16 Felt Harder than 21

Last week I ran my longest ever run. I went 21 miles (well, technically 20.65 but close enough). I have to say that I felt pretty darn good for most of that run. I tried some new fueling techniques. Here's what I did:

• Mile 3:  about 3 sips of flat Coke
• Mile 6:  one Gu (vanilla, I think) and 3 sips of water
• Somewhere between mile 9 and 10:  3 more sips of Coke
• Mile 12:  another Gu (Jet Blackberry flavor)
• Somewhere between mile 15 and 16:  more Coke

I think I took another Gu about mile 18, but I can't remember for sure. I really liked that routine and felt pretty good mentally (no cloudy thinking). I also didn't seem to have an GI issues following that routine. I was physically tired, but I suppose that is to be expected when you run almost 21 miles. Feeling that good running that far was a pretty good confidence booster.

I need to remember that run because this week's run sucked! It was only 16 so it shouldn't have felt so dang hard, but we picked a really tough route that kicked my trash today. The first mile and a half was good, but then we hit the hills going towards the county park and in the dark, they felt like they were never going to end! Instead of heading down into the county park, we stayed to the left and went up, up, up Idaho Road. We stayed on that until we hit Mission. I thought I had remembered that Mission was just down, down, down. It is mostly that but you do have to climb for about 1/2 mile before you get the nice down, down, down. Ugh! I was dying by time we hit the intersection of Mission and Molter and we still had 8 miles to go. Fortunately for the second 8 miles it was a flat route and I was able to finish, but man it was hard. Felt more tired today than last week.

I also was messing with my fueling a bit, too. I wanted to see how I would do without the Coke and all of the Gu's. I can tell you...not good. Having the sips of Coke every so often is like having a caffeine drip. And the fact that the Gu's I take also have caffeine, with the jet blackberry having a double shot. Anyway, today I was using Dots candies and water for most of the run. And while they were a good carb source I missed the boost of the caffeine. So for next week's 22-miler, I'll be carrying Coke, water and Gu's.

Oh, why the Dots you might be wondering? Well, those dang Gu's are about $1.50 a piece and I'm cheap so I was trying to find an alternative fuel source that would be cheaper. Plus I just like Dots and figured I could stand to eat a handful of  those every 3 miles.