Long run 3: 5 miles

When I crossed the "finish line" today, the coach asked me how I felt. "Horrible!" I said, and although I said it light-heartedly, I really wasn't being ironic. I felt pretty horrible.

To be fair to me, there were two extenuating circumstances. The (I think) smaller one was that I didn't get my full maintenance running in this week. Wednesday there just wasn't time, and when I went to make it up on Thursday I only got in ten minutes before a thunderstorm hit. Granted, this is largely my fault - I wouldn't have had to worry about the thunderstorm had I successfully gotten up and done the run Thursday morning like I initially planned before, predictably I suppose, flaking out - but nevertheless. I wore down pretty severely over the final mile of today's run, which could be due to the lack of full maintenance running or could just be because five miles is the most I've ever run (well, I ran 54 minutes of it and walked 18; that's probably four miles and change of running and somewhere between 0.75 and one mile walking, but at any rate it's more combined than I've done before since the 4 miles last week was done at the same interval setting of 3:1), and so I broke down after hitting four, the number I'd successfully done last week without feeling too bad.

Or, it could be because it was FUCKING hot out. I just checked the temperature - 87 with a heat index of 98, according to the Weather Channel. Um, gah. Granted, it's 10:30 right now and I finished around 9:20, but it was already quite hot when we started and only got hotter, and the humidity certainly didn't help. My hat was heavy with sweat by the end; my shirt was sticking to me everywhere; etc. I went through almost two quarts of water, then pounded a Gatorade as soon as I got home. I don't know what it takes to lose multiple pounds through sweating, but if you told me I had, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. At least this time I had the foresight to put sunblock on, because it was richly needed.

Still, I finished five miles without dying even though the morning was about as hot as they're likely to come, so that's a positive. And my right ankle, which started hurting last night when I put weight on it and was still giving me some problems when I got up this morning, actually did not hurt during the run, which was a pleasant surprise (probably has to do with the stability of the shoes). I also had very minimal problems with the left foot - there was brief, partial numbness somewhere between three and four miles, but it passed fairly quickly rather than lingering. If I can avoid having to shell out another 100-150 bucks for new shoes and the tradeoff is two minutes of numbness for every five miles - even if it is the shoes, which the fairly minimal numbness makes me think it might not be - that'd be okay, I think. I'll try rolling out the tendons some more this week and see if things improve further.