My First 10-Miler

• Posted: July 25, 2008
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• Author: Shéamus
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• Filed under: Workouts
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• Tags: 10 Miles

As I’ve mentioned once or twice in this blog, all week I’d been planning to do a long run today - specifically, my longest run to date. I ate a hearty breakfast, slept from 11am until 4pm, then immediate consumed two bananas, a Coke and a pint of water.

Conditions were basically perfect - warm, but not too hot, and a mild cooling breeze that could only really help.

My main concern was water. I was thinking of running ten miles, and I wasn’t sure how my body would react to being ‘out there’ for that long. My Fuel Belt holds 32oz of water over four 8oz bottles, and while that’s been sufficient for runs around the sixty-minute mark I felt I needed extra for today.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but my main problem with long runs is heat. I had a bad car accident when I was very young that, amongst one or two other things, damaged my nervous system. Most of the time it isn’t an issue but when I get very hot, my body takes an awful long time to cool back down. If I overheat, I basically stay overheated, certainly when doing something like running. So it’s important I do everything in my power to keep myself as cool as possible.

So, following on from a tip I picked up by asking for advice on the Runner’s World forums, I bought a 500ml bottle of mineral water, chilled it all day in the fridge, and took that with me. It was a pain to run with it, to be honest, but after a mile or so I stashed it in a bush, knowing that it would be another couple of miles before I’d reached my turnaround and made it back to this point. Overall this gave me about 1.5 litres of water, which should have been sufficient for my journey.

My goal was to run an at average pace of 8:30 pretty much the entire way. I was eyeing the 85-minute mark as a reasonable pace. Anything beyond 90 minutes would be considered a bit of a failure.

I always find the first couple of miles of every run the hardest. If you’re out there looking for pace, that opening mile or two is where you really know if you have the legs for it (or not). When you’re trying to run a slower speed - 8:30 - it takes a while to get the leg-turnover exactly right and to find a comfortable rhythm.

Things were going okay, though; after the five-mile point I knew I’d have no problem doing the ten. I had plenty of water - and I use it both as an actual drinking source as well as regularly dunking some over my head, as well as down my chest and back inside my shirt - and while I did get pretty hot at times, overall I felt good.

I hit the 10-mile mark at 1:25:45 - just missing my target - but had already decided it would be nice to be ‘out there’ for a full hour and a half, so got that done, too. Overall I ran 10:49 miles.

I’ve found it quite interesting that when I run for an hour or more, the actual point when I stop is quite strange. It’s a bit like stepping on to dry land after spending a long time on a boat - your legs don’t really know what they should be doing.

One total rookie mistake I made today was forgetting to apply vaseline to a few select points before I left the house. I always remember this - no idea why it didn’t happen today, but it cost me. When I finished my run, I looked down at my shirt and saw some smudges of blood. Yes, both of my nipples had been rubbed raw and started to bleed fairly profusely. Let me tell you - they’ve very sore right now. I won’t make that mistake again.

Nice.

When I got home, I took a tip from JD at Get Fit Slowly and immediately jumped into a bath full of cold water. For a few seconds it was an extremely unpleasant experience - all the while I was running and feeling very hot indeed it sounded like the best thing ever, but actually doing it was quite nasty. But after a minute or so I became accustomed to the low temperature and when I later got out my legs and more importantly my knees felt great.

Splits:

Note that this workout burned 1,444 calories.

(No point showing the chart today - when I stopped to pick up my water after the turnaround, I dropped it, and had to run backwards for a second to pick it up. This totally confused my Garmin and as a result the chart has a huge spike which makes it completely useless. )

Overall, I’m very pleased. I have my first 5K race this Wednesday and I’m flying to Mississippi on Friday so this week is a great opportunity for me to taper down a bit and have an easy one. After today’s run, I’ve already logged 31.53 miles this week, and an easy three-miles or so tomorrow will set a new PB for weekly mileage. Sunday I might to five or six but will concentrate on speed workouts after that, get the race in Wednesday, then it’s a couple of easy runs before we hit the skies.

Note: I should point out that while this is the longest I have run since beginning my challenge, I have run this distance twice in the past. That was over a decade ago, however, and might as well have been in another lifetime.

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