I’m going on, I’m going to drink myself to death

Tomorrow we have a long workout where we are going to test our limits of liquid and carbohydrate consumption.  It looks as though the weather will actually be a little cooler than late so we will not need the same amount of fluid as a 30C day but we can still top up our carbs.  This is something that is very important to practice in marathon training.  Gillis and I have some help getting us bottles at the right time which is much better than hiding them in the bushes the night before.  The Crew: Dave Scott-Thomas and Chris Moulton will be accompanied by Rob “Destroyer” Watson who is filling in for Cal Staples. 

First off we need to practice sipping a water bottle while maintaining sub 3:10/km pace and not slow down.  Because the pace is fast enough that my breathing rate will be taxed it’s hard to get down the liquid smoothly.  You don’t want to be burping for the few minutes after taking in fluids.

The other important thing to test is the amount of carbs your stomach can handle while still feeling good.  In the marathon you need to take in energy or you’ll run out before the finish line, your body does not have enough stored glycogen to run fast the whole way.  However if you take in more carbs than your body can process or if your mix is too concentrated you can end up sick.  Check out 47 seconds into the video below…

Recovery and training has been going well since National 10 000m last week.  I’ve been running a lot of mileage and had a long workout of 2 x 12km where we (Gillis and I) cruised through 10km in 32min and then picked up the pace for the last 2km.  A couple of days ago we did 5 X mile with 5 minutes rest.  This is basically our speed work.  Considering I ran 70km in the two days before the workout I was very pleased to average 4:25 for the miles.