Bananas And Coke

• Posted: July 1, 2008
• |
• Author: Shéamus
• |
• Filed under: Workouts
• |
• Tags: 30 Minute Days

Day thirty presented it’s own set of unique challenges.

1. I work a night shift, 10pm-9am, that is normally 3-4 days per week (depending on the rotation). Thanks to a staff shortage, Monday night was the seventh of eight I have worked consecutively.
2. I had to have dental surgery this morning, at 11.10am. I obviously hadn’t slept beforehand, having finished work at 9am, and wasn’t actually seen by the dentist until nearly midday, leaving the surgery around 12.30pm.
3. I then had to go to the Post Office to send away some eBay items, and then go to another post office to pick up a package.
4. I then had to collect my youngest son from school (3.20pm).

I was back home by about 4.15pm. For as many hours as I can remember, I’d had that little man in the back of my mind telling me it was okay to quit.

“Skip your run,” he said, “You need to sleep. You know it makes sense. You’re risking injury. You might get hurt. It’s really, really hot outside. You’re dehydrated. It’s stupid to run in this physical and mental state. Just go to bed. Nobody cares. Nobody’s reading your blog. Think of your health.”

In many respects, he was right - I was potentially risking my health. I probably was a bit dehydrated. I was certainly physically and mentally exhausted. It would have been very easy, even justifiable, to take the day off; heck, I could have done that, and just lied about it anyway.

But I didn’t. At 4.30pm, I did my 30 minutes.

I got it done.

How?

Bananas and Coke, mostly. Between 2.30pm and 4.30pm, I consumed 2.5 medium-sized bananas and one can of normal Coke. I also had one of those new 100-calorie C2 Max Performance Powerbars. I’m not usually one for these kinds of sports supplements, as I find them not much more effective than a Snickers (and about ten times the price), but this came free with this month’s 220 magazine (which was frankly the only good thing about it) and to be honest was quite delicious.

That combination of foods seemed to do the trick, as despite being completely exhausted and setting out in scorching 28C heat, I reached the turnaround point of my loop a full 24 seconds faster than normal. I couldn’t believe it. It helped that today was the most windless day we’ve had for a couple of weeks, but still, in my weakened state it was some effort.

It didn’t last, however - about 20 minutes in I began to fatigue badly and for the last 10 minutes, overheating badly as I was, it was all I could do to hold it together. But I did, and it’s another day in the bag.

My new Garmin watch should arrive tomorrow. That’ll be fun - as I said, I’m a real stats freak so expect lots and lots of that in the days/weeks/months ahead!

Alas, tomorrow I also have more dental surgery (at 10.30am), but thankfully tonight is my last shift at work, and then it’s off to the welcoming arms of a three-day break.

And I really, really need it.

• (5) Comments
• Permalink
• RSS 2.0
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•