Jen Runs With Dogs

Lucky me, I had nothing on my calendar for today so I got my weekend long run in early! I left at 11am for 16 miles in the DC summer heat; when I got home, the local weather guys told me the heat index was 105! All went well on the run, though. I prevented the chafing that my running skirt gave me last week, got a new sleeveless top that protects my shoulder blades from being rubbed raw by my camelbak (still healing from last week), and tried some new foods. The Picky Bars looked promising, but tasted off to me. Maybe the sweetener? I didn't even take it out on the trail with me. I tried the Stinger gel on the run, but it was kind of gross. Again, just a personal taste thing, but I'm sticking with chocolate Gu in the gel department. Fortunately, I had much better luck with the Grizzly Bar and ramen this week. The Grizzly Bar was delicious. I cut it into little bites and they were easy to eat along the run and they had a nice crispiness in them. Definite winner. T

Today's long run started my experiments with new foods to see what will work for my 50 miler. I'm keeping a page with all the foods, mostly for my own reference, over here . Today: Mike's Mighty Food Vegetable Ramen - pretty tasty, but too spicy for a running food. Gu Espresso - Gu chocolate is my go to, so I decided to try this. Was not a fan of this flavor Stinger honey waffles - not bad, but they'd probably be a backup food for me GFB chocolate coconut balls - didn't like the taste of these at all. Couldn't even finish the pack despite being hungry.  Dried cranberries  - not bad, easy to eat. I'm going to try some other dried fruits to see if any really grab me. There was nothing wrong with these, but I wasn't super enthusiastic about them. Nothing made me sick, but no big winners in this group. All good data.

Once I decided to start training for a 50M, I asked around to my few friends who do ultras. One put me in touch with an old high school friend who recommended Jason Koop's " Training Essentials for Ultrarunning "  This book is amazing. All the worries I had about nutrition, especially balancing sodium and hydration, are addressed. Plus, it gets to some training techniques that I wouldn't have previously considered. I am and always have been a slow runner. My fastest marathon is 4:51 and when I run comfortably it's usually around 5:20. I'm happy with this. I have no interest in training in a way that I don't like just to get faster because I don't value being faster. That means all my runs were the same except for the distance. Koop's book convinced me that the benefits of more intense training - namely, that I could better keep food down and stay vertical in a long ultra - were worth it. So with some trepidation I made myself a plan stating