Interval Session Nineteen...

I finally got the phone camera shots of the river trail downloaded... so they'll be in here. Not great quality but you get to see the kind of surface I'm tromping on. I picked up a pair of Adidas trail running shoes Friday evening & used those on this run. There was a definite difference. The gravel in the shot below is about .75" to 1.25" in diameter. There are also some larger rocks ranging from 1.5" to 3". So you have to be somewhat careful... looking down... in order not to turn your ankle or end up arse-over-teakettle. That makes it tougher to run with the proper posture... good times! Running this particular trail ALWAYS makes me feel like I just did a full-body weight lifting session. The leg work is that intense; Enough that I'm now having to do the additional back, hams, hips & glutes stretching at least once per day, EVERY DAY in order to keep ahead of the back issues.



This was the first session of week seven... and another 25-minute stint. Two more weeks until I reach the full 5k goal. (Even with taking extra days off I've stayed fairly close to the overall schedule. I'm less than a full week behind.) The temperature was supposed to be lower today than earlier in the week. It was... but only by aroud 5 degrees. By the time I hit Puyallup it was 89 degrees. It felt like it was around 95 at the trail. Odd because it actually felt a bit cooler earlier in the week & I wonder if there had been more of a breeze. There was NONE last night. At least not while I was running.



This ended up being another 2-quarts-of-Gatorade night. One chugged down on the drive to the trail & the other chugged on the drive home. The shoes really did make a difference. I could tell that my feet were no longer slipping... but I was also covering more ground with each step. My quads still took a pounding though. Once again, I'm adjusting my gait to compensate for the terrain... & the varying levels of exhaustion. I'm not looking at my watch quit as often anymore. Mainly because it seems to stop while I'm running. It may even be moving backwards on the second 1/2 of the runs. We go again Sunday morning... & this time I'm setting the alarm for 7 AM... or perhaps 6:30. I'm definitely going to try & beat the heat this time.

I'll reitereate on the hydration issue. Anecdotal though it may be; drinking the G2 Gatorade as opposed to plain water has made a BIG difference for me. I seriously doubt that I would have been able to keep this up had I been relying on H2o alone. Last Sunday & Monday were apparent evidence of that. I simply could not hydrate sufficiently on water. The potasium loss alone inflicted enough upon me that I wasn't functional at work. That was from a single running session... & the temperatures that day were below 90 degrees. I was still seriously depleted. I haven't bothered to investigate the symptoms any deeper than "I feel like poo" but I would imagine that the lasting effects of dehydration aren't all that pleasant.