So after all of yesterday's dedicated effort to my chosen sport, what better way to reward myself than a well earned day of rest. Yeah, not so much. Instead, I met up with another teammate who was also feeling lukewarm about her Brooklyn finishing time and we treated ourselves to a collegial 14-mile jaunt. She called it punishment; I call it staying on task. At any rate, the first thirteen felt pretty good and the last one kicked my butt. I always wonder about the physiology of what's going on inside my body when I feel such a sudden switch from being coordinated and relaxed to fatigued and stumbling. I always wonder if that's the sensation of my glycogen reserves hitting rock bottom or perhaps it's when the muscles stitch over to using fast twich fibers after the slow ones are all worn out. Either way, I think it must be these "running on empty" miles where the real distance training takes place and the body learns what it has to do under marathon race conditions. It's just such a pity that you have to run for a couple of hours first before you get to this point.
After the run, pretty much all of my muscles were talking to me and they weren't saying very nice things. The questionable calf kindly kept his thoughts to himself, but every other part of me was spent and achy.
| What I should have done at that point was fill the tub with cold water and a couple of bags of ice and sunk my whole tired self into the mix to keep those irritable muscles from swelling too much. I've never been in the habit of doing this, but the ice treatments on my calf seemed to work so effectively last week, I really want to start trying to do this after my long runs. |  |
