A blogger, I am not (Stacey)

If you are paying attention to this blog at all, it is very quickly apparent who is better at blogging.

That would be my dear friend Kelsey. :) I keep forgetting to write because I don't see much point in it when my runs are boring. Or other times, I just flat out forget that I have to do so. Also, Kelsey is just the superior, and more comical, writer.

Anyway, my most recent hiatus does come with a good excuse. About a week and a half ago, my boyfriend proposed when I was visiting him in Illinois! :) So that weekend was filled with family and people fawning over me and sending me texts, facebook messages, and phone calls. It was a crazy exciting weekend, but crazy busy, and crazy HOT! Where he lives in Illinois is consistently about 5-10 degrees hotter than where I live. That weekend 3 of the 5 days I was there were over 105. The other two were in the 90s. Needless to say, his family didn't let me run on the day I was supposed to do my 7 miles because it was the hottest day of  the summer thus far. Two days later, still in Illinois, I tried to run my 7 miles and started, but then got caught in severe thunderstorm weather in the woods, on a trail, a mile and a half away from somewhere a car could pick me up. So that was an exciting (and fast) mile and a half. I ended up running only 3.5 miles instead of the planned 7 that day.

Needless to say, by that point, it was Monday and I just gave up on the idea of running 7 miles ever.

This past week I have run when I was supposed to, and as long as I was supposed to, but on Saturday when I was supposed to run 8 miles, I was on a camping trip with a bunch of teenage girls from youth group. So, that leads me to today, Sunday. I started my 8 mile run around 7:30 pm, carbbed up and hoping for the best.

Following the advice of Kelsey, I broke my run into two pieces so I could drop by my house to get a drink of water in the middle. All in all, the run wasn't too exciting. Except for, you know, the fact I finished it at all. . . .

Bunny trail: I took a shopping excursion at the beginning of the weekend. I picked up a tank top and a couple pairs of shorts that will be nicer to me while running, moreso than my cotton tees and poly/cotton blend shorts. My favorite pair of shorts are bright orange and yellow, thus affectionately called "traffic cone shorts." I also bought Gu and a Runner's World magazine approved fanny pack so I don't need shorts with pockets. Bunny trail over.

So I was at my house, in my traffic cone shorts, freshly sweaty and gross after my first 4 miles, which I completed in 42 minutes (woop woop!). After my cup of water, I decided to take/eat/ingest my Mandarin Orange flavored Gu while I was stopped anyway.

Now I like oranges. I like Mandarin Oranges. I like sweet things. Not a huuuuge fan of goopy textures, but I had mentally prepared myself the best I could for the experience of what I thought this substance would be like.

I did not prepare adequately . . .

I squeezed this large glop of this stuff in my mouth at once, toward the back of my tongue. Bad idea. After my mouth registered the extreme concentrated sweet taste, my nerve endings realized exactly  how much I truly hate the texture (similar to petroleum jelly, but smoother, and orange-ier), then the large mass of Gu was at the back of my throat and activated my gag reflex. My mom, who had previously been in the kitchen observing the fullness of my reaction, exited quickly saying, "If you're going to throw up! Do it in the bathroom!" She always knows the right thing to say . . . I got the rest of the package in my mouth in one more dollop, and this time I was a little better prepared and didn't aim straight for the back of my throat. For the remainder of my run, any time I burped I got a fresh reminder of the joyous experience. Three hours later, I can still taste the orange flavor occasionally, and I've eaten since.

The offending flavor is on the top left . . . 

That being said, the stuff works. On my way out the door to start my 5th mile, I was pretty beat. 42 minutes is my best 4 mile time yet and to run that and still have another 4 to go . . . I was rather defeated. My legs were a little jello-y and my feet were getting the blistery feeling and my legs were starting to chafe. And above all, I was just worn out. I made up my mind, that if worst comes to worst and the dreaded stuff didn't work, I stop after 7 miles, because I hadn't run that distance yet. At most, I was hoping for 7.5 and decided that would be a disappointing but decent goal considering my past week and a half of running. However, by the time I hit mile 6 my energy was back up again, and when I turned around to come home for my last 2 miles I felt almost fresh. I'm not saying the stuff's magical or anything, but it definitely helped me complete the second half of my run. I highly doubt I would have been able to have the time I did (43 minutes for the second half) or even finish at all without it. I would have probably taken at least 1 walk break or cut it short like I had been planning.

Now, part of that might be psychosomatic. After all, as we've discussed, running is 80% in your head. However, the 25 g of carbohydrates might also have had something to do with it too . . . .

So was it worth it for me? Yes, I think it was. After all, taste is only temporary right? I'm just hoping the Tri-berry flavor (the only other one that sounded mildly appetizing to me at the store) is slightly better, and doesn't haunt my mouth quite so long.