First 18 miler
After running in Austin TX this past week I was looking forward to the cooler temperatures back in PA. This morning it was in the 60s when I went to the Conewago trail head. I wasn’t sure how far I wanted to go since I had ran the last 7 days in a row (52 miles, a new record for me) so I thought I’d take it relatively easy and see how I felt. I started going pretty slow for the first 1/2 a mile to warm up and then got into a decent groove. At the 3rd mile I realized I should probably back off the pace a tad since I still hadn’t decided how far out to go. As I approached the 8th mile marker I realized I didn’t have a lot of fuel on me (I had 20oz of Powerade and 20oz of water with me when I began), and started thinking how much it would suck if I ran out of glucose and bonked. At the 9th mile marker I did a u-turn and started heading back. I could definitely feel the leg fatigue increasing after the 13th or 14th mile. I was pretty releaved when I hit the “1 mile to go” marker and I was able to pick up the pace a bit, but I’m not sure how much longer I could have kept going without significantly increased effort. I packed two gels into my fuel belt so next time bonking should be less of a concern.
Run stats
Distance: 18 miles
Time: 2 hours 31 mins
Average Speed: 8:24/mile
Average HR: 148 beats/min