Friday's Run

Something crazy happened on Friday.

The day started off in its typical fashion. I woke up at 4:50am and was in the pool by 5:30. During my hour and a half in the pool I swam a 1000m warmup, 900m of pulling and then we were tied up to stretch cords for another tough workout. My favourite kind of tough workout by the way. At the end of it all, when we were sufficiently exhausted, we had to swim two 100m sprints and then four 50m sprints. Christine likes to see how fast we can go after we get off the stretch cords.  I do too because that's always when I clock my best times.

I set a new 100m record (for myself anyway) of 1:35. I also managed to swim 50m in 43 seconds which is not too shabby either.

All in all, it was a fun and exhausting workout.

Normally, Doug and I curl on Friday nights. Last Friday, there was a bonspiel at the club so we couldn't play. (well actually that's only partly true. Doug played in the bonspiel. I did not). The fact that I couldn't curl on Friday night worked out well because I was planning on spending the entire day on Saturday in Toronto with my little sis. That left Friday after work free for me to squeeze in my 16k long run.

So I swam hard in the morning, worked for 6 hours, and then ran 16k.

I have not run in the afternoon or evening in over a year. My body likes consistency so morning runs are my new normal.  I also don't normally exercise twice in one day. I was going to have to take a bit of a wild guess on my diabetes management.

We only work until 2pm on Fridays so I ate lunch at 11 rather than 12. That gave my conservative lunch bolus more time to leave my system. By 2:30pm, when I was dressed and ready to start my run, my BG was 10.0 and I had 0.3 units on board. I had a gel and headed out.

The first thing I noticed is that I had way more energy that I typically do in the mornings. There was no easy 3k warmup - I headed down the street practically sprinting. I kept trying to hold back because 16k is a long way AND I had already worked out that day. My body and I finally reached an agreement to hover around 6 minutes per kilometre - faster than my brain wanted but slower than my body wanted to go. I loped along for 10k at that pace and still felt strong.

At 11k, the world kinda tilted for a second and I knew my blood sugar was dropping. I stopped, took a drink of NUUN, ate a package of fruit chews and headed off again. That's about when I turned a corner and found myself running directly into a cold headwind for two kilometres. I slogged my way through at a more modest pace but as my blood sugar climbed, my legs sped up again. Before I knew it I was back to 6:00 minute kilometres again.

I carried on for the last few kilometres and, 500m from home, the word tilted again. I ran it in, opened the door and headed straight for my glucometer. I was 3.2. Chocolate milk saved the day.

Obviously I need more food during afternoon runs than I do in the morning. Or a lower basal rate.

My best 16k run to this point was 1:40:something. Friday, I ran a 1:37:41. Despite two lows, a headwind and a hard swim workout only a few hours earlier.

Crazy!

Too bad it wasn't race day. I would have finished in under 2:15:00 at that pace. Something I have NEVER been able to do....yet.