Week 1 done
I’m a bit late as week 2 is well underway but for the record I should recount the rest of week 1.
I was off work on Thursday, and a hilly run was on the agenda, so I headed out on a route that I hadn’t been on since the lockdown as I couldn’t cope with all the Covid exercisers clogging the footpath. I was a bit apprehensive on Thursday for the same reason, but the Covid walkers are now back in the shopping centres so it was very quiet and quite pleasant. It’s the hilliest route around here so it did the job.
7 miles was the plan for Saturday so I went back down the canal, which was really nice. I ended up doing 7.5 miles even though my legs were a bit wrecked by mile 6. Despite the fact that I had eaten pizza the night before, I didn’t really have enough carbs in my legs so found it tougher than I should have. First lesson of 2020 training – 7.5 miles is long enough so you do need to take the gel. All in all a good start. 15 to go.
I don’t use the gels, but I found myself needing something once I got to that point too. I don’t know that I ever did take any for my practice runs (I think I suffered through those), but I did take some peanuts for my half and had a few around 10 miles.
I generally take them on the longer runs – 3/4 over a full marathon. They definitely work for me. They days you need 100 calories per hour to stop you hitting the wall and I never have.
Nice… you can’t argue with results like that.
Yep, always good to have a gel handy for sure. You’re right about the 100 calories per hour, or thereabouts, but a full tank is about 1800. So it’s also good to train the body off them as much as possible when not racing. If you’re well-fuelled with normal stuff, you should be able to knock out a half marathon without gels, and just a little water. They are, after all, just gloopy sugar. An instant hit, but not lasting 😉
Yes I only use them for longer distances. I can’t really eat solid food when I’m running. Some people are great for biscuits and bananas and stuff on the run but I can’t stomach that. I will go back to my porridge breakfast too. Are you still getting emails? I changed some settings in WordPress yesterday but not sure if it made a difference?