Food for thought

So a bit of an unspectacular week for me last week. I got in the miles I wanted (181.67km), but I had none of the zip I experienced two weeks ago, where every workout felt incredibly easy and the pace naturally improved as the workout progressed. Instead my legs dragged and I experienced a strange emotion: fear. Instead of exciting me, thinking about doing 2 and a half hours on Sunday left me with dread. It's strange how confidence can desert you after a few bad workouts.

I thought I'd recovered reasonably well from the race on Saturday. I got in 40 minutes the next day, barely even feeling sore. On Monday I walked out the door feeling optimistic, but after 9 minutes I packed it in and fled to the cross trainer. Sore muscles were part of the reason, but there was also a certain aspect of 'Fuck this'. Fair enough, I thought, DOMS would be kicking in about now after all. Tuesday's workout left me feeling a lot better. While not feeling 100%, I had a good 40 minute warmup at 4:50 pace and then did 60 minutes of hill repeats. The 20 minute cooldown was a slow shuffle, but that was to be expected after trashing my legs after they'd barely recovered. What I didn't expect was for that to continue the next morning. I managed 30 minutes before giving up when 6:30/km was causing me to puff and that strange sharp pain over my heart grew too much (which is apparently just a stitch and has nothing to do with heart problems according to my GP). Strangely, that evening I felt better than ever on the cross trainer.

The pattern repeated itself the next day. Realising I wasn't in shape for a tempo run, I slept in and went for an easy jog in the morning. Lasted 40 minutes this time, a bit faster, but still dodderingly slow. Again, I felt fine that evening on the cross trainer.

Friday was only the second time that week I completed a workout. Managed 65 minutes at a little faster than 6:00/k, but was fading towards the end and experiencing chest pain again. Felt fine in the evening.

On Saturday I slept in and didn't have time to workout until that night, so I did 65 minutes followed by 50 mins on the cross trainer. Amazingly, I felt great, finishing the run strongly with no pain. I was beginning to feel optimistic again about the long run the next morning..

..which turned out to be a misplaced sentiment. I woke up, and lacking motivation, plumbed the depths of the internet for a while. Eventually got my act together and started out on the run, not feeling too great. After 40 minutes, I began to struggle and as the pain in my chest started, and a faint rumbling in my stomach made itself felt, the thought suddenly hit me: "I'm glycogen depleted already." Nothing else could explain why I could do 65 minutes at close to 5:00/k pace the previous night and then struggle to maintain 6:30/k after 40 minutes that morning despite feeling fresh-legged.

I think part of the fault lay on a cold I'd been fighting off. It wasn't enough to really slow me down, but it was enough to suppress my appetite due to a resultant sore throat. I simply wasn't eating enough in the evenings. After burning more than 500 calories before bed every night and having not had much to eat during the day, I was hitting the bottom of the barrel by the time I awoke from my sleepy fast.

After coming to this realisation, I broke off the workout after 55 minutes and went home and consumed. 10 tacos, a tin of lentils, a good dollop of tomato sauce, half a loaf of bread and several pieces of fruit went down my throat and despite having not really felt that hungry, I felt immediately better. To celebrate, I rode my bike down to the Gardiner Creek bike path and got in two and a half hours of rollerblading (cross country skiing training) at a good intensity and felt strong the whole way. Then that night, having feasted some more, I went and did another 60 minutes of running at a little past midnight. It was a helluva lot better than my run in the morning even though I was decidedly less fresh-legged.

Have I ever mentioned how awesome running late at night is? It's really quite surreal. There is not a soul in sight, so much so that one could imagine a neutron bomb has wiped out the entire population of Mt Waverley, leaving me to reclaim the roads. I delight in running down high street road, which normally has 50 cars per second racing past, but for this brief interval is frequented only by lonely distance runners and the occasional taxi. Everything looks beautiful without sunlight to expose the imperfections we gouge into this landscape. My footsteps are the only sound, posing little interruption to the flow of thought. All too soon I'm back at home.

From now on, I shall once again embark on my interpretation of what the germans call the 'Dosenfrass' diet. I discovered it when I was in Germany at the start of the year. Basically, it involved eating only what one could eat on a budget in a small room with no cooking facilities or utensils beyond a spoon and some tupperware containers. Typically, this involved 29c cans of kidney beans, pasta sauce, tinned corn and a loaf of fantastic crusty bread with margarine, all washed down with copious amounts of juice. In other words, calories and little else. I may expand the breadth a little since I am no longer on such a restrictive diet and since I now have access to a kitchen, which I delight in using when I have the time and inclination. However, the main principle of the diet: two enormous meals, one in the morning and one in the evening, such that one is so full that it is almost painful; will be retained. In this way, I will have enough stored energy left over from the night before to do my morning workout and then the bountiful breakfast will restock my stores for the rest of the day and my evening workout.

I'm looking forward to it:)