned my stomach into a mosh pit during Silver Rush.

    Jim - When training for my first marathon in 2007, I ordered a case of Strawberry-Banana Powergels. At first I thought they were great. But it didn't take long before even a whiff of them produced a gag reflex! Lesson learned = I need variety! I wish I could stick with just one flavor!

    James - You know ALL about the Powergels! Ha! Hal? He and I have grown quite far apart these days. Maybe someday I'll train under his tutelage again! Haha!

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  4. Ahhhh....now I have a race strategy for Run Rabbit Run! Give Woody a whiff of the ol' Strawberry-Banana PowerGel and run off while he boots his lunch off the side of the trail. (Insert maniacal laugh sound here).

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