After taking Saturday off from running, I met up with a few friends on Sunday morning for a run. Some of us were doing 32K in preparation for the 50K run/race in 3 weeks while others were doing 20+K. It was nice to have a group to run with as it becomes harder to do those long runs when you are by yourself.
Today's run took 3 hours and 12 minutes or just over 6 minutes per Kilometer. That is roughly the speed we will be going when we do the 50K. Towards the end,I felt the need to go a little faster. There is something about kicking it into gear towards the end of a long run which I feel satisfying. Luckily I had my music with me and it helped to keep me motivated.
My friends know that it's something that I just have to do for me so they don't take it as me wanting to show off. I like the final push during a long run so I can simulate the race feeling. As soon as I started to push it, though, I could feel that my right quad was beginning to cramp a little. I had taken some E-Load capsule just before starting my mini speed run and this seemed to help as the cramps only came for a few seconds and then went away as I eased up a little.
Even though I haven't seen any scientific evidence to prove that going faster increases cramping, I've noticed that as soon as I push myself a little more on a long run I feel the cramps coming on. I don't experience this on any of of my shorter runs though even when my pace quickens to 4:45 per Kilometer.
During the 50K the stations are stocked with lots of things like bananas and salted pretzels so I'm hoping that these things will help if I experience cramping once again.
This will be my last long run until the 50K so I will use these next few weeks to rest up and prepare for that day. My longest run will probably be no more than 20K between now and then so I'll stick to doing plenty of "ME" runs averaging between 8-12K.
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