(Thursday, December 31st)
As is tradition amongst my friends in Portland, on the final day of 2020, I ran Wildwood End to End (WWE2E) which is just a tiny bit over 30 miles. In short, it was a blast and played very much to my strengths. I felt really calm and in control until mile 28 where I took my fourth and final planned gel and had slowed to a lightheaded shuffle. Fortunately the gel kicked in and within a mile or so, I was in better shape.
Takeaways:
- I did a better job fueling this time versus my bonk right at 40k (out of 50k) at Frozen Gnome; it wasn’t until mile 28 that I was in really rough shape, I used an extended version of my “gel every 7 miles” marathon strategy, I could see maybe taking gels more based on time to avoid bonking in the future or maybe it was a training issue (the last time I ran over 20 miles was in August of 2019)
- We ran south to north to avoid the higher traffic areas later in the day, the faster times have been run north to south, will have to try this in the future
- After over a year without racing a marathon, it was super refreshing to get a taste of a more difficult long run again. I was reminded that I feel really at home doing these types of runs and am excited to train for and race a marathon again, perhaps even a virtual or solo event
