Well, update first on the tight leg problems. I think the foam roller has helped. I also chose not to run my four easy miles yesterday and take another day of rest. I think that certainly helped. It’s a long road to getting my form perfected and muscles loosened but progress is being made. On to today.
Today I ran a whopping 19 miles. That’s almost 3/4 of a marathon. I ran along the river Thames today on the path. Map here. It was a lovely spring day if a bit warm for running. This led to the one problem: I ran out of fluid again. I filled my CamelBak hydration backpack with one whole litre of Lucozade energy drink (like Gatorade or Powerade) as that would be just enough for my three hour run. Well, it was a bit warmer than I’d expected and I didn’t ration out the amount as well as I’d thought. I got to just outside of Richmond, with 5.5 miles to go, turned round to head back, went to take a drink and found no more Lucozade. I immediately had a small panic but just thought “it’s only 5.5 miles you can do this.” Every ice cream van that I passed, though, I considered stopping and begging some water as, of course, I had no money with me. But I thought “I’ll have to stop, best just to keep going”. Needless to say I would’ve preferred to have had water all the way back but I managed to finish.
I repeated my mantra of ‘loose’ the whole time and, I think, it helped to keep things loose as, thankfully, my feet aren’t nearly as sore as they were after the 17 miler. Don’t get me wrong, they hurt, but why wouldn’t they after nearly 3.5 hours on them?! I’m going to continue to use the foam roller and it will still hurt but I think we’re getting closer to perfecting the form and loosening the muscles.