That bottle of Coke at the end of today’s long run tasted so good.  It was my reward for completing my biggest ever training week and for finishing my biggest ever training block.

My final workout of the block was a two and half hour long run. I got up early this morning, to get it done while the temperatures were still on the cooler side.  While the heat was not a major challenge today, the same could not be said, for the feeling in my legs.

I had woken up with a little bit of a sore knee, and was concerned it would get worse on the run.  It was pretty painful for the first half mile of my run, but it settled down after that, and was very manageable.  After that first half mile however, I had a different and very familiar feeling in my legs.  They felt just like they do at the end of a marathon or Ironman race; tired with very sore muscles.

Even though my legs felt quite bad, I was determined to complete this run.  I started at a comfortable pace and was hoping that I could maintain that pace for the whole run.  In long distance triathlon,  there is a saying that “the runner who slows down the least, wins the race.”  I was aiming to not slow down.

I started the run with a small loop of about three miles, and arrived back at my car.  I stopped quickly to pick up my handheld water bottle and have a quick gel.  Upon starting to run again, my knee hurt for about 20-30 steps, but once loosened up, it was OK again.  I chose a different loop after leaving my car and ended up running this loop three more times.  Running loops back to my car like this, made it easy to fill up my water bottle and get some nutrition in.

By the time I got to the last loop, I knew I could make it for the two and half hours.  I was successful in maintaining my pace for the whole run and my last mile, was my fastest.  I think I just got faster because I knew it was the end and I wanted the whole thing to be over.

It’s been a fascinating three weeks of training.  I have done more than I ever thought possible.  I finished with a week that included 3:50 hours of swimming, 9:45 of biking and 6:05 of running.  That’s a total of 19:40 hours of training. 

I was half tempted to go out on my bike for twenty minutes to get over twenty hours for the week, but after drinking that Coke, I knew I was done!