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Caught a Skunk Ape - Now What?
Nov. 22nd, 2022 10:32 amThat marathon sucked. LOL.
I mean, marathons aren't easy obviously. But between coming off a cold, dealing with cold, windy and rainy weather, and getting seriously dehydrated, it sucked a lot for me. I still finished, though! I probably should have tapped out and just accepted a DNF, but I can be very stubborn sometimes, and in this case, I was stubbornly determined to finish on a course that felt like it was against me from the beginning.
My inability to get consistent training this year, coupled with what is probably ongoing, chronic dehydration, really took its toll, but now two days out, I feel pretty good again. The cold weather, being sick and needing decongestants, and a few other things contributed to my dehydration - it's easy to not get the signal to drink when it's cold out. I've set myself reminders on my Garmin to go drink some damn water, and I have an electrolyte powder I can supplement with to get things back to a healthy level. But it should tell you something that I peed the morning of the race, at the hotel, but then didn't go again until after we got home, after the race, almost ten hours later.
Being kind of dumb, I'm considering going for a short run this afternoon - like, two miles, maybe three. I ran around the house a bit this morning and felt okay. Fox did the same and his calf muscle immediately told him "no more of this shit."
I'm honestly wondering if ongoing dehydration might not be a big part of the problems I've been having for the last couple of months. But I'm still heading over to UF in January to get a running analysis done at their medical college's sports clinic. They'll stick some sensors on me, have me do a treadmill run and film it with a high-speed camera, and do a few other tests. They can then recommend ways to correct any imbalances, tell me my VO2max, and some other interesting points of data. I can then take my results to a local shoe store and they'll use it to recommend running shoes. Plus, I'll be in Gainesville so I can go eat lunch at Red Robin (yummm).
In three weeks, we have our first ultra, a 50k held in Middleburg on trails in Jennings State Forest. I've already emphasized to Fox that we should run this one, not race it, and I expect to go out slow and take my time with it. Jennings has much more technical trail than Belmore, which while it's very shitty road if you're driving over it, it's pretty smooth trail if you're running. It's almost entirely old WPA roads that were built when they were converting the area from pine farming (turpentine manufacturing) into a state park. The roads are kinda sorta kept up by the state, when they get around to it, when there's funding, and someone to actually do it.
In completely unrelated news, Fox bought me another coffee advent calendar, so I'm about to have a very merry Christmas, LOL. Ho ho high caffeine!
I mean, marathons aren't easy obviously. But between coming off a cold, dealing with cold, windy and rainy weather, and getting seriously dehydrated, it sucked a lot for me. I still finished, though! I probably should have tapped out and just accepted a DNF, but I can be very stubborn sometimes, and in this case, I was stubbornly determined to finish on a course that felt like it was against me from the beginning.
My inability to get consistent training this year, coupled with what is probably ongoing, chronic dehydration, really took its toll, but now two days out, I feel pretty good again. The cold weather, being sick and needing decongestants, and a few other things contributed to my dehydration - it's easy to not get the signal to drink when it's cold out. I've set myself reminders on my Garmin to go drink some damn water, and I have an electrolyte powder I can supplement with to get things back to a healthy level. But it should tell you something that I peed the morning of the race, at the hotel, but then didn't go again until after we got home, after the race, almost ten hours later.
Being kind of dumb, I'm considering going for a short run this afternoon - like, two miles, maybe three. I ran around the house a bit this morning and felt okay. Fox did the same and his calf muscle immediately told him "no more of this shit."
I'm honestly wondering if ongoing dehydration might not be a big part of the problems I've been having for the last couple of months. But I'm still heading over to UF in January to get a running analysis done at their medical college's sports clinic. They'll stick some sensors on me, have me do a treadmill run and film it with a high-speed camera, and do a few other tests. They can then recommend ways to correct any imbalances, tell me my VO2max, and some other interesting points of data. I can then take my results to a local shoe store and they'll use it to recommend running shoes. Plus, I'll be in Gainesville so I can go eat lunch at Red Robin (yummm).
In three weeks, we have our first ultra, a 50k held in Middleburg on trails in Jennings State Forest. I've already emphasized to Fox that we should run this one, not race it, and I expect to go out slow and take my time with it. Jennings has much more technical trail than Belmore, which while it's very shitty road if you're driving over it, it's pretty smooth trail if you're running. It's almost entirely old WPA roads that were built when they were converting the area from pine farming (turpentine manufacturing) into a state park. The roads are kinda sorta kept up by the state, when they get around to it, when there's funding, and someone to actually do it.
In completely unrelated news, Fox bought me another coffee advent calendar, so I'm about to have a very merry Christmas, LOL. Ho ho high caffeine!
