Bonking

Hello,

After a long hiatus, I've decided to resurrect this blog. But fear not, an absence of writing was not simultaneous with an absence in training. Well, i've been training consistently except for the christmas week where I sat on my butt and ate anything sweet within a 10ft radius of myself. Well anywhos...as I expanded I knew it was time to get back to training so this past week (first week of january when everyone else s exercising too) I ramped up the training. Here is what the week looked like:

Monday - 2 mile tempo
Tuesday - 3.5  mile tempo
Wednesday - speed work out (4 x 800)
Thursday - none
Friday -  4.5 mile tempo
Saturday - none
Sunday - 8 mile long run

So not bad. The first couple of days were painful. That was what I thought the worst part of running was getting back into it after all. Really, really painful as your body is like 'oh, ok I guess we're doing this again...but I don't really want to, so maybe if I make everything painful you'll stop'. I also read somewhere recently that your body naturally runs in the gait that preserves the most energy. Thus, to burn more calories, and not hurt yourself you have to run harder and faster than you think you do. Just a fun fact for you to chew on.

The big moment of this month was "bonking", which I thinking means having sex if you urban dictionary it, but that's not what I'm talking about. To "bonk" according to cyclists and triatheletes (?) (ie my boyfriend) is to work out really hard and then in the middle lose all energy and just feel like collapsing. This is often preluded by a gnawing hunger that presents itself in the middle of your work out that gets worse and worse the harder you push. This had never happened to me, so I never believed it existed. Unfortunately, today I found out that I was wrong. On mile 6 of this long run I started feeling extremely hungry...like, feed me now type of hungry... so I called my boyfriend worrying that I would pass out and he advised that rather than walk the last two miles I should run them if I could. Which I could, so I did, but it felt awful. And by the end I was so tired that I went directly to safeway to get a vitamin water and a power bar all of which I ate in less than 5 min. I know I was out of it though because as I was walking in the aisles I was trying to figure out why 80 minutes was not 2 hours... it was truly, truly confusing.

Anyways, I feel much better now. And "the goop" has now been recommended to me... although hopefully they have snacks on the course so I don't have to eat gross processed liquid gel grossness. gross. Not to tell you how I truly feel.

Until next week!

:)