I took last week easy in anticipation of today's mock run so was anticipating that I would be able to cover the distance comfortably. But it didn't pan out that way. So what went wrong?
I thought that I had started off at a comfortable pace but, looking at my splits, it is obvious that I was running way too fast for the first half of the course from home and along the bike track. It didn't help that at around the 10k I started getting stomach cramps and began to blow a lot of wind - and the nearest toilet was another 5k away. During those 5k there were times when I had to stop running and just walk, holding my stomach as the pains gripped me. After a 2½ min stop I was then able to run on but I began to slow down, eventually finishing in a time of 2.27.04.
I've begun to wonder if I ham starting to become gluten intolerant. To test this out I will use up all my gluten products and then go gluten free to see if this helps or not.
The other issue is my right hamstring soreness. It is unusual in that the soreness moves around from spot to spot. When I am not running it is normally perfectly all right, though after sitting for long periods of time on my office chair or while driving the soreness will reappear. I think that I need to do a lot more stretching exercises.
I arrived home to a hot bath, a plate with nuts, biscuits, dried apricots and a muesli bar with a cup of hot tea to follow. In the bath I had a couple of small cramps.
Is it worth it? Well, it has definitely helped my lungs. One specialist told me that about 30% of my lungs were dead so I will continue with jogging to help them as much as I can. I would still like to run a marathon by the end of this year or early next year and then go on to run the Six Foot marathon track and then compete in the Bruny Island Ultra Marathon (64k).
Time will tell.
