Deer Creek Trail

Instead of trying to go back and blog about past races, I am just going to start up where I currently am.  For the past 2 months I have been training for the West Mountain Marathon.  It has been amazing. I changed my strategy for training and I have noticed a major change in my pace.

Saturday I did my long run along the Deer Creek Trail by where I live.  This is a difficult trail with lots of gradual uphill and downhill. I was scheduled for 13 miles, but my friend and I decided to go to the end to make it 15 miles.

I've done this trail twice before and I didn't feel as tired as I had before.  I started thinking about what I ate the night before. I had pizza.  That's perfect carb loading!  But then I realized the pizza was thin crust.  This was not my choice, that was just how it was ordered.  We had friends over, and she was watching out for me and my calorie intake.  I love her!  But calories don't mean anything to me the night before a long run.

I also didn't take as many honey stingers as I normally do.  I am not sure why I didn't. My water intake wasn't what it usually was either. Wait, I know why I didn't.  I was running with a seasoned runner and she was not taking anything. So, I wanted to be cool like her and run on nothing.  Fail. We are two completely different people.  Little things that I change really do make a difference. I probably could have ran that a tad faster than what I did.  Do what works for you.  Don't change it. 

The next day my calves were hurting.   It seems when I do hills on trails my body reacts completely different and different parts of my body are worked. 

I was struggling with a hamstring pain from my runs earlier in the week.  I had wanted to run up cascade springs road, but decided against it with my hamstring.  I didn't want to ruin my chances of running the marathon just because I really wanted to run uphill. Like, straight uphill.  There will be many chances for that.