Monday 16 March 2009

Turning to the dark side to beat the bonk

I was out for my 'long' (11k) run last night after having done a wet and windy century ride out to Mornington and back. There was no doubt in my mind that it was going to be a hard slog considering I'd barely eaten anything. It was a faint miracle that I made it as far as the five km mark before bonking hard. I had my fair share of glycogen depleted runs in Europe, so I didn't really mind when I suddenly had to start pushing really hard just to maintain 8:00/k or when my form tumbled unaerodynamically from a fifth storey window. Apparently I must've looked quite comical with my flailing limbs because a car full of youths out for a cruise pulled a u-turn in front of me, beeped their horn and slowly drove off, egging me on, laughing all the time. I took the bait, yelled expletives at them and charged down the hill.

Of course they got away, although they did have to run a red light in the process. I'm not sure what I would have done if I'd caught them anyway. When the red fog descends, I become quite irrational. I probably would have opened the door and given the passenger a vicious slap and then darted off into a side street:P

The plus side of this encounter was that my system was filled with adrenaline and I had no trouble finishing the rest of the run at a good pace. Whenever I felt like I was flagging, I just had to think about the car and with the returning rage came another shot of glucose:P I'm now compiling a list of things that really make me angry for future bonks:P (and I'm also going to start carrying a few glucose tablets in my shorts)

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Had a good week of training. The speed is starting to come back. I had a very strong hill rep session, bouncing up the monstrously steep incline at never before attained paces. There were a few very slow recovery runs to follow, but the tempo run on Friday went to plan. Despite some gastro-intestinal distress (note to self: refrain from baking and eating a whole tray of brownies in the future), I still managed to do six km around the footy oval in 23:55.

All up 85km at 6:30/k plus 210k of cycling (20hrs of training). I also started back on my calisthenics routine. My pullup bar came on Monday, so I've been doing ten a day plus fifty pushups and one hundred bicycles.

This week will hopefully involve 90k of running plus a slightly increased calisthenics routine (15 pullups, 75 pushups and 150 bicycles) and a 200k ride on Sunday.

I'm going to a training session at the Waverley Aths Club on Tuesday. They're the closest club to me and it would be great to do some cross country races and find some running partners.

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